Review of To the Devil a Daughter (1976) by Nate W — 23 Nov 2008

The last theatrical film from Hammer takes considerable liberties with Dennis Wheatley's 1953 novel, although as the novel is a pretty hokey affair with black and white heroes and villains, this might not be too much of a bad thing. Natasha Kinski - jailbait at 15 - is the young girl chosen from birth to become, on her 16th birthday, the avatar of Astaroth, aka The Devil. Christopher Lee is the excommunicated priest whose sect aims to bring this feat about, and Richard Widmark is a writer of occult pulp fiction who gets embroiled in the case and ends up an unlikely knight on the side of light. Widmark's character is hard-boiled and cynical (his publisher says that he won't give up writing occult trash as long as it's profitable) and therefore has a little more complexity than the average Wheatley hero.

The film is a little plodding, is under-budgeted and under-developed in the script department. Some of Wheatley's more outre plot elements have been lost, like the jars of homunculi, and too much of the action is trapped in front rooms. But there are jollies to be had along the way: the one homunculus who does appear is a little red wriggling thing of genuine repulsion; the satanic rituals are lurid and strange; some of the camera angles and music pieces are genuinely disorientating; and foremost, Lee gives a very fine turn indeed as the head of the Satanic pack. There is some question as to whether the Satanists really are evil - Astaroth certainly looks a more attractive god than the suffering Christ on his cross, the Satanists' dogma of man being his own creative force is better than the Church's guilt-mongering and they stop at underage sex (why doesn't Lee take the luscious Kinski at the orgy?); on the debit side, they do tend to demand the death of their female followers; Lee sacrifices a horrid child at the end and the world of Astaroth they plan sounds a little too much like total chaos.

Lee, as I say, is the best thing in the film. The book's central villain is called Canon Copley Style (a much better moniker than Father Michael Rayner, as Lee's character here is called) and was based on the noted occultist Montague Summers (as Mocata in The Devil Rides Out is based on Crowley). Lee isn't as plump as Summers was, but certainly brings a goodly amount of conviction to the role of a man who believes in the powers of darkness with all his might.

The ending is nicely ambiguous, as one is not quite sure whether Kinski was saved before she could be inhabited by Astaroth or not...