The Devil Rides Out [VHS] [1968]: Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower, Gwen Ffrangcon Davies, Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington, Rosalyn Landor, Russell Waters, Yemi Ajibade, Patrick Allen, Arthur Grant, Terence Fisher, Spencer Reeve, Anthony Nelson Keys, Dennis Wheatley, Richard Matheson: Amazon.co.uk: Video

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Amazon.co.uk Review

Christopher Lee, long Hammer Studios' house villain, takes a rare heroic turn as scholar and occultist Duc de Richleau, the kind of role that Peter Cushing had made his métier. Lee plays Richleau with a dark elegance and intensity-he is a commanding figure with a trim goatee who discovers that the son of a war buddy has joined a satanic cult lorded over by the quietly malevolent Mocata (Charles Gray, best known as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Director Terence Fisher, working from a literate script by genre scribe Richard Matheson, creates a strikingly handsome period piece (set in 1920s rural England) dripping in dread as Richleau and Mocata battle for the souls of two young lovers on both physical and spiritual planes. The action scenes are well handled and the towering Lee cuts quite a figure leaping through hoards of robed devil worshippers to save a sacrificial victim, but the film peaks in an eerie supernatural battle in which Richleau and his sceptical party confronts Mocata's demons while protected in a giant pentagram. The effects are coarse and dated by today's standards, but the gorgeous period detail, vivid colour and unsettling imagery create a sinister ambience, and Fisher's mix of psychodrama and swashbuckling action makes for an engrossing thriller, a life-and-death struggle between two masters of the forces of light and darkness. --Sean Axmaker

Synopsis

A group of Satanists invoke the powers of darkness for personal gain, risking their lives to do so. But they all become ensnared by the malevolent presence they have summoned.

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4.9 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews)

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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Hammer Horror, 3 Aug 2009

By	Susan Belcher "Su B" (St Helens, England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Devil Rides Out [DVD] [1968] (DVD)

This film is based on the book of the same name by Dennis Wheatley. The Duke du Richeleau (Christopher Lee) and his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) had been expecting to meet up with their young ward, Simon Aron (Patrick Mower), for a pre-arranged meal.

They go looking for Simon to find out why he didn't turn up, only to discover that he had joined an exclusive "astronomical society". Du Richeleau believes that the young man has fallen in with a Satanist Cult, which is leady by a man called Mecata (Charles Gray). At the party Rex takes a shine to a young woman called Tanith, who it turns out is the medium that Mecata requires for his occult practices.

The Duke must fight time, evil and scepticism to save his friends.

Christopher Lee is excellent as de Richeleau, and is matched by the malevolence of Charles Gray as the evil Mecata. Of the entire cast, the weakest for me has to be Patrick Mower (but he was only at the start of his career in this film).

This film was made as part of a deal with Christopher Lee (who was a fan of Dennis Wheatley's work), and is said to be one of his favourite films. Mr Lee is one of my favourite actors, so I may be a little bias.

I have to say that I have been a fan of Wheatley's work since I was a child, but when ever I managed to save enough to get a book my father would find it and, when I came home from school, we would have a ritualistic destruction of the text, along with comments about witch-craft, black magic and the occult. I hate to think what he'd do to my collection if he could see it now.

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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric morality tale transcends lousy SFX, 22 Dec 2002

By A Customer

Still a class act after all these years, and absolutely ripe for a sympathetic remake. Tim Burton maybe?

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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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I bet the remake isnt as good, 13 Jun 2007

By	Lark - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Devil Rides Out [DVD] [1968] (DVD)

This movie is an absolute classic.

And a decent attempt to adapt the Dennis Wheatley novel to screen, which anyone who has read the book will know would be no mean feat since it was clearly not written for the screen. There are some scenes which have been omitted which could have made the movie more frightening but if all those scenes were kept in the feature would have been twice as long.

The actors are perfect for their respective roles of occult super villain and van helsing style white wizard, the ending of the movie is a little bit of a let down, especially if you have read the book, and it wont make perfect sense beyond a sort of smultz "love conquers all".

In the book the return to sender nature of spells which are repealed by protective magic is a little better elaborated and there is also a little about matriarchal spell binding and strange old books which only a mother could read.

I really could recommend this to anyone, whether as a Hammer Horror film, a good Dennis Wheatley adaptation (I think they made To The Devil A Daughter and it was nothing like the book at all) or as a good straight forward movie from when there was such a thing as British Cinema outside of film four movies. If you dont like it then there are plenty of other Hammer Horror movies that are bound to be to your liking instead.

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