Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Devil Rides Out
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Hey there, Joel here with my buddy Matt from How to Money. Matt, summer's right around the corner. I know you got that travel bug. What adventures do you have planned? Oh man, you are going to love this. We're planning this epic road trip up the East Coast with the entire family. Just think lighthouses in Maine, monuments in DC, plus everything in between. That's amazing.

I'm jealous, but I'm thinking about stowing away in your luggage. But wait a second. How are all six of you going to take this road trip? Okay, so initially we were thinking about taking an RV, but I found some really awesome Airbnbs along our route, places with something for everyone. And what I really love is that with Airbnbs, we can always start our days with like a

A good breakfast at home? Like, it's our home away from home, and I love that routine. I don't know if you've ever tried getting a family of six out the door, let alone trying to find some breakfast in the middle of a city that you're not super familiar with. It's a challenge, plus it's a budget killer. Yeah, that's true. Sounds like chaos, to be honest. And you know, that's actually what makes hosting on Airbnb so special, right? You're giving travelers a chance to really live like a local. They even have the co-host feature, which gives you access to a network of high-quality local co-hosts

who can help take care of your home and your guests when you're not there. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today we're going into the vault for an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This one originally aired on April 15th, 2022. And it's our episode on The Devil Rides Out.

That's right. As we're re-airing this, we're halfway through our look at The Wicker Man. And so, you know, we're going to be talking, we're talking about Christopher Lee a lot. So this is another very interesting Christopher Lee film. Plays a very dour character, but we have a lot of fun with it. So I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And today on the show, we're going to be talking about The Devil Rides Out, a 1968 hammer horror film about the perverted terrors of the satanic cults operating throughout interwar Britain. This movie stars Christopher Lee and Charles Gray and is based on a novel from the 1930s by Dennis Wheatley.

And I will say all of the satanic themes aside, if I could only make one comment about this film, it's that it is a jackpot for anybody who likes listening to Christopher Lee telling people not to do things and ordering them to go to bed.

Yes, and not children, mind you. Grown adults. Yes. This is one of the most paternalistic movies I've ever seen. It has an authority figure. That's Christopher Lee. He represents order, the sign of the cross, conservative values, and he's just bossing everybody around constantly. Everyone stand back. The proper British adults are here.

And it's funny because I, of course, I love Christopher Lee, but his character in this movie is so pompously self-serious and bossy and paternalistic. I feel like it's going to be nearly impossible for modern audiences to avoid regarding this character with anything other than amusement or contempt. Right.

Which I think can be extrapolated to feelings about the movie in general. Because this is a very competently made horror movie. But if you were to just give me the pitch, like, you know, read me a description of what this is going to be. It's a hammer horror movie made in 1968 about satanic cults starring Christopher Lee as Maximum Order Daddy and Charles Gray as a psychic Alistair Crowley who likes to make people garrot themselves with necklaces.

I would assume this was going to be a jolly campy frolic charged up with like gratuitous sex and fangs and orange blood, but no uncharacteristically for its provenance,

this movie is culturally conservative and deadly serious, which in this context means it is pretty much just inviting us to laugh at it rather than with it. Absolutely. I mean, not that there are a lot of built-in laughs in this film anyway, but yeah, it's very much...

one where you have to find some fun in a character like Christopher Lee's character, or really most of the adult characters in this film, because they're very hard to root for, impossible to love. Another thing I would say is that looking at the film's marketing material would also lead the average person, I think, to the wrong conclusion about its tone and content. Oh, absolutely, especially concerning the poster art. Now, this was originally released...

under the title we're discussing it as, The Devil Rides Out. This is the British title. This was the title of the book upon which it was based. And so the British poster had like a devil riding a horse and it looks pretty cool. I wouldn't shy away from putting this on the wall.

But then it's released in the United States as The Devil's Bride, supposedly because they thought The Devil Rides Out sounds too much like a Western. And I don't know, maybe this is just me, but I'm thinking maybe they thought it sounds like a motorcycle film. It does sound motorcyclely to me. And they're like, no, no, no, let's call it The Devil's Bride.

But the poster for this one, oh, it's one of the finest 1960s, 1970s horror posters you could possibly go for. Right. So it has our goat head demon, our goat of Mendez, which does appear in the movie. The funny thing about him is he has the goat horns, but then he also has floppy ears. And you would think, oh, the floppy ears, that makes him look funny and cute. But they add to the horror. It works. Yeah.

He's got a big eye in his belly and then in his row and then he's like holding one of the main actresses in this movie in his arms, presumably, you know, to take her to hell with him. And then in his robes, you see reflected a lot of the monsters and horrors that appear throughout the film.

Yeah, beautiful yellow background that also kind of works. And it's just, it's a beautiful poster. Also, I would say that just the image of the monster man carrying the woman, the unconscious woman, this is, of course, an iconic thingamajig.

theme you find in various poster art from yesteryear. Not entirely unproblematic, but still very iconic. So this one, this poster's really hitting a number of buttons, really coming out with guns a-blazing, and makes you think this is going to be the psychedelic, satanic film par excellence.

And, uh, I have to say, uh, if that is what you were expecting, be prepared to be maybe a little bit disappointed and find yourself going in a slightly different direction. It's still, this film is still a lot of fun. Uh, it has some great satanic stuff in it, some great black master magic sequences. Uh,

But this is a scene depicted on the poster that does not actually occur in the film. It's kind of constructed from elements of the film. Yeah, yeah. Another thing that we must stress is that this is a film that has not just one, but two characters.

Bond villain actors in it. So, of course, Christopher Lee, you know, we know Christopher Lee on this show. He plays the assassin Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, a Roger Moore Bond movie from the 70s, I think widely regarded as one of the worst Bond movies. And

And then you have Charles Gray as the villain in this movie who plays Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, the latter of which is without a doubt the funniest Bond villain portrayal in the entire history of the franchise. Have you seen Diamonds Are Forever? Okay, I've seen both of these, but both of them, I last saw them when I was a child. Okay. So the man with the golden gun, I remember as being amazing because he had that golden gun. Well, yeah. That's the only thing I remember, though.

The golden gun is very cool. And Christopher Lee is very cool, but Charles gray and diamonds are forever. He, he plays Blofeld with this. I don't know what you, you call the style of vocal delivery, but it's the Charles gray is, I mean, well, whatever that's happened. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Is that the one that takes place in Vegas a little bit? Yep. Yeah. They go to Las Vegas. That one's not good either. Okay. Yeah. I barely remember that one, but you know, you, you, you brought up Blofeld. This reminds me of something. So one of the things I kept thinking about in this film was like, Oh, we got two, two Bond villains. We've got a Bond villain actor, famous Bond villain actor playing the hero and a famous Bond villain actor playing the villain. And, um,

Though this movie was before both of those. Right, right. But it made me wonder, especially with Christopher Lee, is Christopher Lee just not good at playing, like how much of it is like he just needs to play villains? This is an actor who excels at playing villains.

