El Diablo (1990 film)
El Diablo is a 1990 American Western comedy television film directed by Peter Markle. It stars Anthony Edwards and Louis Gossett Jr. The film was co-written by Tommy Lee Wallace, John Carpenter and Bill Phillips, and produced by Carpenter and Debra Hill. El Diablo focuses on Billy Ray Smith (Edwards), a teacher living in Texas, as he tracks down the outlaw El Diablo (Robert Beltran), who has kidnapped one of Smith's students. Along the way, Smith meets up with professional gunfighter Thomas Van Leek (Gossett), who helps him recruit a team to take down the outlaw and save the girl. Plot Billy Ray Smith is a timid young schoolteacher from Boston living in a rugged Texas town. One of his students, a teenage girl named Nettie Tuleen, has an unrequited crush on him. While Billy Ray reads a story to the class by his favorite author, Kid Durango, the town is invaded by a gang of outlaws led by El Diablo, who kidnaps Nettie. Billy Ray tries to intervene, but only comes away with one of the outlaw's heirloom spurs as Diablo rides away. The sheriff leads a party in pursuit, only to return with a group of riderless horses and with his tongue cut out. Billy Ray vows to rescue Nettie with the help of Kid Durango (reputed to be "the fastest gun in the West") despite not knowing how to ride a horse or shoot a gun. His ineptitude is displayed when on his way out of town, his mount rears up and throws him from the saddle, the impact causing his revolver to discharge and kill his horse. He arrives by train in the town of Millennium in search of J.D. Shones, a sheriff who had apparently rode with Kid Durango. Billy Ray discovers that Shones is already dead, having been killed by the current sheriff, who is in turn shot in the back by an aging gunslinger named Thomas Van Leek, a friend of Kid Durango who offers his services to Billy Ray and procures him a new horse. However, when Billy Ray explains that he is pursuing El Diablo, Van Leek calls him a fool and abandons him. He later returns to save Billy Ray from a group of bounty hunters who mistakenly believe he killed the sheriff. The next day, Van Leek begins to assemble a group of skilled professionals to aid them on their journey, using Diablo's spur as a calling card. The first to join them is a blacksmith named Bebe Patterson, one of Van Leek's old friends. Next, the group interrupts a hanging orchestrated by the preacher/con artist Autolycus who is about to execute two men: an explosives expert named Roberto "Bob" Zamudio and a criminal known as Pitchfork Napier. All three join the group en route to Mexico, but Napier is soon killed and replaced by the Native American, Dancing Bear, as revenge for Napier having slept with his wife. After retrieving a cache of dynamite Zamudio had buried in