Dreadfully Boring

A Brilliant Conflict

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Blistering performances.

I must admit that I usually have a soft spot for movies where people get great powers and start eliminating their enemies one by one, so I thought that I would like "Devil's Partner". But in the end I thought the movie was a letdown. I will admit it gets off to a decent start, with some intrigue and even a little eeriness, plus also a little style injected by the director. However, after the promising opening, the movie loses its way. It becomes a real slow-moving story (despite having a running time of only 72 minutes), and it is seriously lacking bite. The movie really needed a harder edge; as it is, it feels too soft as well as slow. While I wouldn't call the end results terrible, the movie all the same is a big disappointment.

In a small rural town an unpopular old hermit sells his soul to the devil. He dies and his mysterious nephew subsequently turns up. A string of bad events follow in his wake.This low-budget occult horror film is pretty decent considering its obvious lack of resources. It has a fairly by-the-numbers set-up but it maintains the interest just the same. Ed Nelson, who plays the evil nephew, is good and certainly looks the part. Interestingly, he uses animals to do his evil bidding - sometimes, possessing them, other times shape-shifting into them. This includes a dog, a horse and a snake. The scene with the horse is the best one in the film. In it, a wino is chased in the moonlight by a black stallion, which catches up with him and tramples him to death.The movie on the whole is well handled and should please those with a taste for old cheap black and white horror flicks. Although a word of warning – don't be fooled by the cover art that is often used. It has a scantily clad woman riding a centaur…sadly, there's none of this to be seen anywhere.

An old guy seemingly dies on his farm in the small town of Furnace Flats and soon after, his nephew, Nick Richards arrives. Richards affects a suave and charming, but rather slimy, presence, as he seemingly attempts to fit into the small town. But soon after his arrival, unexplained attacks by animals and mysterious deaths plague this little one-horse-town.Old man has really made some sort of deal with the devil for eternal youth, and is passing himself off his own nephew, and using Satanic magick to exact revenge on the townspeople. He shows another old goat, a wino, his secret to eternal youth and he panics and runs--- so Richards uses magick to cause the wino's death by horse-trampling. Towards the end, shapeshifting also works into its strange-as-hell story in ways which are never fully explained. Film has atmosphere and suspense, the dime-store sets and lighting and no-name actors all add to its overall creepy feeling, but also a bit more violence, especially towards animals, than can be expected in an old Z-movie like this, which makes it a bit difficult to watch at times, but perhaps that was the intention. Bizarre music score, too.**1/2 out of ****

This is a very interesting movie. Never mind the fact that its populated by TV and movie personalities from the 60's (including Uncle Charlie from Pettycoat Junction!). There are some serious holes in the plot, I'll grant you. And the quality of the DVD is even worse than usual (it looks like they just digitized the film without even dusting it off). However, the acting here was sincere, and the plot (what little you can work out) is at least not tired. I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to.