Some of your universe's critics do not see the potential in this horrific film. For example, reviewer Wagner-26993 writes, somewhat inscrutably, "Boring waste of time. The plot is not supported by the scenes." Reviewer mark.waltz writes, also inscrutably, "This has an element of trashiness to it that puts it in the classification of exploitation rather than a piece of art." And reviewer richardtilley-76559 writes, "As for the final scene, it just made me laugh. Awful ending."
Read on for the truth about Devil's Partner...
In the film’s gruesome prologue, an old man carries a goat from a barnyard into his shack, where in silhouette he stabs it in the neck. He uses its blood to create an occult symbol on the floor. He uses a quill pen to stab his own wrist so he can write in blood. Suddenly, he is interrupted by a dark figure. The old man faints, but the dark figure signs its own name to what the man was writing.
The film itself begins by following a bus to the desert town of Furnace Flats (population 1,505). A young man named Nick, played by Ed Nelson, gets off the bus and walks to the local diner, where he asks about his uncle Pete Jenson, the man who died in the opening. At the mention of the name, the sheriff and deputy enter the diner and escort Nick to the sheriff’s office. They tell him Uncle Pete is dead, and Nick says he already knows Pete is dead because he wrote Nick a letter telling him to come to town. “Your uncle didn’t die of natural causes,” the sheriff says. “In fact, he may have been murdered. I’m not sure.” He adds, “They found him in his shack, in a pool of blood. Could have been his, and might not. We’re not sure of that either.”
The sheriff gives Nick a box of Pete’s belongings, which include a goat’s pelt. Shockingly, words appear to Nick on the hide: “I give my soul for 2 yrs. Pete Jenson, Jezzer Hora.” Then the words disappear. Nick doesn’t mention the magical words.
Nick leaves to walk to his uncle’s property, and the town doctor, played by Edgar Buchanan of Petticoat Junction fame, enters to play cards with the sheriff. After Nick has gone, they observe that Nick didn’t even sweat in the desert heat.
When Nick arrives at his uncle’s shack, the first thing he does is lift a rug to expose the occult symbols. Then he quickly replaces the rug.
He is interrupted by Nell, the doctor’s daughter and Nick’s new next-door neighbor. Nick is highly suspicious of Nell, but he warms to her quickly. They shake hands. “It’s a deal,” Nick says. “As for the goats, you can come over anytime. If you do the milking.” (Of course, she sees nothing suspicious about a man named Nick making deals and favoring goats.)
Later, Nell invites Nick to the house of Harry, an old man who is taking the goat milk to help with his “lung trouble,” which either is or is not some kind of a euphemism for something sinister. (Most likely, it is not.) Of course, conversation turns to Nick’s uncle’s death. Harry says, “The way I heard tell is he was found inside his shack, dead. But that’s the sheriff’s job.” Then Nick and Nell simply leave.
Seconds later, Harry drinks the goat’s milk and begins to choke. He falls down, dead.
The doctor and sheriff find Harry’s body. The doctor concludes, “A man just doesn’t have a heart attack without some apparent reason.”
Even though they are in Harry’s house, the sheriff receives a phone call. We watch as he listens for an extended period of time to his deputy, whose words we do not hear. Then the sheriff tells the doctor that the lab results for Uncle Pete’s body have come in from Albuquerque, and that there was goat’s blood on Pete’s hands. “Still doesn’t explain why he died,” the doctor says sensibly, “unless it was a coronary thrombosis.”
“A what?”
“Heart attack.” (Unfortunately, he fails to explain why a heart attack would result in goat’s blood on the man’s hands, leaving it to the audience as an exercise.)
Back at Uncle Pete’s shack, Nick performs a ritual using the same area of the floor as his uncle used.
The ritual has a disturbing effect: it forces a German Shepherd to attack David, Nell’s fiance. The dog injures David, but even more disturbingly David kills it by hitting it with a tchotchke behind an armchair.
In a twist that might be considered convoluted, the end result of the Satanic dog attack is that David hires Nick to run his gas station while he is incapacitated, thanks to Nell’s recommendation. When he gets the job, Nick tells David unsuspiciously, “Why don’t you give me the keys to the cash box now and I’ll go down and open the station for you?”
After a comedic interlude in which a hobo named Papers insults the woman who runs the local diner by telling her, “Fat and Skinny had a race! Fat fell down and broke her face!”, Nell confides in Nick that David has grown paranoid and doesn’t seem interested in her anymore. He buys her a Coke. Then she leaves, and Nick speaks with the hobo Paper again, telling him to meet secretly with Nick at the gas station at night.
Later, Nick casts another spell by kneeling by the pentagram (actually a hexagon) on the cabin floor. This spell also involves an animal — a cow that appears in the middle of the highway, killing a plastic surgeon who was driving to town to help with David’s mauling injuries.
