Whatever happened to this kind of movie? The Dennis Wheatley genre of satanic cults in big stately homes? I guess they feel either too old fashioned or, after the strange moral panic in the 90s over alleged satanic abuse, perhaps in bad taste.
I think I’ve watched this film before, but I always get it mixed up with To The Devil… A Daughter, the Baby Boom of the devil worship genre, so it’s not at all familiar to me.
I’m hoping, at the very least, for any one of Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Denholm Elliot or Freddie Jones. Let’s see who we get.
First good sign: Screenplay by Richard Matheson, from Dennis Wheatley’s book (sorry – “Classic Novel”). And it’s directed by genre stalwart Terence Fisher.
First scene: Jackpot! Christopher Lee himself, complete with the goatee of ultimate evil.
His car has a superb intercom for communicating with the driver.
I assume it’s set in the 30s, as he meets another character flying in by biplane. His name is Nicholas, his guest is Rex. They’re worried about another man, Simon Aron. So they visit his house. “He’s just bought a house. A large one.” “What on earth for?” “Exactly.”
Simon turns out to be Patrick Mower.
They find him hosting a party for a ‘small astronomical society’ he’s joined. He introduces them to members, who aren’t delighted to meet them. It’s all very suspicious, what on earth could be going on?
She seems particularly unhappy to meet Rex, whose full name is Rex van Ryn. Lee is introduced as the Duc de Richleau.
Then they meet Tanith and Mr Mocata. Bingo! There’s Charles Gray.
Already, I can see I was hasty in judging Christopher Lee by his goatee. It’s possible that in this movie he’s the hero (or at least on the good side) ranged against Gray who, of course, can be nothing but pure malevolence.
Lee’s suspicions are aroused, and confirmed when he asks to see Mower’s observatory, and finds astrological charts and symbols, and a basket of live chickens in a closet. There’s Black Magic afoot.
Lee begs Mower to abandon the meeting and leave with them, and when he doesn’t Lee punches him out, and they escape the house with him. But he’s too far under the influence of Gray, so he escapes, and when Lee and Rex (played by Leon Greene, but whose voice is provided by Patrick Allen) return to his house, and they see an apparition – which looks uncomfortably like a pantomime genie. “Don’t look at the eyes” shouts Lee.
To me, this is uncomfortably like ‘fear of the other’ – barely disguised racism.
Rex find Tanith, the young woman they met at Simon’s house with Mocata, and takes her to the country, to keep her away from the ceremony, but Mocata’s influence on her is strong, and she steals his car, leading to a great car chase through the winding country roads of (I’m assuming) Buckinghamshire, and some cheesy process photography.
He runs his car off the road, thanks to some mystically produced fog, and when he recovers, he stumbles around a bit, then finds the house where she was heading, just in time to witness the big ritual. Strangely, this looks like a much bigger affair than the one they were intending to have at Simon’s house – there’s way more than thirteen people in attendance, for one thing. And it’s a goat being sacrificed, not chickens.
He phones Richleau who turns up with some magical protection for him. These scenes are confusing because of the film’s habit of filming day for night – shooting night scenes during the day and just darkening them a bit. So the timescales are confusing cutting from these scenes to scenes actually shot at night (or at least on a darkened stage).
The ritual is in full swing by the time our heroes get there, with lots of lusty dancing from the many acolytes, although Mocata doesn’t seem interested in joining in.
You’ll notice that everyone here is fully clothed, which is odd, given that prancing naked in the moonlight always seemed to be the only positive virtue of satanic worship.
Then the guest of honour arrives.
“The Goat of Mendez. The Devil Himself” intones Lee.
The pair stage a daring rescue, driving a car into the crowd and throwing a crucifix into the devil’s goaty face before punching a few of the worshippers (and Mocata for good measure) and escaping with Simon and Tanith.
They take them to Richleau’s niece’s house, and she’s married to Paul Eddington.
But pretty soon, after Richleau is out on a maysterious errand, Mocata turns up on their doorstep and is soon doing that classic movie hypnosis – the kind that Roger Delgado’s Master was always doing.
He silently exerts his will over Simon and Tanith while the sleep, and there’s a nicely tense scene where Simon starts throttling Paul Eddington which Tanith is about to stab Rex with a decorative knife when Eddington’s daughter Peggy comes into the living room and interrupts Mocata’s train of thought.
Peggy is played by a very young Rosalyn Landor, who would later go on to star in C.A.T.S. Eyes, those annoyingly pretentious Renault 25 adverts, and that embarrassing Next Generation episode about the rustic Irish aliens.
That night, to protect themselves, Richleau gets the Eddingtons and Simon to lie inside a magic circle. Young Rosalyn Landor doesn’t need protecting, it seems, safe in bed under the watchful eye of the butler. Rex and Tanith are elsewhere, she having run off to prevent her doing more harm, and he running after her because he’s a lovesick goon.
While in the circle they are menaced first by Paul Eddington’s skepticism, then by Rex’s voice at the door, and then by a giant spider.
The spider menaces the apparition of daughter Rosalyn too, then as a final assault on their circle, the Angel of Death himself. Don’t look at his face, they are warned, and we should also heed their warning, lest we notice that they forgot to superimpose a background onto this bluescreen shot.
At the end of all this,it’s Tanith who dies. But it doesn’t end there – young Rosalyn is suddenly missing from her bed, so Richleau takes the ultimate step of chanting Kate Bush lyrics.
They make it to Mocata’s house in time to witness the sacrifice, but at the last minute he’s interrupted by Tanith’s spirit speaking through Rosalyn’s mother. She gets her to speak the magic words, and suddenly there’s lightning, and the entire set is burning down – as you would rightly expect from a Hammer Horror.
Our heroes then awaken back inside the magic circle. But Tanith’s body has gone from where they left it. Richleau looks out and sees Rex and Tanith coming back to the house. Time has been reversed, and because the Angel of Death must take a life, it’s Mocata who’s now dead. A surprisingly happy ending for all concerned.
BBC Genome: BBC Two – 29th August 1987 – 22:55
After the film, a look ahead at Sunday’s programmes.
Interestingly, there’s a change in schedule in that the Kiwi Cinema film is listed in the Radio Times as Harley Cokliss’s Battletruck, while here it’s Carry Me Back.
The recording ends here.
VHiStory 
I’m pretty sure I watched Battletruck, but I don’t know if it was that broadcast.
Anyway, the Devil and all his works haven’t gone away in horror movies, it’s just that Wheatley’s style is now dated and it’s The Exorcist and the American Satanic horrors of its era that are emulated, preferably with a “true story” label on it (which guarantees it’s been made up). Maybe now Hammer are back they could bring Den back to the spotlight once again, but I doubt it.