Poor
Devil
Director- Robert Scheerer
Cast- Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Klugman, Christopher Lee,
Adam West
This
feature length film was the pilot to an unsold TV series. Sammy Davis Jr. is a
bottom tier demon spending the centuries shoveling coal into Hell’s furnaces.
Christopher Lee is his over bearing boss, the Devil, who gives Sammy one chance
to prove he is worth a promotion from his menial duties. He has to get a mortal to sell their soul.
His target is a hapless mortal, Jack Klugman, who wants revenge against his
boss played by Adam West.
In truth
this isn’t a very good movie. What makes it worth watching is that this is a
shining example of just how comfortable pop culture was with Satanism in the
early 70s (something that would change by the next decade). Sammy Davis Jr., beloved member of the Rat
Pack casually tosses up some Devil horn hand signs with no more taboo than a
peace sign. Jack Klugman was at the height of his career, right in the middle
of a 13 year run on TV between The Odd
Couple and Quincy M.E. And
remember this was a pilot for NBC. This was actually intended for mass
consumption on TV by middle class American families.
Well,
who knows how the show would have turned out if it had been picked up. Maybe
Klugman would never have played Quincy. One shudders to imagine Christopher Lee
so busy starring in a TV show that he didn’t go on to make The Wicker Man, but I guess that could have happened in this theoretical
alternate universe. Looks like we were better off without it.
No comments:
Post a Comment