And maybe he shouldn't play the heroes. And then how much of it is just like, this is kind of a crummy hero role. I don't know. Yeah. I think it might be more the latter because, okay, so he's a villain in this other movie, but you might think, well, maybe the problem is he's just too imperious and he can't be a, a kind of, he can't have that likable jolly protagonist energy that you would, you know, to really get people on your side. But I would say he has that as the villain in the wicker man, uh,

So when Rachel and I watched The Devil Rides Out, Rachel observed that this movie is kind of inverse Wicker Man. It's with Christopher Lee playing the Sergeant Howie character in The Wicker Man, just like a very uptight conservative person in the face of all of this depravity and devil worship. That's a good point. Though I guess in The Wicker Man, it's not explicitly devil. It's, you know, just paganism.

Though, of course, I would say the mindset that makes a lot of these Satanism movies and stuff like Dennis Wheatley's novel would probably mostly conflate the two. Right. If it is not Christian, then there's a good chance that it is devil worship, according to this mindset. Yes. And that's the other thing is that

this movie, I would say, is satanic panic before the satanic panic. It's like a progenitor of satanic panic. Even going back to the novel, which came out, it did come out in the 1930s, right? Yeah, this was a 1930s novel. And I've actually read that the books of Dennis Wheatley, because there's more than one that ends up concerning the occult, and we'll get into that in a bit. I've read that these helped sort of influence the

You know, what would become proper satanic panic in the decades to follow. I believe historian Philip Jenkins has particularly pointed to a 1927 novel by Herbert Gorman titled The Place Called Dagon and pointed this out as a key influence on the satanic panic themes to come. And the book apparently influenced such references.

occult authors as Dennis Wheatley, as H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert Block. Now, I noticed that right before you picked this movie for Weird House...

you sent me a, uh, you sent me a link to a news segment produced sometime in the eighties that was pure satanic panic. It was just, it's unreal. The kind of stuff that used to run on like mainstream media in, in the American press and on TV in the eighties, I think was, what was this 2020 or I believe it was 2020 satanic panic, um, making just like

on its face, absolutely absurd claims about devil ritual, you know, satanic rituals and stuff like that going on in America, but presented completely seriously as if this is 100% fact. Interviewing these experts who are obviously, like, have no idea what they're talking about, you know, finding devil worship in every movie and music. One thing that was weird is it even

out a movie like The Exorcist, which I would say is a movie that is about as faithfully Catholic as a movie could be. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's ultimately the demons are there, but God is there. Yeah. Maybe it's, I mean, The Exorcist, especially at the time, was regarded as a pretty extreme film and, you know, very shocking and was very much the talk of the town. Yeah.

Maybe part of that is like, it's not necessarily about having watched The Exorcist. It's about the idea that The Exorcist exists. You know, it's popularizing satanic themes. I guess. But so anyway, so you got interested, I guess, in these like satanic panic movies through that? Or is that a coincidence? Oh, I mean, I'm always interested in satanic themes and things, you know. Yeah.

It's, you know, it's part of, it's become such a part of our pop culture. So many of the movies, there are so many movies on our list of potential episodes that concern Satan worshipers in one way or another. Though, weirdly enough, I think the first Satan worship movie that I saw as a child was the Dragnet movie that Dan Aykroyd did. Do you remember this one? Yeah, Tom Hanks? Yeah, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks. And I forget who plays like the high priest of Satan, but it's like Hollywood. Jack Palance?

Maybe Jack Palance is in there. There's some older actor. But yeah, I don't really remember if that movie is good or not, but it has a lot of satanic cult in Hollywood of kind of imagery, you know, the robes, the goats. The satirical. Sex, drugs, every kind of filth. So, I mean, yeah, if you're into horror films, if you're into metal music or anything like that, various themes of movie Satanism are kind of unavoidable. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, well, should we hear some trailer audio? Let's do it. Rex, do you believe in evil? That's an idea. Do you believe in the power of darkness? That's a superstition. Now, there you are wrong. The power of darkness is more than just a superstition. It is a living force which can be tapped at any given moment of the night. Why? On one night of one year...

Should these people live in mortal fear? Mike! The goat of Mendes! The devil himself! Christopher Lee as Derisha, who knows he must fight the devil's power to the death. My God! Don't look at the eyes, Rex! Eyes?

Eyes, once filled with love, are consumed with fear. For Tanith is now promised to the devil. Listen carefully to what I say. This is Makata, the devil's chief disciple. Your will is leaving you.

slipping away. The Devil Rides Out, from bestseller author Dennis Wheatley's famous novel, fills the screen with a special kind of visual terror. You will hear his evil. You will feel his evil. You will see his evil.

All right. So before we get into the people here, we should probably, I don't know if we stressed, yeah, I think you mentioned it briefly, but this is, of course, a Hammer horror film. Have we discussed a Hammer film on the show before? Oh, I mean, I know it's come up in passing. I don't know if we've featured one. We've talked about him with Seth a lot, our regular producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson, I think sometime in the past couple of years, got like the ultimate box set of Hammer films and was just going through them and we were talking about him. Yeah.

So if you're not familiar, Hammer put out a lot of British horror films in the, I don't know when their full run was. I associate them with the 60s and 70s.

And, you know, a lot of films starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and various Dracula, Van Helsing, mummy kinds of roles. But then also they branched out into just more general kind of sexy vampire movies. Right, right. Definitely there's a shift that occurs as things get more into the late 60s, 70s vibe. And one of the interesting things about this film that has been pointed out

In particular, horror historian Kim Newman discusses this a little bit in a little short extra on the splendid Blu-ray for this movie, that this is ultimately more of a 1930s movie. It has 1930s horror sensibilities, or at least 1950s, I believe. More like a 1950s horror movie, as opposed to a 1968, you know, early 70s film, which would have

been more in line with the cultural changes that are happening. This is a film, but it's more for the older generation that's terrified by what's occurring, but is not ready to quite embrace it or exploit it. Right. It came out in 1968, but it seems to be wagging a finger at the audience and cautioning them against any strange or unorthodox beliefs or practices. Yeah.

All right. Well, let's start at the top. The director on this baby was Terrence Fisher, who lived 1904 through 1980. A British film director best remembered for his Hammer films. He directed a slew of them, beginning in, I believe, 1951 with The Last Page, but really kicking into high horror gear in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cullen.

