Trama

Traveling minister Reverend John Keyes and his wife Lorna are quietly menaced by a devil cult in the Old West. By the time the good Reverend figures out what's really going on, it may be too late to stop the evil.

This film puts an interesting twist on the horror genre by placing the storyline in the American West of the 1800s.

Rev. John Keyes (Roy Thinnes) and his wife Lorna (Lynn Loring) have broken a wagon wheel and are stranded in the arid desert while traveling on their way to John's new post as a preacher. Unrelenting sun and dehydration have them nearly ready to succumb to the elements, when a handful of citizens from the out-of-the-way town of San Melas happen by and rescue them.

Under the care of the townspeople and in particular the town patriarch Caleb (Ray Milland), his hauntingly beautiful mute daughter Deliverance (Yvette Mimieux) and Bethia (Gloria Grahame) John quickly recovers but his wife Lorna continues to suffer recurring headaches, weakness and general ill health. Her illness postpones their moving on to John's awaiting post. Deliverance is seen fashioning a wax doll in the image of John's wife in her workshed where she makes home made candles.

Deliverance is showing a growing attraction to John, something that doesn't pass the notice of his wife, who becomes insistent that they leave as soon as possible despite her illness, to John's awaiting post in another town. John is conflicted, because he is also finding himself attracted to Deliverance, and is becoming enamoured of the townspeople and their adoration of him. He finds their ways quaint and old fashioned - Caleb explains that they all migrated from New England to start new lives in the West, thus bringing old fashioned ways with them.

John gives a sermon that seems to have sparked new life in the townspeople and even brings about a miracle, healing a crippled boy. The townspeople don't want John to leave and proceed to rebuild the town church, which had burned down the year before; they ask him to stay and replace the pastor who had died. John's wife, however, makes him refuse the offer and he sees her becoming more and more unreasonable and shrill about leaving. He chalks it up to her serious illness getting worse. When they are finally ready to leave, Lorna is brought down by another attack and rendered unable to leave her bed, effectively ending any hopes of leaving the town. Meanwhile, Deliverance has clothed her wax doll in a snip of material taken from Lorna's cloak, and given it hair provided by Bethia, taken from Lorna while unconscious.

The town continues to celebrate the turnaround in its luck and attributes it to Rev. John - the mine thought to have been tapped out and on the verge of being boarded up, suddenly reveals a new cache of gold; a local outlaw named Moon (Henry Silva) who has been extorting money from the townspeople, returns to kidnap Deliverance as "payment" until the new gold can be mined. He is stopped by Rev. John, who in a moment of desperation shoots and kills Moon as he is kidnapping Deliverance and riding away.

John has effectively risen to the status of hero with the townspeople. Yet, he suffers from recurring nightmares and visions of a man, beaten and bloodied running after him. Each time, John eludes this man by running into the waiting arms of Deliverance. One night, after awaking from such a dream - John encounters Deliverance outdoors and gives in to his attraction to her. Nearby, Moon - who was supposedly dead and buried by the townspeople, watches and delights in John's fall from grace.

Consumed with guilt over his shooting Moon and illicit attachment to Deliverance while his wife was lying near death, Rev. John attempts to give the first sermon in the rebuilt church, baring his heart as a flawed preacher - To his shock and bewilderment, the congregation begins to laugh at him. They then let him know who they really are - Deliverance identifies herself as Lilith, the one who "loved Adam before the gift of Eve".

In the end, we see John strung up from one of the rafters of the church as the church burns down around him in a ritual of unholy offering. The townspeople are happy and celebratory. He realizes, too late, that the man he saw in his visions and dreams chasing him was actually the previous pastor who met a similar end, trying to warn him.

Finally, the film flashes forward to modern times. We see a broken down station wagon with a man, wife and child in the middle of the desert. A pickup truck happens by with a few people from San Melas (Caleb, Deliverance, etc). who give the stranded family a ride back in to town..... in the rear view mirror, the name of the town is seen backwards: "Nas Salem." Which is to say, Salem, Massachusetts.