User Reviews

The accent is really on comedy in this Maverick episode as Bart Maverick goes into the Tennessee hill country of the Smoky Mountains to get monies owed him by Wayde Preston who lives there in the great Metropolis of Hound Dog, Tennessee.

The money is there all right it's in Preston's safe. But a certain family just took the safe itself for what Preston also owed them. The witch of the title is Anita Sands the youngest and a comely lass who has people thinking she's a witch. All she does is get the hormones of the men rising and the women quite jealous. But that makes her a witch. And the fact she thinks a crow that keeps hanging around is the reincarnation of her dead Pappy. That gets Jack Kelly's attention too.

The sophisticated Maverick just can't quite get the hang of dealing with these yokels especially when they fill him full of their mountain spirits.

The episode is done in flashback as Jack Kelly tells how glad he was to finally get shed of Hound Dog, Tennessee. Or has he?

"This is a comedy in which Bart tells his supernatural tale to fellow poker players. When Bart encounters a witch in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, some strange things happen. The witch's brothers give Bart a hard time until she puts them in their place. Thunder and lightning! Anita Sands is our seductive witch. The raven is our omen. When Anita rides into town with Bart, there is chaos. Bart has come to collect money from High Card Harris. Jack Kelly looks good on a horse, and Anita tells him she cast a spell so he would come to her. He finds Anita in a tree dangling her leg. "Nice night for courtin", she says. She wants to be with Bart, but he just wants to get back to Memphis. He refers to himself as an "island of sanity." The witch saves him.

What guy wouldn't like the winsome Nancy (Sands) dropping into his lap as he rides through the forest. So what if she's a witch. Plus, she's got two brothers with combined muscle power of an oxen team and an IQ of about 50. Their favorite pastime, as it turns out, is "bashing" poor Bart while he tries to recover his cash and his reputation after losing to the brothers in poker, of all things. Of course, they poured a gallon of corn likker down his gullet first. And why is it exactly that everyone wants Peaches, the kind that isn't from a tree.

An episode like this is mainly a matter of taste since it's played strictly for laughs. To me, it's pretty funny, thanks to deft comedic performances from Kelly and Sands. That chain reaction of mishaps in town is also a hoot and well staged, to boot. On the whole, the entry's cleverly done, though on the outer edge of the tongue-in-cheek the series was famous for.