Hi-yo and ha ha, it’s Burl, here to review
a horror Western! This one is called Devil
Rider, and it fits into a long if sporadic tradition of sprinkling horror
into the common oater! We’ve seen this in movies like Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula, Jesse
James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, Jack
the Ripper Goes West, The Shadow of
Chikara, Ghost Riders, Ghost Town, Dead Birds, The Burrowers, and Bone Tomahawk! And there are others too, so you can see
there’s no shortage, ha ha!
Devil
Rider gets a little lost among all these titles,
and with good reason: it’s not terribly good, or memorable, or the least bit
scary or thrilling! That doesn’t mean there aren’t some nice things to say
about it, though - ha ha, I never want to be an all-negative nellie! No, I’m
sure that if I give it some good old-fashioned pondering, something admirable
will show itself! Or, on the other hand, possibly not, ha ha!
Now, you’re saying “Ha ha, Burl, but what’s
the story?” Well, we start in old western times, where a homesteader is banging
his stake! A big grumpy cowboy shows up, and, after some rasslin’, the big
grumpus spears the homesteader with his sabre! Ha ha, this meanie is the Devil
Rider of course, and he claims a bunch of victims right away, like the
homesteader’s wife (who is bathing Pigkeeper’s
Daughter-style) and a nearby gang of prospectors! And of course, grumpy as
he is, he doesn’t forget to issue regular laughs as he conducts his reign of
terror! A posse catches up with him and the next thing you know he’s dangling
from a rope, but not dying! They shoot him, yet still he laughs!
Tiring of this he pulls off the noose, and
the next thing you know it’s a hundred years later and his territory has become
a dude ranch in the process of being invaded by a horde of ill-tempered
yuppies! The leader of the yuppies is a reincarnation of the pole-smacking
homesteader from the beginning, and he’s dragged his friends along to convince
them to invest in the place as some kind of dude ranch hotel or something! Ha
ha! And off to the side is the requisite old doom-crier, grooming horses and
grumping about durn fools!
Of course the Devil Rider shows up, his
duster unblemished from his years in Tartarus or wherever, and begins anew his
campaign of shootin’, pokin’, and hackin’, along with a draggin’ or two! The
most objectionable of the yuppies is Buddy, played by David Campbell, known
from prior appearances in Deadly Prey
and Killer Workout, as well as his role
in Scarecrows! He lasts a
surprisingly long time before succumbing to the depredations of the Devil
Rider! Finally, after a head-chopping with his own sabre - the only way to get
rid of this homely, bearded menace - the Devil Rider is slain! Ha ha, or is he?
The picture ends with a headless horseman and the sound of that old familiar heh-heh-heh!
Devil Rider, as noted, is not a good
picture! There’s no art to the filmmaking, no apparent attempt to make the
goings-on scary, and not much else to fall back on, like gore or vim or pep or
style! There’s a fair bit of carnage but not many Special Makeup Effects,
except for the head-chop and a scene in which the Devil Rider flays one of his
less fortunate victims with brands of fire! But even in these scenes, vim, pep
and tomato paste are kept to a minimum! If only they had worked harder to make
the Devil Rider a scary, mythological figure rather than just showing him
constantly in full daylight, showing him off to be just a burly guy in a long
coat! Ha ha! I’m going to give Devil
Rider one single groat, which is half the number of groats we find in the
film itself!
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