Cushing. He was already an established TV and film director by this time, though, but he ended up directing a lot of the big Hammer films, including but not limited to Horror of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, and others.

I have a big poster for Terrence Fisher's production of The Mummy right next to me on the wall here. It's from 1959. And I have the Belgian poster for it, I believe, because the title on it is Les Malédictions des Pharaons and The Curse of the Pharaohs, I guess.

But the poster is great because there's like the mummy, which is played by Christopher Lee in the Terrence Fisher movie. But like it's approaching and then there's a lady screaming in the foreground. And then behind the mummy, people are shining a flashlight and the beam of light is just like piercing right through it. Oh, yes. Yeah, I have seen this poster. This is a beauty because there's kind of like a cosmic sense to the mummy in it.

All right, we mentioned Dennis Wheatley already. Dennis Wheatley wrote the novel, The Devil Rides Out, upon which this is based. Wheatley lived 1897 through 1977, British author of popular thriller novels, often with occult themes. And one of the things that Kim Newman points out is like, this guy was a very popular author at the time. He says, like, if you went to the horror section of your British bookstore, half the books would be Dennis Wheatley novels. So he was a big deal. He was a popular author. Yeah.

He's said to have influenced the likes of Ian Fleming because a lot of his books were, especially his earlier stuff, you know, it's sleuth-centered. You know, it's about espionage and spies, but also very much around, based around sort of, you know, classic British machismo. You know, heroes going out and risking their lives, punching somebody in the face and saving a woman, that sort of thing.

But then things begin to get a little more, he ends up throwing in more occult themes as he goes. Now, I'm certainly no Wheatley expert. I tried reading one of his books once, and it didn't grab me. But my understanding is that, yeah, a lot of his series, and he has multiple series with recurring characters, start out more traditional and then end up latching onto occult themes more.

And we definitely see this in his Duke de Richelieu series, of which this book is a part. Right. Christopher Lee's character in the movie is the Duke de Richelieu. I think his actual given name is Nicholas. They only say that like once or twice in the movie. Usually he's just Duke or the Duke or Richelieu.

Yeah, so the first book in that series, however, is just pure espionage adventure. And then the second book that comes later is The Devil Rides Out, full of not only occultists and Satanists, but actual supernatural forces. So it's like, imagine you had like a couple of James Bond movies, and yeah, they've got giant squids and whatnot.

But then, in super science a little bit, but then you get to the point where it's like, oh yes, the devil has shown up. Okay, so it's James Bond versus Baphomet. Yeah, sort of, or kind of like a proto-James Bond, you know, because it very much came first, but...

He has another series, the Gregory Salas series, that I think does much the same thing. The first book in that, Black August from 1934, imagines a futuristic 1960 and economic collapse. So very much, you know, a different beast. But then by 1964, he returns to that character in They Use Dark Forces, which has the hero battling Nazi occultists

And I think teaming up with another occultist to take them on, this is the one that I actually tried to read once and just could not get into it. But your mileage may vary, but I could not get into Wheatley. When you pasted in a paragraph from the opening page of The Devil Rides Out, I got to say I was not attracted to the prose style. No, I don't think there are a lot of certainly modern critics that are praising his prose.

Now, one of the interesting things, since this is not the first book to have these characters in it, you could consider this movie a sequel to the 1934 all-spy, zero-Satan thriller, Forbidden Territory, directed by Phil Rosen and based on the first Duke novel, though the protagonist's name, and I think all the main characters' names are changed for some reason. Alfred Hitchcock originally optioned the book.

Speaking of film adaptations, Wheatley's occult novel To the Devil a Daughter was adapted in 1976, starring Christopher Lee, Richard Widmark, Denholm Elliot, and Natasha Kinski. And other films based on his work include The Secret of Stambo and The Lost Continent.

He allegedly invited Aleister Crowley to dinner to research The Devil Rides Out. I ran across that tidbit. I don't know if they actually had dinner. Maybe he just invited him, but anybody could invite Aleister Crowley to dinner, so I don't know. Well, I would say, again, one thing to stress about this is that this is different than a lot of the other devil worship movies, horror movies that you might see from the early 70s, because I would say this is...

It is in itself and is based on material that is genuinely contemptuous of any alternative religious practice or devil worship or anything perceived as devil worship. It like believes that is real, that people actually do it, and it is evil and will destroy you.

Right.

Right, yeah. The original intro by the author is kind of funny to read because he's like, this is all fiction, but I did research it and I am convinced Satanists are in London doing their thing. Don't try this at home because your soul is in danger, which is a weird line to walk. It's like, I'm going to exploit this. I'm comfortable exploiting this, but don't look into this any further than what I have presented here.

It kind of reminds me of like the Da Vinci Code, you know, the Dan Brown books where he's like, okay, so this is a work of fiction, but all of the historical claims and the situation of this story are 100% real and true, which in Dan Brown's case, they are not. Right. Yeah.

All right. So, yes, to my taste, Wheatley's work is kind of insufferable and there are a lot of problems with it. But the gentleman who adapted the screenplay is a writer that I think holds up exceptionally well. And that is the American novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson, who lived 1926 through 2013.

American writer who is best remembered as the author of the excellent 1954 novel I Am Legend, upon which three films have been based. 64's The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price. 1971's The Omega Man, starring Chuck Heston. And 2007's I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. He also wrote the excellent haunted house novel Hell House, the thriller Duel, and The Shrinking Man. All of these were adapted into films. Duel by a young Steven Spielberg.

as well as such other adaptations include What Dreams May Come, A Stir of Echoes, and others.

He also wrote a lot of TV, including 16 episodes of the original Twilight Zone, including the iconic Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode. And he also wrote for such shows as Night Gallery, original Star Trek, the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Thriller. And as far as films go, his screenplays include Trilogy of Terror, Corman's House of Usher, and of course, Jaws 3D. Jaws 3D? That was Matheson? Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. I mean, one of the things about Matheson, and this is something that Kim Newman points out, is like Matheson was great. Matheson's work certainly holds up to a modern reader so much better than Wheatley. But also, he worked with Corman a bit, so he could also work very fast.

Yes. And presumably, he says, it could probably work on a reasonable budget if you were working for Corman. Okay, I see. So it's the Corman principle. It's like coming to Charles B. Griffith and saying, I need a movie called Attack of the Giant Crabs. It needs to be done in four days. Yeah, presumably.

