31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: The Devil Rides Out

This year's penultimate film was:

The Devil Rides Out
Every once in a while I start to feel like I've seen all the horror films. Like there's nothing new under the sun. Sure, new stuff gets released every year, but I'm talking the really good stuff - the classics and the new classics. I've seen all the vampires, the slashers, the zombies. I've seen the exploitation flicks, the psychological horror and the ghost stories. Wale, Corman, Craven, Romero, De Palma, Carpenter all sit on my shelf. I'm found-footaged out.

I start to feel - not just jaded, but melancholy, like all the good stuff has already been watched and whatever I'm watching now is the dreck. It's not rational - there's no way I've seen even a tenth of all the horror movies ever made - but the feeling is there.

And then - and THEN I realize that I've still never seen The Old Dark House. Or Basket Case. Or, in this case, The Devil Rides Out. It's like a renewal - what other awesome films haven't I seen? It Follows was fantastic, and I'm glad I saw it - what other flicks will become new classics? The moment passes and I'm once again happy to have horror films to watch.

Which is all to say that I was in a mood, and The Devil Rides Out got me out of it.

The Medium
I saw this on YouTube and I'm not sure I should have. It's not available anywhere else for streaming, however, and I didn't see a copy for sale at my local shops, so...

The Movie
The Devil Rides Out (released as The Devil's Bride in the US) is a Hammer film starring Christopher Lee and that right there generally means it's worth watching. Production quality is of a consistently high level as is the cinematography. The acting ranges from top-notch (Lee and Charles Gray) to serviceable, if a bit wooden. All the characters are from upper-crust British society, however, so perhaps it's that stiff-upper lip that makes them all so rigid.

"Is it the lip that's stiff or the enormous sticks up our..."
"REX!"

The film follows the efforts of Nicholas (Lee) and Rex (Leon Greene) to save their young friend Simon from the clutches of a devil-worshiping cult.

Yes - for once Lee is cast as the good guy in a Hammer picture, and his Duc de Richleau is awesome. A modern (I think this is set in the 30's) van Helsing, Nicholas affects a certain world-weary knowledge of pretty much everything. He consistently knows exactly what's happening and why it's bad before anyone else has a clue. His ever-calm nature and answer for everything makes those few moments when he loses his cool much more effective. Only Lee could make a phrase like "Good God, man!" fraught with danger and import.

He even makes smarmy condescension look awesome.

Simon and a young lady named Tanith are to be baptised into the Satanic cult within two days time. Nicholas and Rex attempt to save both of them - even interrupting a ritual wherein the Devil himself (as the goat headed Baphomet) appears! (FYI - for future knowledge or Call of Cuthulhu games - driving a car into the middle of the ceremony and chucking a cruxifix at the demon/monster seems to be the way to go.)

"Me? I thought YOU invited him."

The leader of the cult - a thinly disguised Aleister Crowley stand-in named Mocata - will do anything in his considerable power to regain control of Simon, and especially Tanith, who is a medium for his demonic powers. Gray is excellent in this role and I completely forgot he was Blofeld for at least five minutes. One scene in particular - where he visits the house in which Simon and Tanith are taking refuge only to mesmerize the lady of the house - is incredibly effective. It felt like he really was bending the woman's mind to his, forcing her to obey him simply through the power of his will. He is an excellent villain and as an actor is able to hold his own with Lee, no mean feat.

"Listen to the sound of my voice - it's just... a jump... to the left..."

Thwarted in his attempt to get Simon and Tanith by the timely entry of a little girl, Mocata lays siege to the house with an endless wave of black magic attacks. Nicolas is able to help the residents and Simon withstand the assault, even when the Angel of Death appears on a black horse. Unfortunately, Tanith loses her life - it seems the Angel cannot leave empty handed.

"Maybe the idea of hiding in the barn instead of the magic circle wasn't the best one."

And then they all realize the little girl, Peggy, is missing.

The rest of the film is a desperate race against time to prevent the girl from losing her life - and possible her soul. And the only person who can help them is the recently deceased Tanith!

"Black curtains, check. Black candles, check. Black robes... dammit!"

The Bottom Line
Well written - the adaptation of the Dennis Wheatley novel is by Richard Matheson - acted and shot, this is a fantastic Hammer-flavored Halloween treat. In general I'm not that big on Satanic films, with very few exceptions (Rosemary's Baby, for one, The Exorcist as well). I just find the idea of Satanic cults to be not that credible as a threat. I did very much enjoy The Devil Rides Out, however, and it's extremely well put together. I even found myself misty-eyed at the ending, even though it's a bit of a cheat!

Fear Flashback Friday: Quatermass and the Pit (AKA: Five Million Years to Earth)

Quatermass and the Pit (AKA: Five Million Years to Earth)

This is another one of those movies that I remember fondly from my childhood. It was first watched, as so many older sci-fi and horror films were - from my grandmother's couch on a rainy Saturday afternoon. For the longest time I couldn’t even remember the name, just the vague plot of a spaceship found buried in the earth during a subway expansion. I’m almost certain I saw it under the Five Million Years title, as that seems to have been the US release title. 

I do remember it creeping the hell out of me as a kid.

Many years later I read a Stephen King novel about an ancient spaceship buried in the forest that comes to influence and, eventually, to control many of the people in a small Maine town. Hang on, I thought, this sounds familiar... The book was The Tommyknockers,  and while it obviously has other influences - Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space among them -  it was the nods to Quatermass and the Pit that stuck out to me the most, and I remember thinking that I wanted to track down the movie that I had seen so long ago.

