Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again host a fundraiser for Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.
Today’s theme: Unsung Horrors Rule
Written and directed by Orville Wanzer—a man who only made this and a film named George Andrews, of which IMDb says is “….a semi-autobiographical masterpiece written, directed and starring Wanzer himself. This newly digitized 16mm film is an experimental and thought-provoking exploration of memory, reality and the social conventions of 1970s middle-class aspirations.” The Devil’s Mistress sits at the strange, hallucinatory crossroads where the classic American Western collides head-first with gothic horror, witchy folk legend, and pure, unfiltered psych-drive-in weirdness.
Before we dive into the madness on screen, let’s talk facts. Orville Wanzer wasn’t a Hollywood insider. He was an academic—a professor of English and drama at New Mexico State University. Armed with grit, local theater actors and zero studio oversight, Wanzer gathered his crew and shot this bizarre masterpiece over several weekends around Las Cruces, New Mexico.
We open on the New Mexico high desert. Four dust-caked cowboys are riding through the barren rocks while an ominous voiceover intones a grim scripture from Deuteronomy: “They sacrificed unto the devil and not to God… They shall be burned with hunger and devoured with passion and a bitter destruction. I will also send the poison of the serpent and the mouth of the beast upon them.”
These aren’t your heroic John Wayne types. These four cowboys are low-down, vile bandits running from the law. They are Joe (Douglas Warren, who also scored the soundtrack), Charlie (Wes Moreland, one of the producers), Will (Oren Williams) and naive young Frankie (Robert Gregory, who had the most experience of the cast with plenty of extra work). As they huddle around a campfire, Joe and Charlie let us know just how irredeemable they are. They talk casually about heading up the mountain to find Indigenous women to assault and murder. Joe spews absolute filth, telling young Frankie: “Girls you gotta marry or pay. Squaws, you have your fun and stick your knife in their belly.”
Low on provisions and facing a brutal four-day trek over the mountain, the gang stumbles upon a solitary cabin sitting in the rocky wilderness. There are no crops. No livestock. Nothing to sustain human life. Yet out steps a large, bearded man dressed in black named Jeroboam (Arthur Resley), who greets them with unsettling warmth: “Greetings, brothers. You are more than welcome.”
Joe and Charlie rush inside to gorge themselves on free food, while Will stays outside, his gut telling him something is deeply wrong. Inside, Jeroboam introduces his wife, Liah (Joan Stapleton), a striking, mute woman. When Charlie asks if she can’t even make a grunt, Jeroboam serenely replies that she hasn’t made a sound in all the years she’s been his. Jeroboam drops another odd detail: he and Liah traveled all the way from Salem to escape religious persecution so they could practice their beliefs in peace.
Will finally steps inside, draws his gun, and asks the big question: “What kind of meat was in that stew?” No animals are around for miles, and neither Jeroboam nor Liah ate a single bite. Jeroboam calmly informs Will that his gun means nothing here. Terrified, Will convinces Frankie to leave. Joe and Charlie, however, smell gold. Once Will and Frankie ride off, Joe shoots Jeroboam dead in cold blood. Charlie tosses a crude wooden cross onto the dead man’s chest, and then the two monsters brutally assault Liah and drag her along as their prisoner.
Then, Liah—without ever speaking a single word—systematically destroys the bandits one by one using supernatural horror.
It could be her stealing your life with a kiss. Or sending you off to be killed by rattlesnakes. Or everything, as Will realizes the universe is actively hunting them. “Something’s in the air,” he tells Frankie. “I got a feeling somebody’s always watching us.” He makes Frankie promise to bury him when he dies. Later, Liah walks up to Will’s horse and whispers something into its ear. Soon after, Will mounts his horse and rides off alone. When Frankie and Liah follow his path, they find Will hanged from a high tree branch—his horse having executed him on Liah’s quiet command.
Liah sits with Frankie by the campfire. She gently leans in and bites at his neck. Frankie stumbles away, gasping, “I can’t seem to catch my breath.” He collapses into the dirt, utterly weakened. Then comes the film’s singular, glorious moment of raw shock gore: Liah pulls out Frankie’s own hunting knife, carves his heart straight out of his chest, tears it in half and whips it into the campfire.
As the fire roars, the man in black appears in the distance. Liah kneels before the flames in silent prayer. The man walks up to her—except when he gets close, we see he isn’t Jeroboam at all, but a completely different entity who looks slightly different. The cycle is complete.
This is where The Devil’s Mistress elevates itself from a simple B-Western to a glorious brain-melter. What is Liah?
The movie refuses to answer any of this,
The real star of the film is the New Mexico landscape itself. Wanzer shoots the barren rocks, the harsh sun and the dust-choked dirt with a bleak, oppressive intensity. When you see Liah staring off into the distance at a tiny black figure standing atop a barren mesa miles away, it gives you genuine chills. Add in the grim implication that the bandits ate stew made from human flesh at the cabin, and you have a movie that feels thoroughly cursed.
It’s not great, but it’s great. If you can figure that out, you’ll love it.
You can watch this on Tubi.
