The Mysterious Stranger

The one thing to keep in mind when watching this is the fact Mark Train wrote three versions of this only one of which was actually completed: 'Chronicle of Young Satan' (set in 1590 Austria, abandoned in mid scene), 'Schoolhouse Hill' (with Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer as Satan's (now called No. 44) companions, also incomplete), and 'No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger' (set in 1490 Austria and the only version to actually have an ending).

The problem is that the 1916 version published by Twain's biographer Albert Bigelow Paine has since been revealed to be a composite of an heavily edited 'Chronicle of Young Satan' with the 'No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger' ending slapped on. If that was not confusing enough for someone trying to go back to the original story the University of California Press put out yet another version in 1982 that is supposedly the 'definitive' version that Twain himself would have had published had he lived.

It is clear from the text at the ending that this film is based on either the entire 'No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger' draft or the University of California version and not on the better known Paine version that mixes plots and characters from two totally different versions.