But at any rate, Matheson's great and has created so much wonderful work over the years. So it's interesting, though, that in a very British film, we have this very American writing force that is adapting it and tweaking it a little bit and also ultimately removing many things that probably didn't work all that well in the Wheatley novel. One last thing. I didn't know that Matheson had written one of the Corman Poe movies, and I'd been thinking we need to do one of the Corman Poe movies. Oh, well...

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All right, now let's get into the cast here. So kind of like last episode, the last new episode we did, I mean, what can you say about Christopher Lee, who plays the Duke here? You know, he's been in so many things. Lived 1922 through 2015. He has one of those careers that had like multiple, you know, he had some sort of dips here and there, but also, you know, especially later in life, he was in so many great films and, you know, memorable films at least.

He's known for playing so many villains, Dracula, Saruman, Scaramanga, Count Dooku, Lord Summerisle, Frankenstein's monster, Charis the mummy. He also voiced the villain King Hagrid in 1982's The Last Unicorn, which I just watched live.

More than half of with my family last night and was really enjoying that. So, and that also reminded me, I was looking up some stuff about Last Unicorn. Last Unicorn is one of these where they hired Christopher Lee for it and he was very enthusiastic about it, apparently a big reader. And he showed up with the original novel with things earmarked

saying, these absolutely cannot be cut. These lines have to stay in the picture. And he apparently did this with Lord of the Rings as well. Oh, yeah. And probably with this film, because I understand that The Devil Rides Out was also a film where he liked the book and he was really excited for the film and probably showed up with the book and was like, no, sorry, Matheson, this goes in. This stays in the picture.

That's funny because I actually watched part of an interview, or I think it was an audience Q&A with some event that he was doing. And a member of the audience asks him, you know, it's been rumored that you have a large occult library. Is that true? And how'd you get interested in that? And he says, no, it is not true. I have maybe four or five books on the occult. And one of them, he says, is an original copy of The Devil Rides Out signed by the author. So he's clearly a fan. Yeah.

But then he also cautions the audience not to experiment with devil worship. He's basically the Duke.

But I mean, yeah, gotta love Christopher Lee. It's hard to pick a favorite role. I'm tempted to go. I mean, he is Saruman to me. It's one of those performances that is so thoroughly the character that it replaces whatever imagination you might have had from the book before you saw the movie. He just embodies it perfectly. But then the other thing I would say maybe even more than that is Lord Summerisle. I mean, he is the gentleman pagan from The Wicker Man. It just can't be beat.

Yeah, yeah. These are all great roles. I love all the roles that I mentioned already. And there are plenty of Christopher Lee performances out there I haven't seen. So I'm sure there's some other gems. I know one thing I've said on the show before. I'm not a huge fan of the Star Wars prequels, but there's always that moment when Christopher Lee shows up in them where I think the way I've put it before, and I stand by this, is that

It's like in a movie that is kind of stuffy and suffocating, Christopher Lee walks on screen and suddenly it's like someone has opened a window and let fresh air in. And now everything's, oh, oh, oh, things feel great now. Yeah, yeah. I love his portrayal of Dooku in those two Star Wars films. And I especially love in the opening of The Revenge of the Sith where you have that duel between Anakin and Dooku. And then, of course, you have Palpatine watching on and ultimately deciding his fate.

Yeah. It's a great sequence. And Lee's great in it because he's, you know, he's very much, he's great. He was always great at playing this kind of grandiose and egotistical villain. And then we get to see like the vulnerability briefly as he's betrayed by his master. So yeah, Lee always brought something great to the,

to the table. But anyway, it's an interesting casting choice for this character of the Duke de Richelieu that the protagonist of the movie who, who represents a order and the side of good against, uh, against the chaos and evil of, of Charles Gray as, as Mr. Mokata, uh,

but yeah, it, it, I'm kind of wondering like, could you have cast somebody else in this role and how would the movie be different if you had? Yeah. Like part of me was thinking, well, maybe like maybe Lee, especially at this point, wasn't as good at like portraying like likable and vulnerable characteristics. Like, whereas someone like Peter Cushing, uh,

his close friend and, you know, infrequent co-star, maybe he would have been able to deliver that better. But then again, I come back to the way this character is written and maybe anybody would have been stuffy and unlikable in this role. One thing I got to say is the bizarre choice, and maybe this reflects how the aesthetics of Satanism have changed over time, but

they give Christopher Lee devil worshiper facial hair. They give him the classic Satanist goatee when he's playing the guy who's against the Satanists.

Yeah. And then it is interesting when we look at who's playing his adversary, Mokata, the high priest of the, what, the London chapter of the Church of... It's not actually the Church of Satan, but whatever the satanic cult is calling itself. This is played by Charles Gray, who lived 1928 through the year 2000. I think they're called the Friends of the Goat. Friends of the Goat. Okay. Yeah.

So, Grey, not as legendary as Christopher Lee, perhaps, but certainly a celebrated British character actor in his own right. Often remembered for playing aristocratic and villainous roles, you know, very sort of tight-lipped, clinch-jawed villains. Yeah. Very British. But he played some big ones. We already mentioned his run as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. Yeah.

But he also played a good guy in 67's You Only Live Twice. So he's actually in two Bond films. Oh, that's right. He's like another spy who Bond meets somewhere. And I remember he gets a knife in the back through a paper wall. I don't remember that, but...

He isn't fun. He played Mycroft Holmes. This is Sherlock Holmes' brother, both in the 1976 film The 7% Solution and also in the excellent Jeremy Brett Granada television series of Sherlock Holmes. Oh, I've got to see those. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a lot of fun. Wait, was The 7% Solution, is that –

Nicholas Meyer? It is, yes. This was his novel, yes. I bet that's great. But of course, for many of you out there, Charles Gray is best remembered as the criminologist and expert in 1975's The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's just a jump to the left. Yeah.

But he was in a lot of other things, too. For instance, he was in Richard O'Brien's follow-up musical film, Shock Treatment, which I have not been able to get into yet. I keep thinking, oh, I love Rocky Horror. I'll give Shock Treatment a try, and I'll listen to the music a little bit, and it just hasn't happened. He's also in the wonderfully fun 1974 werewolf Whodunit, The Beast Must Die. This is the film that has a werewolf break, as you'll remember, Joe. Right, yeah. To collect your thoughts about who the werewolf is. Mm-hmm.

He also dubbed for Jack Hawkins in the film Theater of Blood and others after Hawkins' larynx was removed to combat throat cancer. Theater of Blood is the other movie we talked about in the episode about Dr. Fibes. It was the other movie where Vincent Price must return from the grave or after being assumed dead to get revenge on nine specific people who he believed wronged him. Yeah.

