Plot summary

The story opens with a hunched old man, Pete Jensen, who lives in a shack in the town of Furnace Flats.
He slaughters a goat and daubs its blood within a pentagon drawn on the floor of his shack.
A young man, Nick Richards, comes to town, claiming that the old tramp was his uncle. Everyone notices that even though it's incredibly hot, the young man doesn't so much as have a drop of sweat on him.
The Devil proceeds to run a gas station which he uses as a base to do some petty interfering in the lives of a few locals, driving a wedge between Nell Lucas and David Simpson after Simpson's dog attacks him and mauls his face. Nick Simpson seems to be behind all this, and further animal-related incidents occur - for instance, a local drunk is trampled by a horse, and a rattler gets in to attack Simpson in his bedroom. The sheriff goes to the shack and finds a buried goat (dug up by his terrier).Ultimately, Nick dies and transforms back into his human shape, having had it revealed that he was behind the various animal-inflicted maulings and killings. At this point, David Simpson's facial wound miraculously disappears and the film ends on a happy note with the townsfolk characters standing over Nick's body in a field.

Cast

• Edgar Buchanan
  Edgar Buchanan
  Edgar Buchanan was an American actor with a long career in both film and television, most familiar today as Uncle Joe Carson from the Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies television sitcoms of the 1960s...
  
   as Doc Lucas
• Jean Allison as Nell Lucas
• Richard Crane
  Richard Crane
  Richard Crane was a veteran character actor whose career spanned three decades in films and television. His early career included many uncredited performances in feature films made in the 1940's. He is best remembered for his portrayal of the title role in the TV science fiction series Rocky...
  
   as David Simpson
• Spencer Carlisle as Sheriff Tom Fuller
• Byron Foulger as Papers
• Claire Carleton as Ida
• Brian O'Hara as Harry Matthews
• Harry Fleer as John Winters
• Joe Hooker as Deputy Joe
• Ed Nelson
  Ed Nelson
  Edwin Stafford Nelson is an American actor.Nelson has appeared in numerous television shows, more than fifty motion pictures, and hundreds of stage productions. Until 2005, he was teaching acting and screenwriting in his native New Orleans at two local universities there...
  
  as Nick Richards / Pete Jensen