Welcome to “The Devils I Know!” For this spooky time of year, from now till Halloween, I’ll be counting down My Top 31 Depictions of the Devil, from movies, television, video games, and more! Today’s Devil is One Bad Kitty.
Number 30 is…Julie Newmar, from The Twilight Zone’s “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.”
The original version of “The Twilight Zone” actually had SEVERAL episodes involving the Devil, and each one featured the character being played by a different actor. The first appearance was early in the show’s run, during its sixth episode, “The Escape Clause.” In here, the Devil was played by Thomas Gomez. Perhaps the scariest episode was “The Howling Man,” where the Devil was played by Robin Hughes. In “A Nice Place to Visit,” the Lord of Darkness was depicted by Bagheera himself, Sebastian Cabot. And in “Printer’s Devil,” the Penguin decided to jab his umbrella into the hellish blend, as Burgess Meredith tackled the part.
Meredith was not the only Batman Villain to play Satan in the series, however. While all of these episodes and all of these Devils were great, my personal favorite appearance by the arch-demon was in the episode “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.” This episode aired during the fourth season of the show, and features the original Catwoman, Julie Newmar, as “Miss Devlin” – a female take on the Devil herself.
The plot of the episode focuses on one William J. Feathersmith: a prosperous but totally unscrupulous businessman. He has had to step on a lot of little people to get to the top, and now that he’s there…he doesn’t regret a single one of his actions and decisions, but he DOES feel rather bored in life. After all, now that he’s at the top, there’s nowhere else to go, and he longs for the good old days of his youth. This is where Miss Devlin comes in: she makes a bargain with Feathersmith to de-age him and send him back in time to those good old days, so he can relive them once more. Ironically, Devlin does NOT take his soul, because, according to her, his soul ALREADY belongs to her, due to all the evil deeds he’s done to get to his station in life. Instead, she declares she will take all but a little over a thousand bucks from him, leaving him with virtually nothing. Feathersmith agrees, since he figures he can make the same choices he made in the past to get back to where he once was.
However, once he gets back to the past, Feathersmith soon realizes his great mistake: he may LOOK younger, but he’s actually still an old man inside, and risks dying before he can ever even enjoy the fruits of his labors. On top of that, the reality of his youth is not nearly as romantic as he remembered it to be, and he soon finds that – after spending so much of his life leeching off the hard work of other people – he has almost no recourse when it comes to fending for himself. Miss Devlin agrees to send him back to the future (hide all your Christopher Lloyds)…but Feathersmith’s decisions in the past have now completely changed the course of his life, and he finds no comfort there, either.
This is a classic time-travel story with a powerful message: Feathersmith is an awful so-and-so, and it’s hard to defend him much or say he doesn’t have what’s coming to him. However, we still sympathize with him, regardless: we’ve all wanted to revisit places in our memories and relive what we consider our glory days. Nine times out of ten, though, those fondly-remembered moments aren’t nearly as golden and grand as we like to believe, and there’s no telling what we could or could not do in the future if we truly chose to return to the past. Newmar’s Miss Devlin is truly a treat: in many ways, her performance here is actually a lot like her Catwoman, depicting the Devil as a slinky, playfully wicked femme fatale, with elegant grace and a dark sense of humor.
Long story short: if you ever wanted to see Catwoman wear devil horns and torment an old capitalist…I guess your very strange and specific wish will be granted with this episode.
Tomorrow, the countdown continues with Number 29!
HINT: He loves an island adventure.
