HELENA-WEST HELENA – Musician Webb Wilder will visit the Delta Cultural Center on Thursday afternoon for a special showing of the popular film short in which he starred in the 1980s.

Wilder, who performs with his band Webb Wilder and The Beatnecks on the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival Main Stage at 7:15 p.m., will appear at the DCC Visitor’s Center at 141 Cherry Street in historic downtown Helena-West Helena at 4 p.m. for a screening of “Webb Wilder, Private Eye: The Saucer’s Reign,” a 1984 short film that became a surprise hit on USA Network’s “Night Flight” and other venues.

Admission is free. The event will be held in the Delta Sounds gallery of the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street.

A bizarre, comic hybrid that might fit somewhere between “Andy Griffith” and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” the film starred Wilder as a department store security guard with aspirations of being a private detective. When he travels to the small town of Wakefield, Mississippi, to investigate a mysterious disappearance, numerous Southern gothic characters emerge to bewilder and amuse.

“It’s about what happens when a plug-ugly trailer-park housewife named Pristine Suggs is evidently carried off by flying saucer people, and her grieving goofball husband Hiwayne Suggs becomes a media celebrity,” Joe Bob Briggs, the syndicated “drive-in” film critic, once wrote of the movie, encouraging readers to “check it out.”

Directed by fellow Mississippian Stephen Mims, the film introduced Wilder to the American public and helped launch his recording career.

“When we became aware that Webb Wilder & The Beatnecks would be on the bill at the festival, we thought it might provide an opportunity to screen a wonderful short film that many folks remember fondly – and it definitely has something to do with the culture of our region,” said Thomas Jacques, DCC development specialist. We hope Webb’s fans will drop by and revisit the film, and that we can get him to tell us a little about what was on the minds of the participants.

Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturday. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitor’s Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” hosted by DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew and Payne, is broadcast each Friday from 1 to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, interested persons can call the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or toll free at (800) 358-0972 or visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.

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