The Devil's Mistress

Now the basic premiss of this Western is quite decent. A band of unsavoury cowboys pass the home of a preacher and his much younger, mute, wife. After accepting the hospitality of the couple, they kill him then violate the woman "Athaliah" (Joan Stapleton) before taking her captive on their journey. One by one they meet a grisly fate - much to their increasing chagrin and to her obvious joy. Who might be responsible for the deaths, though, as there is no clear common denominator? Well that's actually pretty obvious - however puzzling - to the audience, but by now the story has long been overpowered by some seriously shoddy production and actors that would have struggled to get cast in a pilot for the "High Chaparral". Arthur Resley's rather puritanical "Jeroboam" is the stuff of third rate ham, and though only an hour or so long, it seems longer and really does quickly fall into the realms of films best avoided. This is poor, sorry.

...but it just didn't truly work on camera. This could have been fantastic, considering the basic idea. I love that. I got excited when I read the description. I love old westerns and supernatural stories. But the camera work is the worst. It feels like a random person off the street was hired for Cinematography. Very grainy too. But it's a B movie. It's definitely not the worst movie. Two of the guys are perfectly filthy looking for their characters. The Devil..vampire... guy..is truly creepy. Actually the whole movie gave me the creeps. But the fun kind. Like when you're a kid the plot intrigues you and you can't wait to see something weird & strange. We are living in a time of terrible remakes. This movie should be remade. It would be a hit. If you like random B movies, watch this one. You'll be surprised a few times. It's worth a watch. It's amusing and disturbing.

The filming locations are gorgeous in their desolation; the narration and gauche, melodramatic voiceover that open the feature immediately lower one's esteem. The production values are bottom-dollar; the level on which this operates more specifically recalls 'Manos: The hands of fate' than perhaps any other picture I've ever watched. The characters and dialogue to which we're quickly introduced are flush with horrid racism, unflinching misogyny, and gleeful intonation of sexual assault, and the figures are otherwise just thoroughly unlikable boorish pigs (with apologies to our actual porcine cousins). Teddy Gregory's cinematography sometimes inspires outright bewilderment, though in other instances it's decent enough. I can't completely fault the acting of a cast who mostly never acted before or again, just as I can't completely fault the writing or direction of a man who seems to be a first-time filmmaker who never made another film. That doesn't mean, however, that I won't question the performances, or Orville Wanzer's script, or especially his direction.

'The devil's mistress' sure is a thing that was made.

I guess the music is fine, at least for low-grade, low-budget fare of the 1960s if nothing else. The cast may be amateurs, and less than perfectly skilled, but they do seem to put in earnest effort. In fairness to Wanzer, his direction isn't uniformly terrible, only some instances much more than others. There actually is promise in the story he wrote as ruffians in the "Old West" are preyed upon by a woman who is more than she seems. Would that the pacing weren't so lackluster and lumbering, for in a runtime of only sixty-five minutes not much really happens, and it happens at a lackadaisical pace. The discrete events that do transpire are arguably suitable enough in recognition of the cash-strapped resources the "production" had available to it; on the other hand, surely Wanzer could have found a way to foster a tad more excitement, and exercised his imagination a little more so that we viewers didn't have to use our as much. The concept is solid enough; the cinematic expression of that concept basically amounts to the bare minimum, and it's hard to muster enthusiasm for what little plot we get.

I suppose there are worse ways to spend your time, but I've a hard time drumming up any reason why one should necessarily bother with 'The devil's mistress' in the first place. For all the countless other flicks one could be watching instead, including even many other horror-westerns, the modest, middling value represented here is just all too insufficient to warrant an especial recommendation; the tale arguably picks up a smidgen in the very last minutes, but by then it's too little, too late. Watch if you're curious, and if you're looking for something very light to fill time on a lazy day, and that might be the best way to appreciate this 1965 movie.