Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Getting the Devil's Goat, or How To Deal With a Stranger in Town Who Can Turn Into a Snake or a Horse and Never Sweats



Our local-access cable TV station, CATV-6, runs a very creditable series of elderly films of dubious worth in between Planning and Zoning cage matches.

Last weekend was a real CACA sleeper, The Devil's Partner (1961), directed by the great Charles Rondeau (his TV credits read as an almost complete list of everything I watched as a kid: "F Troop," "Batman," "The Munsters," "Get Smart," "The Odd Couple," "The Partridge Family").



Nick Richards gets off the bus in Furnace Flats, N.M. It's 100 degrees, but the man doesn't sweat.

He's in town to see is old uncle, local crab Pete Larson. But Pete's dead. Or is he?

We've got primitive devil music. A hexagon rather than a pentagram on the floor under the throw rug, but with enough goat's blood one can overcome problems of geometry. Attack dogs.  Attack horses. Attack snakes. Winos. Stupid tourists. Girls in high-waisted jeans that look sexier than the current low-slung models. Stop-action metamorphosis, from clean-cut garage attendant to crusty coot of the "John Brown, Abolitionist" school.

A decent plot that doesn't get in the way of the story. Short. Not bad at all. Three coils.

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