A filmmaker who worked with America's most inbred family described his first meeting with the Whittakers as 'like a scene out of Deliverance'. Mark Laita spoke about his experience with the family in a new documentary and compared it to the 1972 thriller movie, the Mirror reports.
Laita revealed when he initially reached out about filming a documentary, their protective neighbours threatened him but he was soon escorted by police to meet the family who stay in a village in West Virginia named Odd. The filmmaker whose work has been watched by millions shared his first impressions of the Whittakers on the Koncrete KKLIPS podcast where he describes people 'barking' at him.
Laita has previously been criticised for his 'exploitative' work but argues that after working with the family and getting to know them better through filming he's been able to raise funds to go towards buying them a new home. Laita admits when he first met them he was very taken back as he said: "It was like that little scene from Deliverance that everyone knows."
His comparison is in reference to the famous motion picture where four men go on a canoeing trip for the weekend down a river in the Georgia backcountry and are met with their worst nightmares. He continued: "We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road, and we come to this trailer and then a little shack on the other side of the road.
"And there’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us. And then one guy, you would look at him in the eye or say anything and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can.
"And this would happen over and over. It was out of control - the craziest thing I have ever seen." The Whittakers who are known as America's most inbred family live in squalor in an isolated shack in the backcountry which is cut off from the rest of the world and have no education whatsoever.
The filmmaker met three siblings and a cousin who were living together in a filthy home along with their dogs during the meeting. He revealed that some family members were only able to communicate through grunts and squeals and seemed to be suffering with physical and mental health conditions.
The YouTube content creator warns in his videos that anyone planning on visiting the family to mock or disturb them to think again because they will be chased away by their protective neighbours. He explained: "They are kind of protected by the neighbours and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them."
After much hesitation, the family finally allowed Laita to take some photographers after he offered to take a portrait of them together to place in the casket of a loved one. After his first visit, the filmmaker stayed in contact with the family and he soon returned to shoot a family called Inbred family - the Whittakers in 2020.
The film was posted to his Youtube channel which goes by the name Soft White Underbelly and it shows him chatting with the siblings, Betty, Lorraine and Ray and cousin, Timmy. Another brother, Freddie, had passed away from a heart condition.
When questioned, Betty doesn't reveal if her parents were related and she says she doesn't know why Ray, Lorraine and Timmy all have disabilities. Laita wrote: "There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whitaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whitakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far.
"I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in Lorraine, Freddie, Ray, and Timmy.” A year later Laita revisited the family to shoot a follow-up video where Betty confirmed their parents were double first cousins.
Another short film released in 2022 features a relative called Kenneth who discusses the family's facial abnormalities and disabilities with Laita. When asked why their eyes don't point forward, Kenneth suggests: "Might be coal mining."
Laita has received a lot of backlash from his work with the family as people have branded him an 'exploitative b*****d' however through his videos the filmmaker has helped the Whittakers has raised money to pay for repairs and improvements at their home. However, the filmmaker has shot back at the criticism after he said: "I think it's good for people to know that a lot of these things exist.
"Everything can be viewed as exploitative. I'm exposing or creating awareness of what is going on in our country."
The fundraising is still ongoing as he is now trying to buy them a new house.
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