It’s completely unsatisfactory but even divine intervention wouldn’t have saved the film from confusion and tedium. The ending is so abrupt you find yourself rewinding in case you missed something, the result of the lightning strike being just too similar to the finale to Scars of Dracula and a spent budget not allowing for anything more spectacular. Still, the film remains completely unwieldy.
In the film, Nastassja wheels out the lines she’s given with about as much belief as the audience accepts, it set her off on a successful acting career and gave Hammer the only thing, apart from Lee, with which to dangle a carrot to cinema audiences. It’s not that Elliott isn’t a capable actor, only that his performance is completely out of kilter with Lee’s. Denholm Elliott acted much in the same manner as he did in Hammer House of Horror, with ham very firmly on the menu. Wheatley went to great efforts to ensure the accuracies of his references to Satanism and black magic, even going as far as to meet with practitioners, so the film had a significant amount riding on it for various parties.Īlas, the film is something of a mess. The previous attempt by Hammer to adapt Wheatley’s works, The Devil Rides Out (1968) was both successful and highly thought of. Lee offered the option of 1953 novel To the Devil a Daughter to Hammer with Christopher Wicking ( Scream and Scream Again The Oblong Box Demons of the Mind) and John Peacock tasked with bringing the page to the screen. Battling against black magic, ancient rituals and a bunch of sombre Satanists, Verney battles to save the young girl from a diabolical fate…Ĭhristopher Lee‘s connections to the film stretch back to an earlier forged friendship with the author Dennis Wheatley, who wrote many books on subjects involving the occult.
It is Catherine’s 18th birthday, though she appears even more innocent than her young years suggest, holed away as she has been by the Order of the Children of the Lord and it soon appears than someone other than Beddows and Verney is keen to have her close to them.Ĭue ex-communicated priest Father Michael Rayner (Lee), who it transpires is in charge of the weird cult and is actively seeking Catherine to become the avatar (incarnation) of one of the crowned princes of Hell, Astaroth. Timid Henry Beddows (Elliott) approaches writer and expert on the occult John Verney (Widmark) to look after his daughter, Catherine (Kinski), who visits England once a year from her remote Bavarian convent.
The movie stars Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Honor Blackman ( Fright Tale of the Mummy), Nastassja Kinski ( Cat People Blind Terror (2001) and Denholm Elliott ( The House That Dripped Blood The Vault of Horror Supernatural: ‘Lady Sybil).
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