1968 horror, dir. Terence Fisher, Christopher Lee, Charles Grey:
IMDb. Satanists! They're
everywhere!
I have only read one Dennis Wheatley book, and it was Black
August (1934), which has little of the derring-do of his Duc de
Richleau (sic) series. Those eleven books, one of which was the
inspiration for this, are by all accounts sub-Saint adventure with
bonus snobbery borrowed from Dornford Yates, and having seen how much
of that is also in Black August I can readily believe it. (And while
of course the film must stand or fall on its own merits, I note that
Wheatley very much approved of this adaptation.)
So it's all very patriarchal. All these 'tween-wars adventure
stories with a leader and his band of heroes have a tendency to make
the leader Always Right (Doc Savage is another example and probable
influence), but Wheatley goes much further in that direction than
most. There are two main underlings here; one is already in the claws
of the cult when the film opens, and the other is basically there to
punch people. Meanwhile the Duc has to get all the good guys from
their initial belief that magic is nonsense to full spiritual warrior
status entirely on his own and from a standing start.
What saves the film, though, is that the Duc is played by Christopher
Lee, who like Tom Baker has the ability to say something entirely
bizarre and come over as utterly convincing.
We also get Charles Gray (probably best known for Blofeld in Diamonds
Are Forever) as Mocata the satanic cult leader, and the similarly
distinctive-looking Paul Eddington as another friend of the Duc's
(he'd later go on to The Good Life and Yes, Minister).
Of course there's a second problem at least for me, and it's one that
even Christopher Lee can't solve. I was brought up as a Catholic (I
got better), and I can see the appeal of the fantasy of spiritual
warfare: spending your life being Good is boring, especially the way
most grown-ups talk about it in terms of prohibitions on anything fun.
It's much more exciting if there are real Bad Guys out there who will
steal your soul, who have to be fought before they take over and/or
end the world, and nobody but you can do it! (If I'd met this book at
about age twelve, I might have ended up as a teenage Satanist-hunter.)
But when you put this into practice you get satanic panics and the
oppression of anyone who dares not to conform. (While, of course, the
Brave Holy Warriors do nothing about the corruption inside their own
house.) I don't find possession and exorcism a thrilling subject for
drama any more because I've read too many tales of the people it's
done to in the real world, tortured sometimes to death for not obeying
their parents, and sometimes for trying to tell someone about the
abuse they were suffering from their good Godly relatives.
But hey, the film is still fun taken on its own terms. Especially when
you notice that when Our Heroes have all chased off after phantoms and
the villainous Mocata comes to subvert Marie, someone's wife they've
left in charge of the recovering victims, the argument he deploys on
her is in exactly the same style as what the Duc's been saying to
everyone: there is scary stuff out there, you don't understand, you
have to trust me because I Know Stuff and I am a big strong man. (Then
Mocata just uses mind control on her anyway.)
But I will put in a bit of praise for Rosalyn Landor, playing the
child Peggy: I'm not generally impressed by child actors, but she gets
her job done convincingly (helped, to be fair, by not being asked to
support a major dramatic role on her own).
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.