It's kind of a last breath for Hammer and Terence Fisher, but I assume it was pretty influential in the subsequent years of satanic craze movies.
My problem with it is that the scariest sequences are right in the first half of the movie (the demon invoked in the observarory and the satanic rite watched by the goat-faced devil himself), leaving a lot of the second half to be about exposition only. The scene near the end in which the heroes can't leave the protection circle is pretty good too, though.
It also bothered me a little that sometimes the knowledge of the all-knowledgeable Duc is stretched a little bit too much, to the point of absurdity. It felt like they couldn't tell the story in any other way than through expository explainations by his character.
But nitpicking aside, it's creepy campy fun, and I'm all in for it. I love the settings, costumes, the creepy vibe and, obviously, Christopher Lee. It's worthy if at least for those sequences I mentioned above, but there's a lot else to enjoy in it.
I don't get why it has a 7.0 on IMdb. It's one of those movies that deserve a 5-6 at most. Here are my reasons.
Let's start with the good. The subject the movie revolves around is interesting and intriguing. At least for me. All the weird esoteric cults about witchcraft and Satan (especially in many old movies) have a really eerie vibe. The acting was good in general, with Mr Lee being outstanding as usual. The movie began well, with some mystery involved, and for some reason I really liked the moment where they broke into Simon's house in the beginning to find him after he escaped. It felt solitary, kinda claustrophobic, and the part where they went to the observatory and started to feel cold, promised a lot But then, that's where the bad elements started to show up...
Smoke comes out of the floor devil pattern, and a really happy, almost cute black man in red diapers appears and enchants Rex with his blaze it 420 eyes. That was supposed to be some kind of devil/demon, but all it managed to do was not only make me laugh, but really lose faith in the movie, not to mention it immediately destroyed the immersion it build up so far. Even though to be honest, I had a small red flag since the first 2 minutes of the movie where Rex and Duc de Richleau say that they don't know where Simon is for the past months, but 1 minute later they just go to his house and he is there throwing a party. Also the hypnotism of Simon scene early in the movie, felt really amateurish.
Then, we have some very badly made driving scenes with a clear as day background screen and them pretending to drive, some awkward acting from Tanith, and a really boring drag of the plot with lots of trips with cars. The movie kinda made it up after many missed steps with the ceremony scene in the forest where the friggin devil himself appears, and that's where I started to question the director of this movie. I mean, they got a really intimidating goat-headed dude with creepy eyes in there, but the first demon thing the movie threw as, was a really friendly and happy looking black dude with satin red panties. Come ooon. Then they "save" Simon and Tanith from the ceremony and somehow ran away from almost 20 cult members pretending to chase them, putting like 10% effort into actually stopping them. Lots of plot armor too. Peggy saved her mother from Mocata just because she accidentally entered the room and stopped the enchanting, near the end of the movie they traveled back in time and Ta
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Non-fiction, but utterly incredible! With beautiful pictures of the fair and the creepy "Doctor" who built his own personal killing factory!
From 1935, this is possibly Dennis Wheatley's best work, and certainly his best known, since Hammer made it into a very cool film in 1967 starring Christopher Lee as the hero (something Lee should have played more often).
I had mixed feelings about the book. It gets off to a strong start, has several really tense and exciting scenes but falls apart badly at the very end. And it is seriously overwritten. A hard-headed editor could trim maybe a fourth of this 310 page opus away, leaving out lyric descriptions of rose bushes and irrelevant chat to create a much tighter and more enthralling books. Some of the lengthy historical references and explanations of how the characters' lucky numbers come from their names could also be dropped without loss.
THE DEVIL RIDES OUT was a sequel to a earlier, non-supernatural adventure story by Wheatley, FORBIDDEN TERRITORY (1933) in which his little band of four raced across Russia, pursued by the dread Ogpu and where one of them found his wife, a lovely Princess. Wheatley's four comrades are an interesting bunch. There's the fairly normal and non-eccentric Brit named Richard Eaton, who had had a little daughter Fleur by his ex-Princess wife Marie Lou. There's the burly, easygoing American hulk Rex Van Ryn, who travels to England often to see his friends. Then we have Simon Aron, an English Jew who unfortunately looks like a Nazi-drawn stereotype, but who speaks fine English and who fought alongside his friends through the desperate Russian chase. Simon is brave, well educated, a successful businessman and regarded by the other three (and Marie Lou) as a dear, trusted friend. As 1930s stereotypes go, Simon is pretty heroic and admirable.
But the main driving force of the book and the natural leader of the group is the Duke de Richleau. The Duke is a slender, delicate gray-haired man who must be hitting sixty. A French expatriate who is wanted by the Surete for his part in the Royalist uprising of the 1890s, de Richleau is so extremely well informed about spiritual matters and the history of magic that you suspect he might have been training to be a sort of Dr Strange of the era. The first comparison that comes to mind is, of course, Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin. I don't know if Wheatley read any of Quinn's WEIRD TALES stories, but the similarties are suggestive. De Grandin, with his abysmally "cute" broken English and immense vanity, suffers in comparison to the sophisticated, likeable de Richleau.
Okay then. Simo
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I really wanted to grab the Blu Rays for some of those awesome old Hammer films like the Horror of Dracula, Devil Rides Out, Frankenstein, Mummy, all those goodies with their special features and stuff. I've been real heavy into collecting Blu Rays, but I'm kinda stuck here with these, which happen to be some of my favorites. Is there anything that can be done without spending a bunch of cash on a new Blu Ray player? It's aggravating.
From 1935, this is possibly Dennis Wheatley's best work, and certainly his best known, since Hammer made it into a very cool film in 1967 starring Christopher Lee as the hero (something Lee should have played more often).
I had mixed feelings about the book. It gets off to a strong start, has several really tense and exciting scenes but falls apart badly at the very end. And it is seriously overwritten. A hard-headed editor could trim maybe a fourth of this 310 page opus away, leaving out lyric descriptions of rose bushes and irrelevant chat to create a much tighter and more enthralling books. Some of the lengthy historical references and explanations of how the characters' lucky numbers come from their names could also be dropped without loss.
THE DEVIL RIDES OUT was a sequel to a earlier, non-supernatural adventure story by Wheatley, FORBIDDEN TERRITORY (1933) in which his little band of four raced across Russia, pursued by the dread Ogpu and where one of them found his wife, a lovely Princess. Wheatley's four comrades are an interesting bunch. There's the fairly normal and non-eccentric Brit named Richard Eaton, who had had a little daughter Fleur by his ex-Princess wife Marie Lou. There's the burly, easygoing American hulk Rex Van Ryn, who travels to England often to see his friends. Then we have Simon Aron, an English Jew who unfortunately looks like a Nazi-drawn stereotype, but who speaks fine English and who fought alongside his friends through the desperate Russian chase. Simon is brave, well educated, a successful businessman and regarded by the other three (and Marie Lou) as a dear, trusted friend. As 1930s stereotypes go, Simon is pretty heroic and admirable.
But the main driving force of the book and the natural leader of the group is the Duke de Richleau. The Duke is a slender, delicate gray-haired man who must be hitting sixty. A French expatriate who is wanted by the Surete for his part in the Royalist uprising of the 1890s, de Richleau is so extremely well informed about spiritual matters and the history of magic that you suspect he might have been training to be a sort of Dr Strange of the era. The first comparison that comes to mind is, of course, Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin. I don't know if Wheatley read any of Quinn's WEIRD TALES stories, but the similarties are suggestive. De Grandin, with his abysmally "cute" broken English and immense vanity, suffers in comparison to the sophisticated, likeable de Richleau.
Okay then. Simo
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