So Gray is fun in this, but he's very much playing a kind of stern and serious Aleister Crowley with hair. But also, as this is, I thought, another fun tidbit that Kim Newman points out, is he's kind of playing Aleister Crowley's

idea of what Aleister Crowley seemed like to everybody else. You know, like, like Crowley himself was, you know, uh, you know, a bit of a con man in his own right, you know, uh, and was many other things. Uh, but, but he may have thought that he came off like this to other people, this highly charismatic, uh,

uh, British occultist with hypnotic eyes that just instantly, uh, has power over everyone when he walks into a room. And then the other interesting thing is that you have this character, this is a film again, where Satan, anything that's not British and Christian is potentially Satan, Satanist in, in nature. Um,

It's potentially Satanism. And you have this character with his name, Mokada, that I'm to understand maybe has more of an international flair in the novel. But here we have him played by a very British actor with a very British performance. Yeah, I don't know how much we've emphasized the xenophobic themes of this movie already. But yeah, there is very much a sense that like that which is foreign is very likely associated with the devil. Though...

I'm a little confused. I don't know. I know there's always some cultural crossover between Britain and France, but is Richelieu supposed to be British or French? His name is French, and he mentions that he and another character, that their fathers had worked together in some kind of French organization, but he also just in every other way appears to be British. Yeah.

Yeah, it's very confusing, yeah, because it's a very French name, but in the film, at least, it's a very British portrayal. Likewise, you know, Mokata seems to have been played up in the novel for being something kind of, you know, international and foreign and threatening. But of course, Mokata, the name Mokata has been very British for a long time. I mean, I believe it's tied to some important banking families and so forth. So I'm a little confused on that.

All right, should we go to the next actor? Yeah. I was trying to find how to pronounce her name, and I was sorry that I could not find a good example of it being said out loud. But her name is, I think, Nike Arigi. Her first name is spelled like the brand Nike, N-I-K-E. But I guess that's Nike. Okay. Yeah, she plays Tanneth Carlyle.

in this film, which is probably one of the more likable characters. It's a very low bar in this film, but yeah, she was born in 1947, French visual artist and former actor. As an actor, she was only active from, I believe, 1966 through 1974, appearing in various European horror and art house films.

She had a small part in Ken Russell's 1969 film, Women in Love, 1971's Countess Dracula. Other films include parts in Sunday, Bloody Sunday, playing a nun in Ken Russell's The Devils, A Season in Hell, The Perfume of the Lady in Black. That was her last picture. But then she went on to focus on her art and she has a website and you can look at examples of her art there. Some of these look like surrealistic oil and watercolor pieces.

Yeah, I was looking through her paintings and I really like some of them. They're interesting. So some are just like watercolor landscapes showing, I don't know, a waterfall or a city skyline or something. And then others are really surreal. There's one of these...

women in, I don't know, having like a big, it might be one of those like things they put on your, I don't know what these are called. These things they put on your head at the hairdresser that like do a perm on you or something. It's like a big glass helmet, but it's absurdly large in the painting, making it look more like a science fiction device. Like it's scanning this, this lady's brain while she's sitting there with rollers in her hair, holding a baby. It's a very, I don't know, weird, interesting painting. And I like it. At any rate,

She's good in this. She's acting opposite a whole lot of stiff, unlikable male characters. But it's easily the character that seems to have the most inner conflict. She's ultimately not given a tremendous amount of agency in this, so it's not...

It's not one of the great roles one might hope for, but she breathes a lot of life into it. Yeah. There are several parts where she just has to gaze into the camera with hypnotized or possessed eyes, and her eyelids go super wide. And she has some kind of quality to her irises that makes them really good for this kind of shot. It looks intense. Yeah.

All right. The next actor of note is Leon Green playing Rex Van Ryan, though the character is dubbed by Patrick Allen. Green lived 1931 through 2021. British actor who appeared in such films as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Flash Gordon. In this, he is the ultimate square-jawed British man who is ready to punch Satanists, punch windshields, whatever it takes if it means saving a pretty lady from non-British ideas. He is our turbo lug. He's

I think you mentioned when we were chatting about it, you said Rex is ready to punch and kiss. And that's about it. Yeah. Somehow I kept thinking, well, this doesn't quite communicate his physical genre, which is sort of hunky lug. But he reminded me of a cross between Chris Cooper and Buddy Hackett. Yeah, I could see that.

He's also our skeptic for like three minutes anyway in the film because the Duke is like, Satanism is real and it's a major threat to everything we know and love. And Rex is like, I don't buy that at all. But then the Duke is like, look at this. And then Rex is like, I'm convinced. Yes. The famous, the power of darkness is a living force speech. Yeah. So a lot of this film is going to concern another character who they're very concerned about.

And that is the character Simon Aaron, played by Patrick Moer, born 1938, still active as he was just on a British series called Emmerdale Farm. He's done a bunch of TV work, as well as such films as the 1970 Vincent Price movie Cry of the Banshee and 1971's Incense for the Damned.

He's pretty good in this in part because, again, his character is one of the few that seems to be in genuine conflict and gets to act a little bit more and ultimately maybe is a little more relatable.

I kept thinking he looks like Tobey Maguire. He kind of does. Yeah, he does. Quick note that we have that goat monster, the goat of Mendes that shows up later on. This is uncredited, played by Eddie Powell, who lived 1927 through the year 2000. A 6'5 British stuntman who also wound up in costume as such creatures as the Xenomorph in Alien for stunt purposes.

The Mummy and The Mummy Shroud. And yeah, in this film, he plays the goat himself. Powell also did stunts on such films as Willow, Legend, Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Krull, and various Bond movies. Uh,

On that note, speaking of monsters, I'm just going to briefly mention the makeup effects. Artists responsible for many of Hammer's best monsters. Roy Ashton was the monster maker on this, 1909 through 1995. And then the music. This is James Bernard, who lived 1925 through 2001, a classmate of Christopher Lee's at Wellington College. He composed the scores of a whole bunch of Hammer horror films.

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Alright, are you ready to talk about the plot a little bit? Let's do it. Okay, so the movie starts with a reunion of old friends. We get Rex Van Ryn, again this is played by Leon Green, arriving by aeroplane, which he pilots himself, and landing in some kind of, I don't know, field. It's just like a landing strip.

in somewhere in rural England, it looks like. And he meets with Christopher Lee playing the Duke de Richelieu, who is watching with binoculars as he lands. And I assume Rex is arriving from overseas, but I'm not positive. Yeah, I think in the books, he's actually American even, which is interesting. Again, they just Englished him right up. Anyway, they appear to be old friends reunited after some time apart.

