The Devil's Horse (1975)

You won't be disappointed!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Great title and great poster but oh dear me. I was aware that this was going to begin badly and was prepared to persevere but sad to relate it is really not worth the effort. Unbelievably this begins as a musical comedy and eventually, after a lot of fist fighting, gets around to the dead son and pact with the devil to get him back again. Cue mysterious, big black horse to rear up and snort a lot. The upshot is that the son reappears, to everybody's delight, even if he has another's voice and funny staring eyes. He's far more violent this time round and extends this to animals and women. There was some extraneous background dialogue towards the end of my print, as if there was a TV on somewhere within the film. This made the final section even more surreal as we move into exorcist territory. I'm sure I've seen enjoyable Mexican movies, as well as the brilliant Bunuel ones, but increasingly of late i seem to have encountered some real bummers and this certainly comes into that category.

What starts out like a musical episode of a Mexican BONANZA quickly ricochets into THE TWILIGHT ZONE once a wealthy padrone begs Satan to resurrect his recently deceased favorite son. Don Fernando and his offspring Esteban and Luciano love letting off steam by drinking, crooning, and carousing in a cantina after a long day on their horse ranch until Luciano spots a magnificent black stallion while out looking for a stray colt. The young man's soon found dead, mangled beyond recognition at the bottom of a gorge, and the inconsolable Don in a graveside soliloquy forsakes Heaven and implores Hell to return his son to him. The next day Luciano comes back on a dark steed with a plausible explanation for his disappearance but his overjoyed family soon see a drastic personality change marked by murder, rape, ranch hand beating, rape, animal abuse, and rape. Did I mention Luciano likes to rape de wimmenfolk? Luckily, Don Fernando's brother is the village priest and he knows a thing or two about exorcism which brings things to a swift, if predictable, conclusion.THE DEVIL'S HORSE is a riff on the oft-told tale of "The Monkey's Paw" and bears some similarity to the 1974 Hollywood cult classic DEATHDREAM wherein a mother lives to regret wishing her son, killed in Vietnam, would come home. The black-clad, raven-haired Jorge Rivero (who also produced) cuts a sexy, sinister figure astride his ebony mount and with the exception of his sister-in-law, the ladies Luciano took by force would surely have said yes if asked. It's hard to tell in what era the supernatural action takes place (everyone's dressed in 1970s attire but there's no automobiles and one woman takes a horse-cart into town) but no matter: happy horsesh!t like this is pretty much critic-proof anyway and will either be loved or hated -so where can I find more like it? Beware cut prints.