#16 The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968)

It’s funny how I’ve always found Dennis Wheatley’s best-selling witchcraft potboilers to be an insufferable load of insufferable, sanctimonious guff, and yet somehow I love Hammer’s take on “The Devil Rides Out” - an adaptation that if anything renders its source material even more smug and puritanical.

In some ways, I’ve always thought there is almost something almost sweet about Hammer’s Manichean puritanism - something quite comforting and noble about the steadfast, upstanding heroes of their vampire movies, forever protecting their buxom womenfolk from the depravations of immoral monsters. Wheatley’s dire warnings against the forces of darkness by contrast just seem sleazy and hypocritical, like a public school master berating his charges for their ‘dirty thoughts’. Thankfully though, it is the former aspect that predominates in Terrence Fisher’s film, a thoroughly enjoyable affair that sets out to define itself as ‘the quintessential, old-fashioned witchcraft movie’ with such Victorian vigour that witchcraft movies made ten years before it end up looking modern by comparison.

One of my favourite scenes in all cinema has to be the one here in which The Duc de Richleau and his allies watch from a distance as evil sorcerer Mocata’s coven carry out their black mass on a starless Walpurgis midnight. Partly because their polite, fully-clothed ‘orgy’ is such a gas, but mostly for the moment when our heroes look on in disbelief as a giant, horned figure – “..the Goat of Mendes… the devil himself!” – rises at the climax of their ritual. I mean, that’s motherfucking SATAN, standing right right there guys! No messing around! And how do our heroes respond but by hitting the accelerator and driving their motor-car RIGHT AT HIM. Physical manifestation of the lord of all evil, pah - run the bastard over, that’ll sort him out! I can only assume it is the sheer, true-hearted bravery of our protagonists, rather than the hurled crucifix, that gets the job done, making The Horned One cut his losses and quit the scene in a puff of smoke.

It is this wonderful, bloodyminded literalism that I love above all about “The Devil Rides Out”. Faced with the prospect of trying to represent magical conflict and the evocation of demons in a movie, Fisher and co bypass all the go-to techniques usually brought in to make such subject matter palatable – excessive atmosphere, implication and subtlety, ‘monsters of the id’ style psychological peril, psychedelic freakout etc. – and instead misstep the audience by doing the last thing anyone would expect: giving it to us straight. There is something incredibly unsettling about the way the horrors of Mocata’s bestiary simply *appear* at his command, centre-screen in full light - a shock that mirrors the way one might actually feel if suddenly confronted with a boggle-eyed imp or a giant, spectral tarantula. The sequence that see The Duc and his allies under attack from the forces of darkness within their chalk circle is one of the most effective ever seen in a supernatural horror film – a masterclass in building tension and dread from almost nothing whatsoever. Whatever you do, DO NOT STEP OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE, or you will be lost. Rarely has the idea of cringing before the forces of goodness and light and promising not to be naughty seemed so tempting.

If Christopher Lee as The Duc initially comes across as a rather self-satisfied and bullying character, what with his dictatorial pronouncements, his haughty attitude to servants and his tendency to beat his friends about the head and kidnap them if he disapproves of their social life, he more than rises to the occasion when the supernatural shit starts to hit the fan – the very personification of stern, benevolent authority, with more gravitas than the cliffs of Dover. I’m not Lee’s biggest fan, but he’s great here - enough so to make me wish he’d had the chance to play good guys more often.

Although given a more low-key role than villains are usually allotted in a Hammer picture, Charles Grey too is excellent as Mocata – a casting decision that in its own way is as unusual as making Lee the good guy. Not in any way the kind cool, aspirational face of villainy more common to witchcraft movies, Grey cuts a chubby, smirking, manipulative figure – closer perhaps to the face of an actual ‘60s/’70s occult huckster. And, whilst we’re on the subject, I’ll also throw in a good word for Nike Arrighi – a striking actress who manages to turn the nothing-role of Tanith into a really engaging presence here, her demure looks and mannered performance placing her in a whole different universe from Hammer’s usual buxom beauties, and making her character all the more intriguing as a result.

For all that I enjoy it though, it must be admitted that there is a deep current of anachronistic imperialism, even flat-out racism, running through “The Devil Rides Out” that many modern viewers might find distasteful, beyond just the sight of our comfortable, independently wealthy heroes and villains cruising between country houses in their fleets of unfeasibly speedy and reliable motor-cars. I’m not usually one to try to project social consciousness onto a film that never asked to be judged on such terms, but the presence of a few black extras who are seem milling around whenever Mocata’s coven meets is a strange and completely unnecessary inclusion (perhaps trying to imply some spurious connection between Western witchcraft and African ‘hoodoo’, or merely warning us that people who consort with other races are not to be trusted), and it is hard not to read at least some sub-text into the film’s first supernatural manifestation, which sees The Duc and Rex Van Ryn reduced to stunned terror by the spectre of a semi-naked black man impudently grinning at them (“for God’s sake, don’t look into its eyes”).

But as noted, these few weird missteps aside, I find the old fashioned tone of “The Devil rides Out” perversely comforting. The staunch moralism always present in Fisher’s films is given perhaps its ultimate expression here, and, together with screenwriter Richard Matheson’s characteristically thoughtful approach to ‘us & them’ story dynamics, I feel that “The Devil Rides Out” succeeds in giving a more elegant expression to Wheatley’s dusty bluster, conveying a more genuinely humane take on the battle between good and evil. This is beautifully illustrated when Sarah Lawson’s Marie boldly steps forward to reclaim her daughter from Mocata’s altar, calling out the creepy Satanists not in the name of God, but of that which they truly lack and fear, that which ultimately separates our upstanding heroes from them - love without desire.