Word: devil
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Angel is a motorcycle bum who has ratted on his gang, the Devil's Advocates, by selling their sordid story to Like magazine for ten grand. The Advocates are angry, of course, so they leap aboard their Harley-Davidsons and go roaring off in search of Angel and Laurie, his little bombshell of a broad, who have hidden out in an abandoned house and taken up housekeeping. Soon, the "straight scene" starts to get to them. Angel shaves off his mustache and even gets a job. Laurie cooks his meals and occasionally cleans the place...
Take, for example, the last couple of reels of a minor Ford film, Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). Dr. Mudd, unjustly imprisoned on an American Devil's Island, is recruited to stop a Yellow Fever epidemic. He must rally the panic-stricken soldiers, who are shown to us initially in rapid montage of richly lit terrified faces (a characteristic Ford device seen in Four Men and a Prayer, The Fugitive, The Sun Shines Bright and other films, and an example of Eisensteinian Classicism). Next he airs out the sick ward as a windstorm accompanied by lightning flashes begins (expressionism...
...probably hadn't met before. For instance, George Jessel played The Presence, who follows Hieronymous, wears ivory suits with ivory lace shirts and ivory ties, carries an ivory parasol, and goes through Borscht Belt jokes (very well, if you like them) at several crucial points. Milton Berle was the devil, Mr. Goodtime Eddie Filth, who honest-to-God baked big-breasted sex in a private oven and also hand cranked the shaft that turned Mercy's Merry-go Round...
Most of the rest of the cast works hard and well, too, although no one can ever quite overcome the lethargy of the non-musical scenes. David Dunton's sharp and funny portrayal of the devil, Applegate, bristles with cunning and sleek nastiness. While Don Meader's version of Joe Hardy, super baseball star, is essentially unappealing (why does he always scowl?), his singing voice has extraordinary power and expression...
...statement completes the matter: a society that believes in witchcraft will produce innocent people who are mistaken for witches, fools who idly pretend to be witches, and guilty souls who, actually believing themselves to be in league with the devil, practiced the forms and rituals of witchcraft...