TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (1976)

In a brief opening scene, we see Father Michael Reynor (Christopher Lee, pictured) being excommunicated even as he insists that he is not a heretic. Twenty years later, Raynor has set up a kind of alternative abbey in Bavaria for his group the Children of the Lord, and he is sending his goddaughter Catherine, about to turn 18 (Nastassja Kinski) back to London to be with her father Henry. But before she arrives, Henry goes to occult novelist John Verney (Richard Widmark) and asks him to take charge of her. Henry acts dazed and frightened so Verney agrees and soon discovers that someone is trying to take control of her through supernatural methods. The big reveal (technically a spoiler I suppose but fairly obvious from early on) is that Reynor and his cult are Satanists who worship the demon Astaroth, and their plan is to sacrifice Catherine, who has been groomed since birth with the permission of her mother (who was sacrificed in childbirth) and father (who has since changed his mind), to bring Astaroth in the earthly realm. Can Verney and his friends subvert the diabolical plan?

I have a long history with Dennis Wheatley, the British author who wrote the book on which this is based. I read The Devil Rides Out in my impressionable teen years and loved it. I've read a handful more of his occult novels and been less impressed—they all tend to be padded out quite a bit. The movie of The Devil Rides Out is a kind of guilty pleasure; the budget is too small for the movie to be as atmospheric and effective as it should be, and it occasionally borders on camp, but I enjoy it. I haven't read this book, but Wheatley essentially disowned this film, released the year before he died. It has, I imagine, the same problem that Rides Out has: a budget that is not adequate to the ambitions of the original story. It also may suffer a bit in comparison to movies like THE OMEN and the various 1970s Exorcist rip-offs. The set-up works fairly well, but as the movie goes on, the cheap effects and Richard Widmark's hammy performance hurt the film. (My handwritten notes tell me that at about the 75-minute mark, the movie pretty much stops making sense.) Lee is fine, Kinski (who, though only 14, has a brief scene of frontal nudity) isn't called upon to exercise her acting skills much; she seems to have been directed to just look sexy and vulnerable. Honor Blackman and Michael Goodliffe provide good support as friends of thee hero in the same way that several supporting actors do in THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, and the best performance, because of its relative subtlety, is given by Denholm Elliott as Henry, the passive, frightened father. A particularly poor demonic special effect in the home stretch is laughable. This was the last Hammer horror film for many years, and it's telling that it doesn't feel much like a Hammer movie, maybe because Hammer's better movies (including DEVIL RIDES OUT) were set in the past and had colorful visuals—this one isn't and doesn't. [Streaming]