Unfortunately, none of my local video stores had it - I'm not even sure it was ever released on VHS, at least not in the 1980's. To be fair, I didn't really know the name of the movie at that point either, so even if it was available it's likely I wouldn't have found it. It wasn't until many years later that I came across a DVD copy of Quatermass and the Pit. The name meant very little to me - I was only vaguely aware of the Quatermass name from the final BBC serial when it was broadcast on PBS - but the plot sounded vaguely familiar, and there was something about the monster on the (otherwise uninspiring) cover that also rang a bell. So I took a chance and picked it up - and got to relive a piece of my childhood.

This was the only scene I could really remember.

The Medium
My copy of the movie is the Anchor Bay "The Hammer Collection" release. It's a double-sided DVD with the movie on one side and most of the extras on the other. There's a commentary track with director Roy Ward Baker and writer Nigel Kneale, as well as some trailers, TV spots and a "World of Hammer" episode.

British distributors Optimum Home Entertainment had a recent release of the movie (restored) on Blu-ray, but it's region B only and the DVD is long out of print and difficult to find. At the moment, your only (legit) choice in the US is to catch it on TCM (under the Five Million Years title) or buy an expensive copy off eBay - though I have seen it pop up (briefly) on YouTube.

The Movie
Quatermass and the Pit is an adaptation of a 1958 BBC serial of the same name. The adaptation was done by the author of the original, Nigel Kneale - a name that's synonymous with quality British sci-fi. I still haven't seen any of the original Quatermass television shows, something I should probably remedy.

At a place called Hobbs End in London workers adding an extension to a tube (subway) station uncover a number of fossils – an early form of hominid. Scientists are brought in to preserve the specimens (and get the site cleared as soon as possible so construction can continue). In the process of digging out specimens they find some kind of metallic device that is assumed to be an unexploded bomb from the blitz. The military is brought in, but they can’t determine the nature of the thing – it’s certainly not like any bomb they’ve ever seen and doesn’t appear to be made of any type of steel (their magnetic listening devices won’t stick). As they unearth more of the strangely shaped object they also find another skull embedded in the clay within one of the hollows of the ship. As they’ve dated the hominid skeletons to roughly 5 million years ago the question becomes: what is this device and how did it get there?

Why... hello, handsome!

We’re introduced to the title character of Professor Bernard Quatermass when the military is brought in. He’s a scientist who’s in the middle of having his moon rocket project co-opted by the military. For someone with no experience of the character, I really liked this touch – it gave a sense of  Quatermass having his own story, separate from the events of the film. In a few lines you understand he is a brilliant scientist, that he has problems with science being used for military purposes and that he has at least a little bit of political influence.

His foil in the military is Colonel Breen, a man who isn’t completely inflexible, but certainly believes the military knows what’s right. He’s portrayed by Julian Glover who you may remember as General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back or Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

"You'd never catch my AT-AT in such a state, why it's filthy in here!"

The military decides that the device is a German propaganda weapon from WWII, but Quatermass and his allies - the anthropologist Roney who began the dig and his assistant Barbara - begin to believe it’s a spaceship, possibly from Mars, possibly on a genetic colonization mission. 

And it may not be completely dead.

The military will not be denied, however, and you get the distinct impression that it's not just Quatermass that has a low opinion of both the military and the government - Kneale doesn't have a lot of trust in them either. The blind insistence on a conventional explanation leads, predictably, to disaster - and the final acts of the film devolve into scenes of psychic mobs, under the influence of the ship, hunting down unaffected individuals while a horrific vision of their alien masters floats above scenes of destruction.

If there's a down side to the movie it's that the effects are very dated. They were probably pretty low-tech and low-budget even when they came out - and it compares very unfavorably with 2001: a Space Odyssey, which came out the following year (albeit with a significantly larger budget). It has the unfortunate effect of leaving us amused when the aliens are first revealed, when instead we should probably be repulsed and dismayed. 

This is, unfortunately, the least cheesy looking view of the alien.

That being said, there's a certain mood that the movie works hard to create - a growing sense of unease - that still works very well. The acting is quite good, with only a few moments of over-the-top hysteria. Some of the effects are done well, especially during a sequence in which a drill operator is 'hounded' by various telekinetic phenomena, and the climactic sequence involving a crane and a hovering 'vision' of an alien monstrosity is still both exciting and chilling.

The cinematography, editing and - particularly - the pacing are great. It almost feels like a more modern film in its terse dialogue and rapid plot development. The colors are vibrant and clear, as one would expect of a Hammer film, and the set design is top notch.

The Bottom Line
I think this movie is still pretty effective – especially for being made on a shoestring in 1967. It has some genuinely creepy moments and the non-creature effects are done quite well. The limited amount of extras are shot skillfully as things begin to go truly pear-shaped towards the end. There are lots of issues of course – nobody likes to see the Styrofoam ‘grain’ on the rocks that are being thrown around by the ‘psychic awakening.’ However, these are more than made up for in the creepy set-pieces: the exploration of the abandoned housing, the poor contractor chased by ‘demons,’ the whole apocalyptic end sequence.

The choice to make the alien cross-eyed may not have been the most inspired one.

I’d love to see this movie remade today. I think it could be quite an effective action/horror movie and the ideas still have some depths that haven't been completely plumbed in the intervening years. As it is, this is a great piece of classic British sci-fi/horror and I highly recommend giving it a look if you haven’t seen it. It’s one of my favorites and I try and watch it every Halloween season.