And so we learn that they have a mutual friend named Simon and Rex is curious, where is he? Why isn't he here to greet me at the airfield like you?

And the Duke says, well, he hasn't heard from Simon in three months. He doesn't go to his club in London anymore, which that's a horrible sign. And he's moved into a large house in the country. And Rex is worried that Simon might be in some kind of trouble. But immediately this should be an alarm bell for how this character is going to go. The Duke is like, no, that's preposterous. He would have told me if he was in trouble. But they decide to go pay him a visit.

Oh, and when they do, I don't know if you noticed the same detail. It involves the Duke. They get into the back of a car and the Duke talks through some kind of hose lined with red velvet to tell the driver where to go. Yeah, I don't think I remember seeing this in a film before, but I guess this must have been a thing because this is supposed to take place in the 30s, I believe. Yeah, so he talks into the velvet hose and then, yeah, they get there.

So they head out to Simon's mansion. And as soon as they're at his doorstep, ringing the bell, twilight has fallen. There's creepy music playing a Butler answers the door. And Christopher Lee is immediately highly suspicious. You see him squinting and furrowing his brows at everything in the house. He just like looks at a vase suspiciously. And, uh,

He gazes into an open doorway like, hmm, that's trouble. And then they get led into the next room where it looks like Simon must be hosting a nice party. And again, it's one of those things where you look at the party and it looks like there's nothing wrong with it at all. It looks nice, but the Duke immediately appears to have some kind of internal alarm siren screaming in his brain and

but I would say the only thing that looks unusual about the party is that like you walk through and you like hear people talking and you see people's clothes and stuff. And it appears that not everyone here is from England. Like there appear to be people from all throughout continental Europe and West Africa and South Asia. And then they're like, dear God. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing in this scene that would make you think it's anything other than maybe a, you know, a, you know,

Various academics from around the world have gathered to discuss, you know, policy or something. Yeah. You know, a UN meeting or something. But yeah, but they're just immediately horrified. This is no good. Simon is in the deep. So yeah, again, I think this is showing these weird xenophobic assumptions of the movie. It's just like, oh, there's tons of people from other countries here. This must be devil worship. Yeah.

So they see Simon, they come up and talk to him. Rex is like, sorry for interrupting your party. And Simon is like, oh, it's just a meeting of a little astronomical society I've joined. So because they looked outside when they were outside earlier, they looked up and there appears to be some kind of like observatory dome at the top of his new house.

And then we meet some major characters. We meet Mr. Mokata, played by Charles Gray. He's not scary yet in this scene. In this scene, he's more in Blofeld mode. He just has to say, you know, well, well, excuse me, gentlemen, there's something I must say to Simon, and he takes him aside. And then they get a moment to speak with Tanith, played by Nike Arigi. And...

And she's confused about their presence. I think she assumes that they are part of the coven. But then she says, surely we're not meant to be more than 13. And as soon as she says 13, this gets a dramatic wheel about from Christopher Lee. You know, he whips his head with his eyes wide. And you know that like he's really sure that there's trouble now.

So they're asked to leave. But first, the Duke asks, you know, before we depart, may I see your observatory? Because he says he's recently become interested in astronomy. He would like a peek through the telescope. And Simon tries to object. But as always in this movie, Christopher Lee just gives him the do as I command you eyes. And then they head on up.

Now we'll see this observatory room in a couple of scenes, but there is a giant goat head Baphomet on the floor tiles and another one I think on the wall. And when they come in, they're like, this is interesting. Are these astronomical charts? Simon's just like, oh, it's just a decoration. Yeah.

But then the real thing that seals the deal is there's some noises in the closet and we get the chicken reveal. Rob, do you want to describe this moment? Oh, this is great. So in just like pure Inquisitor mode, the Duke goes over to the closet, pulls it open, and we see this view, it's shot from the closet, horrified look on his face because he opens his basket and there are a couple of chickens in there.

And these are the hallmarks of black magic. You can't practice black magic unless you've got some chickens around to sacrifice. I guess, yeah. But it was the pair of chickens that clinched it, that this is definitely black magic and not the Baphomet circle on the floor. Right, right. The Baphomet circle is certainly, like, there are other reasons to have chickens around.

There would even be other reasons to have, say, a black cat and a chicken around. But to have the full baphomet floor, yeah, that suggests something else. Oh, but then we get the – so he sees the chickens and Lee knows for sure what's going on.

And then we get, I would say, the line of the film that stands out more than any other, which is he turns to Simon. He says, you fool. I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic. It's such a great and telling line. Like this, it just adds extra unlikeability to this character. Yeah.

You know, like I would rather you be dead than adhere to some ideology that doesn't perfectly line up with my own. So the Duke exhorts Simon to leave the house. He's like, come with us. You know, we will get you out of this. And Simon doesn't want to go. So he just punches him out, just knocks him out. They repeatedly do this to Simon, by the way. By the end of this movie, he will have had major head trauma. Yeah.

Yeah, I have to admit, I mean, I know that you're not supposed to punch people in the face and try and knock them out. You're not supposed to hit people over the head with bottles and so forth, which these things happen in films all the time. But a few weeks ago, I sustained a very mild concussion, and it was not fun at all.

And ever since I've been maybe a little, I have like heightened sensitivity to these moments in film. So like something like this happens and I'm like, oh, that's a concussion for sure. And then I'm like, oh, he just had a concussion earlier in the picture. This is so dangerous. Stop punching Simon. Yeah. I love it in movies. They just treat hitting people on the head as like general anesthesia. Well, it just renders the, harmlessly renders them unconscious for some short period of time.

How are you supposed to end a scene and have somebody, you need to get them to another location and have them wake up and observe things. So you need a, you need some head trauma in between. Yeah. So anyway, they go back to the Duke's house and there was a great hypnotism scene. This is one of the first scenes indicating that Christopher Lee's character not only knows what the, the, the rituals of darkness are, but he can practice them himself apparently. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. This, of course, ties in so perfectly with a lot of the satanic panic energies of the decades to come. And even some of the, you know, the scare tactics you see in other social panics and, you know, fundamentalist and conservative mindsets where the individuals warning you about the evil, whatever the evil happens to be, they know all about it. They've got all the grisly details and they will list it for you. They know all the terminology. They have seen the stuff.

But they're safe. They're concerned about your safety. And so like the Duke is already coming off as such a hypocrite here. Yeah. So he – there's this hypnotism scene where he like puts a mirror in front of Simon and he's like, look into the mirror, Simon. And he brainwashes – like he seizes his mind somehow and he's like, you must go to bed now. Yeah.

