Ghost Town 1988

Kate, Catherine Hickland is driving alone down a highway in Riverton, Arizona after leaving her fiancé at the altar. While driving, she hears the distant pounding of horses’ hooves outside her car, but sees no one. After pulling onto the side of the road, she is whisked away in a swirling dust cloud and vanishes, leaving the night silent and empty behind her.

Sheriff Langley, Franc Luz, is dispatched to Kate’s abandoned car, found later that day. While he’s stopped, a rider on a horse shoots at him. A stray bullet strikes the car’s gas tank, triggering a fiery explosion. Langley wanders on foot until he stumbles into a ghost town that sits off the main road. He drifts through a strange, sleep-filled moment in an empty building and awakens to apparitions that seem connected to the town’s faded history. In this eerie place, he encounters a barmaid, Grace, Penelope Windust, and a blind gambling dealer, Bruce Glover, as well as a blacksmith, Zitto Kazann, and his daughter, Etta Laura Schaefer.

Meanwhile, Kate is held captive by Devlin Jimmie F. Skaggs, a zombie-like outlaw who exerts control over the town through a pact with Satan. Devlin torments the souls of Riverton’s residents and, after they confide in Langley, kills both the blacksmith and Etta.

When Langley discovers his modern gun is ineffective against Devlin’s forces, Grace lends him an old revolver, and he realizes that the town’s curse responds to old bullets. With this gentler, antique weapon in hand, he begins to turn the tide against Devlin’s henchmen.

Langley finally locates Kate, but the two become targets again as Devlin’s men close in. They take shelter in the abandoned church, which Devlin and his henchmen set aflame. Kate and Langley manage to escape just as the church burns. Outside, Langley engages in a final showdown with Devlin, delivering a decisive defeat to the outlaw. As the two stride away, the grateful souls of Riverton watch approvingly, and the town dissolves into the dust from which it briefly emerged, leaving Kate and Langley to walk into an uncertain dawn together.