Halloween: "The Goat of Mendes!" (The Devil Rides Out (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	The Devil Rides Out (DVD)
Date:	13/10/07 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hammer's last real classic

Disadvantages: Not terribly scary

(This is a review of the ‘Hammer Collection’ DVD release, although oddly it now has a different cover to the one shown above.)

This might not be Hammer’s best film (that would probably be Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed or Plague of Zombies), but it might well be my favourite. It was made in 1968, at about the time when Hammer were starting to be outflanked by their more adventurous rivals, both at home and abroad, and it really represents the last hurrah of Hammer’s more traditional fare. From here on their more watchable films are either experiments that don’t quite work (Demons of the Mind, Hands of the Ripper) or blatantly exploitative or silly (The Vampire Lovers, Dracula AD 1972).

Based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley, who was once hugely popular but is now unreadable, the film concerns two middle-aged magicians fighting for the soul of a young man, Simon, and a young woman, Tanith. The Duc de Richleau is the goodie, Mocata is the baddie. Richleau is helped by his over-sexed friend Rex and his niece and nephew-in-law. Mocata is helped by the Angel of Death.

Hammer’s most successful films tended to involve the same behind-the-scenes personnel, and can’t really be attributed to the work of any one person. Although Terence Fisher was the director on many of Hammer’s best films, it’s difficult to discern any real flair in his direction, and films he made away from Hammer tend not to be very good. I suspect it was a combination of Fisher and others, such as designer Bernard Robinson or cinematographer Arthur Grant, that gave Hammer films their unique ambience. The nicely garish film stock in Devil Rides Out is textbook Hammer, and the film’s 1930s setting lets them indulge their fondness for country houses.

James Bernard composed archetypal Hammer music for the film, which starts at merely overwrought and goes all the way up to apocalyptically overwrought. Like all his best Hammer soundtracks, it has a main theme that you can sing the title to (‘Thuuhh De-vil Riiides Owwwt!’).

The cast is headed up by Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee as Richleau. He gets to play the hero for a change, something he was apparently delighted about. He’s his usual impressive self, although it feels like he’s coasting on his presence alone at various points. He gets to declaim some impressive lines like “Rex, do you believe in evil?” as only he can and injects some urgency into things. Charles Gray as the evil Mocata is a lot more fun – his big meaty face with piercing blue eyes and absurdly wide mouth is a great asset and he plays the part more as an impish upper class roué than a demonic force for evil. He has an especially impressive confrontation with Richleau’s niece. Unfortunately, while suavely sinister he never quite manages to be scary. The character is likely based on Aleister Crowley, but Mocata cuts a rather more impressive figure than the drug-addled real mccoy, who would have been more likely to come on to Christopher Lee, or try to borrow money from him, than to send a giant tarantula after him.

The rest of the cast are a little generic. Women are either pretty or motherly. Rex (Leon Greene) is a middle-aged macho man, but without any depth to him. The hapless Simon is played by Patrick Mower, later a 70s macho type, but here quite a weakling – he has a great face, rather like the demon mask from Onibaba, but he doesn’t make as much out of the sexually submissive side of the part as he could have. A pre-sitcom Paul Eddington also turns up and even gets into a fist fight, but otherwise the cast is a little obscure.

What I like about this film is that it never really flags. A lot of Hammer’s films drag at various points, but this one keeps things moving at a cracking pace. Episode follows episode, and while it’s all a bit predictable, it’s nothing if not fun. Mocata summons something nasty; Richleau talks urgently, does something incomprehensible, and saves the day. It’s also chock full of fights and car chases – at times it’s more like a deeply weird spy thriller than a horror film. The big set piece, where Richleau and chums are trapped in a magic circle while Mocata sends various beasties against them is terrific, even if the special effects are pretty weak.

I also enjoy the sense the film gives that all this occult stuff is just something the upper classes do as a distraction while they’re waiting for the war to start. The coven we see is pretty dull, talking shop in the most tediously expository way imaginable and indulging in the tamest orgy I’ve ever seen. Mocata, as an ageing bachelor, is obviously meant to be suspect, but Richleau is *also* an ageing bachelor, and they both seem far more interested in pretty boy Simon than in Tanith (who’s quite a hottie). It feels more like a parlour game than a matter of life and death, despite Lee’s best efforts (“Don’t look at the eyes, Rex! Whatever you do! Don’t look at the eyes!”). Really, we only have Richleau’s word for it that he’s the good guy and Mocata the bad guy, and it’s quite late on that Richleau explicitly aligns himself with the forces of good when he starts evoking angels and Jesus.

But that’s more in my head than the film – Hammer weren’t in moral ambiguity mode when they made this – it really is about as black and white as you can get. It isn’t scary, of course, not even a little bit. Hammer weren’t really about scares in their gothic horrors, they were more about spectacle, and despite a distinct lack of blood and cleavage this doesn’t disappoint. (I assume the 15 certificate is more down to the subject matter than anything we actually see in the film).

The picture quality on the disk is very nice. The only extra is a trailer (with the film’s US title “The Devil’s Bride” – apparently Americans thought it was a cowboy film under its original name). It’s a mere £5 on amazon, and is also available as part of the 21-disk Ultimate Hammer Collection (which will set you back about £75, unless you happened to pick one up in HMV’s current sale for a mere £40. Heh heh heh.)

It would make for a great appetiser at a Halloween party, before you moved on to meatier fare.

Summary: Cheap DVD release of one of Hammer's best-remembered films