One of the many great sending people to bed scenes. He sends him up to his bedroom. He puts a crucifix necklace on him. It says it's a symbol of protection. And then they break out the snifters of brown liquor. I love that there's just like numerous unlabeled jars of brown liquor for them to drink from. And Christopher Lee and Rex, they sit down to have the talk about devil worship. And he asks Rex, do you believe in evil?

And, you know, Rex is like, ah, magic and all that. I think it's hocus pocus. But then the Duke gives a speech about how the power of darkness is not just an idea, but a living, breathing thing. And it's clear now that they're up against something big and they may have to do battle with it throughout the rest of the film.

Meanwhile, Simon upstairs in the Duke's bed, his eyes snap open. He seems to be under the influence of something. And he starts gathering up the chain of his crucifix necklace and starts garroting himself with it. And it seemed for a minute like he was going to die. I assume this character, he's a goner. But then the butler comes in and helpfully removes the crucifix from his neck. And then Simon just bolts out the window.

So at this point, the caper is on for the rest of the movie. The Duke and Rex will be in pursuit of their friend Simon and eventually also of Tanith to free them from the cult and from the jaws of Satan himself.

And so maybe at this point we can just sort of zero in on several scenes and sequences throughout the rest of the movie that struck us. One of which I think we've got to talk about is the return to the house. Because the first thing the Duke and Rex do when Simon gets out of the Duke's place is like, well, maybe he went back home. So they go break in through a window and look around to see if he's there or if Mokata's coven is still there. That's right. They go up to the observatory.

And then what starts happening to the floor? Well, out of that goat head on the floor, you have this sinister smoke begins to rise.

And we essentially have our first proper summoning of the film. There are, I think, three different summonings of note. And it seems to summon. It's like smoke's bringing in some sort of form. What's it going to be? It's going to be a monster, right? Yeah, a monster or a demon. Maybe it'll be the goat guy from the poster. But no, it's just a dude that looks slightly stoned. Yeah, when we first saw him. So there are some good monsters later on. But I was just like, this is just a guy. He's got bloodshot eyes. But it's just a dude. Yeah.

I've seen this summoned being described as a djinn or a demon, but it's just Nigerian-born actor Willie Payne in red pants with a legitimately kind of creepy smile and very stoned-looking eyes. They're able to play it up a bit, so it's not like it doesn't work. But it also seems to lean really hard into this idea of non-white equals possibly satanic thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This scene didn't feel great. It was, it seems to lean more on those kind of xenophobic assumptions that the movie has. Yeah. Because the only other nonwhite act characters in the film, uh, including Nigerian born actor, playwright, Yimmy Goodman, um, uh, Ajabadi, uh, are all seen as members of the cult. Uh,

None of our protagonists. The cult is international. It's got members from all over. Right. So yeah, this feels a little weird to watch this. It's also a little weird that Hammer picked this scene out and put it on their YouTube. They're like, there it is.

But if you lean into the sort of like, here's a really stoned dude summoned to combat your heroes, then I kind of like that. It's kind of like, don't look at his eyes. He's really stoned. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like hypnotizing them, I guess, with his eyes to like get them to come into the circle of Baphomet. But I think they defeat him by throwing a crucifix. Yeah. The first of several crucifix lobbings in the film. Yeah.

Yeah, the Goosefixers are like the holy hand grenade from Monty Python. They make demons just explode. Yeah, one, two, five, and then they blow him up, and then they run out of the house.

Now, I think the next big thing is that the Duke is like, you must find Tanith because I must go to the British Library. And he's going to look into several occult tomes that are kept under lock and key. Fortunately, the person who runs the occult tomes section is a friend of his. Yes.

Again, it's safe for the Duke to be interested in these things and be knowledgeable of these things, but not you, Simon. Simon, I'd rather you be dead than read some of the books that I've read. So Rex, the next scene we see with Rex, he's just got Tanith in the car and they're out driving in the country somewhere.

And it's one of those weird scenes where somebody's already in the car with somebody. And then she's like, so why am I here? Where are we going? And then I'm like, well, why did she get in the car? What did they say before she got in the car? Yeah. I don't know. But then it becomes clear. He's like, I'm here to rescue you from Satanism. Yeah. And she's like, I don't want to be rescued. And then, yeah, it ultimately ends up being a whole chase sequence.

Yes. But also before that, he's like, I'm here to rescue you from Satan and take you out to lunch. Do you want to go on a date? Yeah. And so they're planning on going to lunch at a friend's house. This is the house of Richard and Marie and their daughter Peggy, who will become bigger characters in the third act. A lot of the second half of the movie takes place at their house.

Uh, but I was also wondering about, they're not sure who he's bringing. So it's like, hello, old friend. I brought a bride of Satan to your house for lunch. Yeah.

I've kidnapped somebody. This is the other thing. This film has a lot of kidnappings in it. Simon has already been kidnapped. Yes. And now Tanith has been kidnapped. Yes. And there'll be more kidnappings to come. Yeah. She lured away on false pretenses, or I assume, we don't know what they said before she got in the car, but at least continuing along the journey after she has said, no, I would rather go back to my Satan worship, please.

And then this leads to a complex series of chases where she steals a car from somewhere and drives away. And then Rex has to chase after her. And there's a, you didn't expect a car chase in this movie, did you? But the car chase does involve Rex punching through his own windshield. Yeah.

Yep. And they eventually, oh, they use magic to make him wreck his car. Yeah. But he's still- He's knocked unconscious. Another concussion in this film. Right. Yes. And then she, so she eventually makes her way back to Mokata because Mokata was like hypnotizing her through the rear view mirror in the car. Well, mirrors are magic. We know that. Oh, that's right. So eventually, Rex stumbles upon a satanic mass that Mokata is conducting in the woods and

Actually, it looks pretty tame. It's just a lot of people in white robes, though the bosses, like Mokata, he's wearing a purple robe. Yes. But a lot of people in white robes just drinking wine and dancing. It is not as debauched as some of the devil worship scenes in later movies would be. Right, but it does have the ultimate, they sacrifice a goat, and then here comes the goat himself. Yeah.

We have this wonderful appearance by the goat of Mendes. It's the goat-headed humanoid form, and it looks very good. It's legitimately creepy. I think this was a scene that they pulled off rather well because he just kind of appears...

You know, it's like he's come out of the woods. You've thrown a satanic party that is fun enough that he is making an appearance and everyone gets very excited. Yeah. And one thing I noted was like when they when they cut the goat's throat in the sacrifice, it's like dropping the beat in the club. Everybody goes wild. Yeah.

