Atmospheric morality tale transcends lousy SFX, 23 Dec 2002

Its a shame that more of Wheatley's work isn't filmed. Its now considered bombastic and politically incorrect by self-appointed style-arbitrators and their baah-ing followers. But Wheatley knew his occultism, having hung out with illuminaries such as Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers and Rollo Amad. He excelled at telling rousing tales in which drama and pace are never sacrificed to cod-psychology or boring character motivation - the Jeffrey Archer of his day. Providing a heady mix of sex, violence and graphically described Satanic rituals and orgies, his work still resonates in the collective unconscious.

Chris Lee is perfect as the aristocratic Duc de Richelieu, Wheatley's self-confessed alter-ego - he was instrumental in persuading Hammer to film the book. But this movie is owned incontestably by Charles Gray as the Crowley-inspired Satanist Mocata - the impeccably dressed and perfectly mannered personification of urbane evil and predatory sexual menace. Gray's delivery is superb - 'I won't be back, but something will' is a killer line presented with distinction, heralding the onset of the movie's breathtaking core sequence in the pentacle.

Fisher's direction is pacy and rarely lets up, and there's a real atmosphere of dread throughout the film. The scene in the observatory has a hair-raising feel of inexplicable evil, and the appearance of the demon/incubus has a cold, creepy quality unmatched in any other movie.

The pentacle sequence is stunning and the breathtaking appearance the Angel of Death propels us into the type of mythic territory which is only now beginning to be explored by Peter Jackson in his LOTR trilogy. Lee's ritual to seal the pentacle, invoking the four Archangels, is straight out of the Golden Dawn and adds esoteric credibility.

Sure, some of the special effects are cheesy, and most of the other actors (apart from Tanith), are lacklustre. Yet the atmosphere and production values define this as Hammer at its very peak - matching The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy (all Fisher movies) in intensity, visceral imagination, commited performances and striking meditations on the nature of good and evil. The whole show went downhill from here, but what a swansong.

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