A bewitching and beautiful Indian half-caste, Liah, takes her revenge on four ruthless cowboy desperadoes who have gunned down her husband for the sheer joy of killing. Using her enigmatic charm in a way that is fatal to the outlaws, the haunting young woman's vengeance is melted out in a strange, occult manner.
USA
USA
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Desert Horrors List
A strange piece of drive-in fodder yet within it are echoes of something that could have been good. This was a passion project of Orville "Bud" Wanzer, a Film Studies professor in New Mexico who cranked this out on weekends with unknowns making up the cast and crew. Despite these limitations, there is an eerie quality to it. I can imagine someone with some money taking this idea and remaking it into an effective horror film.
It's a member of that small genre, the horror-western. Four despicable cowpokes (well-delineated, I might add) are fleeing to the Mexican border and see this desolate cabin in the middle of the desert. Turns out it's inhabited by an old…
In big bold letters as soon as The Devil's Mistress opens we read it was filmed on location in the majestic mountains of Las Cruces, New Mexico which is fitting because the location is one of its stars.
In September 2021 before leaving the state of Texas for my home-state of New York I went on a road trip from Austin, Texas to Riverside, California to visit my father's grave (who passed away in 2013 while I was living in Norway). It was an emotional journey and my first stop was Las Cruces, New Mexico. Of all the places I visited in the great American southwest, Las Cruces was the most enchanting, to this day I dream of packing up…
Truly a one-of-a-kind western horror hybrid from the mid-60’s that gets by on a few unexpected aspects. The story has no real heroes, as its main characters are a band of scoundrels who murder a man and abduct his daughter, while said daughter may also be a witch who wants to convene with Satan. The story is supernatural revenge, and there is a sense of gloom and helplessness to the whole thing. None of the guys know what’s going on till it’s too late. And the ending, well, it’s oddly dark. Feels like something you’d see in the 70’s, not in the 60’s. But I dig it and can look past the pan-and-scan crop job on Tubi, the dry cinematography,…
If Ted V. Mikels had made a western, it might look a little something like The Devil’s Mistress. (I mean this as a compliment).
Joan Stapleton slays, a pair of large dark eyes and a curtain of glossy raven hair delineated by harsh desert light, but the film around her is anemic, as if she has already drained its life.
Still, this is the oldest rape revenge film I have encountered (of the variety where the woman takes revenge), and who doesn't love a vampiric witch woman?
The beginning has some dialogue about sexual violence towards Native American women, and if that makes you want to skip this film, maybe do.
Just like Manos (one of the few other horror films released by Emerson Film Enterprises), I'm really happy this movie exists, is still extant, and available to watch on both Amazon and Tubi - even if the act of watching it is tedious and miserable.
First, a little backstory. Orville Wanzer (apparently his real name) was an English professor at New Mexico State University, apparently with a love for both movies and the New Mexico landscape. They wanted to film a movie across the mountains in Las Cruces to, quoting Boxoffice Magazine from 1964, "prove that American films made outside Hollywood can be as challenging as the foreign films that dominate art film houses". He teamed up with Forrest Westmoreland,…
Considering the cowboys were absolutely salivating at the thought of raping Apache women, I was 100% rooting for the Devil's mistress. Give 'em Hell, girl.
I love the opening act, but ironically the film seems to slow down quite a lot once the action starts in earnest. When it's just a group of greasy, unpleasant people shooting the shit, it was amazing. That said, this is perfectly fine as far as a no-budget b-movie goes, it's a shame it doesn't get more love.
I was flicking through Prime and this popped up. It was short and I had never heard of it so why not.
Directed and written by Orville Wanzer in what would appear to be their only credit. We begin with four cowboys chatting around a campfire. It suggests they are on the run and sets up two of them as truly despicable with their racist and misogynistic conversation. Another seems a naive and good-at-heart young man and the leader of the pack is the quiet, brooding but direct type.
Along their travels they stop at cabin occupied by a man and a woman and here the trouble begins.
Even for a short film there is quite a bit of padding…
I don't think I've ever been hungrier than I was when watching the four cowboy-rapists-murderers scarfing down a homestead meal of meat and bread. They are just really fucking getting after it and director Orville Wanzer just cuts between long shots of the four me as they shove more bread and gravy into their mouths, using pieces of bread to wipe their plates and chins. I wanted that homesteader slop so fucking bad. It looked absolutely delicious. Anyways, the four cowboy-rapist-murderers are served this meal by the mute wife of a bizarre bearded devil cultist and after they eat they murder him ad rape her and the whole thing feels so 70s despite this being made in the 60s. It's…
This very obscure horror western (released by Emerson Films, the last stop company that put out MANOS, THE HANDS OF FATE) concerns four cowboys of less than perfect virtue traveling in the desert. Running low on food and stuck in Apache country, they come across a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The inhabitants are a mysterious man and his mute wife who say that they fled Salem to escape religious persecution. They kill the man, rape the woman, and head back into the desert with her as a prisoner, only to start dying one by one.
That’s really all there is to this film, which takes place almost entirely outdoors and was shot MOS. A couple of mildly creepy moments occur towards the end, but the rest is too slow, predictable, and uneventful.
A genuinely surreal horror western in which a gang of depraved bandits rock up to a remote shack, occupied by a creepy old guy and his mute half-native wife. One hearty helpin' of mystery stew later, and the bandits kill the man and ride off with the woman. And that's when things get really weird.
The woman gets revenge on the men, but not in the expected ways. She seems to drain the life from some of them. Others suffer bizarre fatal accidents. When the last guy finally bites the dust, out comes the ritual knife and we discover what the purpose of this strange little odyssey really was.
(it's notable that the title and poster paint the woman as…
