Devilishly bad

Last month, in a momentary fit of HMV-induced europhoria, we splashed out on The Ultimate Hammer Collection -- 21 of Hammer's best-loved films, but none of the good ones. I mean, no Twins of Evil, but you do get The Plague of the Zombies and The Viking Queen. PJ braved Straight On Till Morning, featuring James Bolam and Rita Tushingham as swingers in 1960s London, in which the most horrifying things were the trousers and sideburns. I decided to opt for The Devil Rides Out and To The Devil A Daughter, a somewhat masochistic exercise.

The Devil Rides Out was fine: Christopher Lee was on good form as the Duc de Richleau, despite looking at one point more like a maitre d' preparing crepes suzette than a witch-hunter casting "good" spells; Paul Eddington played an early variant of his befuddled and bemused good egg who's much happier with a stiff drink in his hand; and none of the characters were offensively dim. The effects were rather good for the time, it barrelled along nicely, and it retained the quaint 1920s settings and upper-classness of the book (pure house porn, by the way).

Encouraged, I then persuaded PJ to watch the (loosely-related) follow-up with me. Oh dear. Oh deary, deary me. Disaster! Set firmly in the 1970s and positioned as the UK's answer to The Exorcist, it features a grumpy Richard Widmark running around London trying to protect a clearly bonkers and frequently naked Nastassja Kinski. You also get to see Christopher Lee's bottom, Honor Blackman offed with a comb, and the weakest ending of any film ever. [Spoiler alert: the evil Satanist is killed by being hit by a small rock.] Our "hero" not only clearly doesn't want to be in the film and shows little remorse at seeing his two innocent friends slaughtered to protect our ungrateful/stupid heroine, but he's wearing the most offensive brown slip-on loafers! The film was, of course, a commercial success in the UK. The best part of the evening was watching the accompanying documentary, in which Christopher Lee called the ending of the movie obscene (albeit not for the rock-throwing) and said that Dennis Wheatley hated it and refused to let Hammer film any of his other movies.

Thank God!