The sheriff gases up at the gas station where Nick works, and the sheriff, perhaps a bit oddly, comments that Nick never seems to perspire. Nick says jokingly, “Well, I’m really the devil. It gets kind of hot down there, so I came up here to cool off. Sort of a summer vacation.” The sheriff chuckles.
The gas station is the busiest place in town. Nell and David drop by, which prompts an argument when they drive away because David is worried what he will look like when the bandages are removed from his face where he was mauled by his dog. Nell drives back to the gas station and parks, blocking all three gas pumps before she leaves her car and goes into the gas station with Nick. She admits she’s worried about her relationship with David, and Nick kisses her, but she rebuffs him and leaves.
At night, Papers goes to Nick’s cabin for their appointment. Shockingly, Nick murders a goat in front of the hobo; the murder act is shown in silhouette as in the film’s opening. Nick uses the blood on the hexagon on the floor, resulting in Nick’s transformation into his own Uncle Pete!
Papers runs out of the cabin screaming. Then Pete transforms back into Nick, raising questions about the purpose of their meeting.
In another shocking sequence, Nick casts a spell to make a black horse chase the screaming Papers and trample him, killing the hobo.
The next day, a man and his kids find Papers’s body in a ditch. When the sheriff and the doctor arrive, the man, a born storyteller, recounts the entire story: “Well, the car got overheated so I pulled over to the side and let the kids get out of the car to stretch their legs. We’d been on the road a pretty long time. Just about that time, Vera Jean started yelling. Then they both got all excited, screaming that they found a dead man. I didn’t believe them. You know how kids are, Sheriff, always imagining things. But they kicked up such a fuss. Finally when I went over to this place where…there he was. I’ve never seen such a mess.”
“Then you flagged down a car and called me,” the sheriff concludes. “Well, I guess that about does it. I certainly appreciate your cooperation.”
“Don’t you want a statement?” the man asks, raising questions about what the man’s story was intended to be.
In the ditch, the doctor discovers that Papers was writing something in the dirt: P-E-T-E-I-S-R-I-C-H. (Certainly the message one would try to communicate if they saw a man turn into Pete by casting a Satanic spell.)
Later, the doctor removes David’s bandages, revealing that his face is scarred down the left side. David tells the doctor that he wants to break off his engagement to Nell but he says plastic surgery can perform wonders. When he leaves, David takes a handgun out of his dresser, but his suicide is interrupted by a phone call from Nick with a trivial matter about the gas station. David doesn’t know whether to kill himself or not.
In the final act, the sheriff and the doctor become suspicious of Nick because he knows that Papers was killed by a horse, which was never revealed to the public. Cleverly, they determine that Papers was not writing “Pete is Rich” but “Pete is Richards,” which is Nick’s last name! (Unfortunately, he did not attempt to write “Pete is Nick,” which he would have had time to finish.)
The sheriff stakes out Nick’s shack.
Meanwhile, David has decided to leave town alone. As he packs, however, a rattlesnake creeps into his bedroom, no doubt Satanically inspired. David shoots at the snake with his suicide handgun, drawing the attention of Nell, the sheriff, and the doctor. The four heroes walk through town and the doctor explains his theory that Nick is a shapeshifter, able to turn himself into animals like the horse that killed Papers and the rattlesnake that attacked David. (How this explains David’s own dog attacking him is unexplained.)
In the end, Nick, injured by the gunshot that hit the rattlesnake, stumbles back to his cabin. When he is confronted by our four heroes, however, he has transformed into the black horse again. The sheriff shoots the horse. When everyone stands around the horse’s carcass, it transforms back into Nick.
As the haunting notes of a theremin play in the background, a dying Nick looks up at Nell, who is wearing a crucifix. He reaches for the cross but dies before touching it. Then he slowly transforms back into Uncle Pete.
Surprisingly, when Uncle Pete dies, David’s scars disappear and everyone, presumably, lives happily ever after.
The End
Among the many, many notable aspects of Devil's Partner is that its art director was Daniel Haller, director of Die, Monster, Die! (1965) and The Dunwich Horror (1970). Although the film itself looks like most black-and-white movies or TV shows of the early 1960s, Mr. Haller's talent for populating Nick's shack with goat skins and bloody symbols gives the film a macabre look.
Of course, the real draw of Devil's Partner is the cast. With top-billed Edgar Buchanan as the doctor, prolific B-movie and TV actor Ed Nelson in the central role of Nick, and Richard Crane -- TV's Rocky Jones, Space Ranger himself -- as the tragic David, the film is full of professional actors acting professionally. In fact, Devil's Partner would have worked brilliantly as a pilot for a TV series following the sheriff and the doctor investigating occult disturbances in the little town of Furnace Flats. It is a tragedy almost as calamitous as David's facial scars that no further films or episodes were ever created. A Furnace Flats TV series could have been as classic as Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The X-Files. Who wouldn't want to watch such a show?