Don Fernando (Narciso Busquets) and his sons, Esteban (Juan Miranda) and Luciano (Jorge Rivero) are ranchers that buy and sell horses. They can drink and fight with the best of them but pay for whatever damage they do. Esteban is married to Luisa (Yolanda Ochoa) but Luciano is still a bachelor and considered the catch of the area. While out rounding up a couple stray horses Luciano comes across a beautiful black horse. They look at each other for a while before the horse runs off.
Later Luciano slips away from his father’s birthday celebration to party elsewhere. Sometime during the night there is a knock on the door. Luciano’s mutilated body was found at the bottom of a ravine. The only way he could be identified is by his clothes and a bracelet he wears with his name on it. Luciano is buried but his father is so distraught that he prays for his son’s return. Believing that God has abandoned him he decides to pray to Satan. Suddenly he sees a black stallion in the graveyard. It paws at the ground where Luciano is buried and then runs off.
That night Don Fernando arrives home late from the cemetery. He hears someone call to him. He turns and sees Luciano standing there. Believing that a mistake was made, and that Luciano was not the man that was killed, Don Fernando welcomes his son back home.
The next day Luciano shows up riding the same black stallion that appeared at the cemetery. It doesn’t take long for everyone to realize that Luciano is not the same happy-go-lucky guy he used to be. Luciano’s violence extends to rape and murder in addition to brutal beatings. Everyone is subject to it including his brother and sister-in-law. Eventually his father comes to believe that Luciano’s body has been taken over by a demon. The same demon that is manifested in the black horse Luciano rides.
“El caballo del Diablo” AKA “The Devil’s Horse” was released in 1975 and was directed by Federico Curiel. It is a Mexican horror movie. As far as I know, the movie never had an American release.
The movie plot is reminiscent of “The Monkey’s Paw” and perhaps a touch of “Pet Semetary” with a Mexican twist. It starts out with a drunk singing number and a bar fight but soon morphs into something a little more serious than the normal Mexican horror movie. The movie is not all that great, but it does have a few moments of eerie atmosphere. Actual blood and violence are mostly at a minimum. There are off screen rapes and murder but some of the fights are on screen. Not the best Mexican offering but OK.
How Luciano died is not really explained. He was found at the bottom of a ravine and his body was basically pulverized but how that was done is never said. Was he beaten to a pulp by mad cowboys or did the devil horse stomp him to death?