[AUCTeX] Customizing pdfLaTeX for a particular file with AUCTeX (original question posted to tex.sx)

[Faheem Mitha]

I asked the following question about customizing PDFLaTeX with AUCTeX at 
tex.stackexchange.com, 
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12243/customizing-pdflatex-for-a-particular-file-with-auctex

However, the suggestions given there, specifically the per-file solution 
given by  David Andrews, namely

%%% Local Variables:
%%% LaTeX-command: "latex -shell-escape"
%%% End:

looks like it should work, but doesn't. Emacs does recognize that I'm 
trying to set something and gives a warning, but it still doesn't work. I 
tried it with emacs -q in case something in my .emacs was messing stuff 
up, but it doesn't make any difference. What am I missing, if anything? 
Please CC me on any reply. Thanks.

                                                          Regards, Faheem