Hammer-Time!: The Devil Rides Out, (Dir Terrence Fisher, 1h48, 1968)

 
To borrow the old adage, the Devil has all the best movies. Some he, or his child, appear in themselves, from 1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster, and 1973's The Exorcist, to The Omen (1976) and Rosemary's Baby (1968), Elsewhere, his presence drives on everything from 16th Century New Englanders (The VVitch, 2015), and a grieving family, (Hereditary, 2018), to a space crew (Event Horizon, 1995), a German ballet academy (Suspiria, 1977) to all manner of cults, Satanic churches, and devil worshippers. (too many to name, but the beautifully sinister Haxan remains effective, despite turning 97 this year). Hammer, of course, were no exception, with Satanic cults often bent on resurrecting Dracula or other monsters (see, for example, Lee's last turn as the count in The Satanic Rites of Dracula, (1973)), or the standard satanic cult, (for example, the final film made by Hammer pre their 2010s revival, To the Devil a Daughter (1976)), but all of them pale in comparison to The Devil Rides Out.

1968 essentially begins the start of the end for Hammer; whilst May 1968 would see Hammer receive The Queen's Award for Enterprise for their services to the film industry, two films would essentially demark the coming form of modern horror cinema, and how hopelessly dated Hammer would be by the end of the 1960. The aforementioned Rosemary's Baby remains darkly suspenseful in its tale of the slowly dawning horror of a young woman that she is birthing the Anti-Christ-and disturbing, whilst the gore and pointed political satire of Romero's Night of the Living Dead, as the shambling arrival undead, the great horror cinema trend of the 1970s would show how fangless Hammer had become in just a few years. Hammer, though, would have one last masterpiece, one last bloom before their cinematic autumn began.

Adapting the novel by Dennis Wheatley (a prolific author whose Gregory Sallust spy series influenced Bond, and who socialised with occult figures from Aleister Crowley to British Occultist, Montague Summers), the second in a series starring the Duke de Richleau, a rare heroic role for no less than Christopher Lee, the film seemed purpose-made for Hammer. Despite its its production delayed several times as the UK slowly relaxed its blasphemy laws, so 1968 finally brought the film to cinemas. What audiences saw was far from Hammer's usual fare-far from the gore and the sex of the other Hammer films, a formula that the studio would only hammer further down upon as they entered the 1970s. Indeed, The Devil Rides Out, from start to finish, is a remarkably serious, and superbly taut piece of cinema, almost uniquely focusing upon a pared back battle between Good, represented by the Duke and his friends, and a satanic cult, led by Charles Grey.

This darker, more serious tone, is apparent from the film's titles, James Bernard's score thundering over occult symbology in an effective, and highly dramatic way that immediately draws a line between it and Hammer's more frivolous fare. This is not a film meant to titillate, or scandalise, but to scare. This grounded, unsettling tone, continues into the film itself as Nicolas Duc de Richleau, (Lee), with his friend Rex (singer Leon Green, oddly enough dubbed by broadcaster Patrick Allen), arrive at the house of his younger friend, Simon (Patrick Mower), to find all is not well. If there's something that particularly works in The Devil Rides Out to give them film its pathos, its grounded sensibility and its impact, it is in how it melds the horror movie and the thriller; the slow lingering build-up, as an increasingly agitated Simon attempts to get his friends to leave before the meeting of what eventually becomes apparent as a Satanic cult is a masterstroke, whilst Lee's Duc refuses to be turned away, and eventually comes upon the truth, and essentially kidnaps Simon from his home with Rex's help.

Here, of course, the film's supernatural elements come into focus; the Duc attempts to deprogram Simon, only for the cult's (at this point unseen) leader (Charles Grey) to control him, almost strangling him with the crucifix that the Duc has put round his neck, and making his escape once the Duc's servant comes to his rescue and removes it. From here, the film gathers pace, the Duc and Rex now on the trail of Simon and another recent member of the cult, Tanith (French actress, model and artist Nike Arrighi), when they are confronted, in the magical circle that takes up much of the observatory of Simon's house, a Djinn, in the first of several supernatural visitations that are the only (slightly) dated elements of the film. Having completely won over the sceptical Rex, so he and the Duc give chase, with an impressive car chase as the cult's leader takes over Tanith mere moments after Rex locates her, the effects in which Charles Grey's eyes are superimposed over the rearview mirror particularly spine-tingling and still effective. Both Tanith and Simon eventually fall into the cult's clutches, and the Duc and Rex follow their trail to Salisbury Plain

Here, Charles Grey's Mocata enters the film, as the leader of this Satanic cult, who promptly summon the Devil in the form of a goat-headed man, only for the Duc and Rex to defeat it with holy water, and make their escape with Tanith and Simon. Grey is the towering performance to match Lee's powerful, and seemingly all knowing patriarch, the Duc-much has been made of the film's preponderance upon age and experience, younger characters largely becoming pawns for Mocata, incapable of fighting back against the powerful and charismatic leader of the cult, or directed against him by the equally charismatic Duc. Mocata, though, is not to be thwarted, and his appearance at the house where the Duc and his friends are hiding, belonging to the Duc's niece, Marie, and her husband is a remarkably sinister scene, in which Mocata's powers of suggestion are on full display, quickly taking control of Marie, and mind-controlling her into revealling the locations of Simon and Tanith, until their daughter, Peggy, appears and breaks the trance.

From here, the darkness, and true creeping horror of the extent that Mocata will go to to get him would-be disciples back becomes clear, his villainous attempts to destroy the Duc and his friends growing in magnitude and danger (albeit occasionally a little dated in terms of the special effects), with one of the group making the ultimate sacrifice to turn back the tides of Mocata's evil, only for one of their number to kidnap, and make off with, Peggy. Seemingly confronted with their utter destruction, the battle between good and evil reaches its impressive-if, viewed through Wheatley's often moralistic and deeply Conservative world view, somewhat lacking subtlety-climatic finale, and once again, James Bernard's score storms to the fore. The cycle, the never ending battle between good and evil, between black magic, and man's faith, continues.

The Devil Rides Out is singular in Hammer's filmography; compared to its dark and often unsavoury companions in the later years of Hammer Studios, it is a stern and often moralistic film, its focus upon the triumph of good over evil, of wicked men vanquished by age and experience, and its serious tone, peppered with the pace of a thriller and the slow-burn of a detective story, utterly at odds with the typical fare of the studio that birthed it. Yet, it remains one of the late standouts of the later Hammer films, Lee's favourite film that he made with the studio, and a powerfully made piece of horror cinema, in its tautly made battle of wits, and a struggle between good and evil, and between two towering performances.

Rating: Highly Recommended

The Devil Rides Out is available to watch online in the UK via Amazon Prime and Apple TV and on DVD from Warner Bros. It is currently available to stream via HBOMAX and on DVD from Wamer Bros in the United States.

Next week, we bid a fond farewell to Hammer Studios, as Dracula heads to -in Dracula AD 1972

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