Yeah, they get very excited about it. And yeah, the goat looks great. It's not, I should stress, it's not the goat you see on the poster. They took the head of the goat creature here and they put it on one of the, like probably the Charles Gray character, Mokata's robed body and sort of built themselves a poster out of images from the film. Yeah.

Well, anyway, at this mass, it's where Simon and Tanith are going to be baptized in the name of Satan. So Rex goes to a nearby payphone and summons the Duke. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the Duke comes and joins him and then they're like, Oh, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop this before they are baptized to the evil one. So they decide they're going to, Oh, how do they, Oh, the Duke is like, I wish there were some light. And then he's like, what has light the headlights of a car? So they're like, we can defeat them with car. So they get into a car and then they drive up on the, on the ceremony, blasting the headlights. I guess they turn the brights on and,

And that seems to, I don't know, it does something. Everybody's like, oh, and then they lob a second holy hand grenade. They throw a crucifix at the goat and the goat explodes. Yep, yep. And then Rex is in there punching Satanist, grabbing Tanith, carrying her off. And I was struck by the, it's kind of ironic that we don't see the goat creature. We don't see the great goat, the devil himself carrying an unconscious woman. But we do see Rex grabbing our female character and running off into the night with her.

Yes. And they also, they rescued Tanith and Simon and they take them back to Richard and Marie's house, uh, where, where Christopher Lee promptly starts managing everybody's sleeping arrangements. He's like, you will go to bed and you will sit beside the person who goes to bed. Um,

And commanding, yeah, so commanding people what to do. I think, so he gives them all these instructions while he goes out to fetch some magical implements. And then there's another big set piece, which, and this scene I actually thought was,

pretty effective in the way it was meant to be, uh, the visit by Mokata. So Charles Gray just shows up at the door, Mokata arrives at the house and he, I guess it's proper courtesy to invite someone in, even if they are the, the priest of the high priest of Satan. So, uh, you know, he's invited him by, by Marie and then Mokata and Marie sit down in the study to have a conversation and

where he will ask her to hand Simon and Tanith over to him. He says, I'm not actually evil in magic. There is no good or evil. And then he tries to hypnotize her and bind her will to his by the power of darkness. Uh,

And I got to say, props to Charles Gray in this scene. While he is often funny in this movie, in this scene, he is extremely good, I think. Actually, rather scary. Yeah, yeah. He's great in this scene. There's also another sequence where it's just the cultist marching out of the observatory house with some kind of thunderous music. And he's up front with a very stern look on his face, where he also feels very powerful and a little bit scary.

Yeah. And he, so he's, he's hypnotized Marie and he's like, where is Simon? And she says upstairs, which I mean, he probably could have guessed that, but anyway, so he, he's trying to, I guess, get, get them out of the house, but then he fails and,

because the kid living in the house, Peggy, she runs in asking for a snack or something. She's like, where's my ball? And then Marie is snapped out of her trance and asks Mokada to leave. And I thought that was funny, especially because Rachel was like, it's the kid that's going to defeat the devil. Oh, yeah. It's also kind of, it reminded me, of course, of Indiana Jones. Like, next time, Dr. Jones, it'll take more than children to save you. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Uh, but so Mokata is asked to leave. He does. But then there's a great line. He says, I will not be back, but something will. Oh, and that's, that's something, uh, should we talk about that? Something? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess this leads into the main thing that's left in the movie, which is the siege of the magic circle. So yeah, the Duke returns with his magical implements and he draws a protective circle on the floor of the library in the house. Uh, it's got symbols all around it and inside the circle, uh,

The Duke, Simon, Marie, and Richard have to wait out the night while being besieged by the forces of evil that are sent by Mokata, and I think conjured through the medium of Tanith. This got kind of complicated, but I think the idea is that

somehow uses Tanneth to like make himself more powerful. He like manifests power through her. And for that reason, Tanneth is like, I can't be in the house. So meanwhile, while they're in the library, Rex and Tanneth run off to a barn somewhere. I don't know exactly how all that works, but that's where they go. Uh,

And the other thing I was wondering, why don't Peggy and the Butler have to be inside the magic circle? The other four people in the house are in the circle. Peggy and Butler just up in a room somewhere. Yeah, I would, I mean, I wouldn't want my child to see the forces of darkness that have been marshaled against me. Uh,

But if they're going to be in the house with the forces of darkness, I think I would rather them be in the circle. I guess today, if this were to happen, I could give my son an iPad and he would be fine. He'd just watch Pokemon and you could have the forces of darkness doing their thing outside the circle and he wouldn't even look up. But how are you going to keep a kid this age distracted during the 30s? I don't know. Well, anyway, so we get the siege here. And Rob, do you want to describe the attacks that befall them while they're waiting out the night in the circle? Yeah.

All right, so first attack was Stone Dude. Second attack was the Great He-Goat. Third attack here, third summoning, is going to be none other than the Angel of Death. And it is pretty alarming when this one's summoned because suddenly the door opens, white light spilling out, and a perhaps semi-transparent—it's hard to see—

winged horse rides in and the rider on that horse is this individual in armor. You can't see his face, but then eventually he rides up close enough and we get this close-up, like blue flames behind his head. The mask opens and it's a skull. Yeah, the angel of death is here to claim a human soul.

Rob, one thing. I agree with everything you said, but I think we're out of order here because I think the spider attacks before the angel of death. Oh, okay. Well, okay. In that case, we get a lackluster giant spider attack. Right. So that comes, tricks them with all these illusions like they...

the, the devil keeps simulating people they know asking for help or trying to get them to step outside the circle. It pretends to be Peggy being attacked by the spider, but it's not really her. And of course the Duke is like, control yourself, man, stand there. And, uh, uh, yeah. And then, but then we get the angel of death. I have to say the spider, again, the spider does not look very good. No, it's just a tarantula with, with a forced perspective and stuff. But then, so how do they defeat the angel of death? Uh,

Christopher Lee has introduced this idea earlier that the only thing he can do to fight back against these forces is to say this spell, the most dangerous magic spell in the world. And he's like, I dare not say it unless our very souls are at peril because it could destroy the entire universe. But I did memorize it just in case. Yeah. But he does say it. He says it at the Angel of Death and that banishes it.

But at the end of the night, so they've made it through, but things look bad because Rex comes back and he's holding the body of Tanith. Tanith has died and also Peggy has disappeared. So they're in dire straits now. But where have they gone? Well, the Duke has to figure this out by conjuring the ghost of Tanith in the body of Marie. And then again,

commanding and yelling at her saying, tell me where have they gone? I command you. But this leads to a final confrontation at the mansion Mokata where he has an onsite temple for human sacrifice. I think he's going to sacrifice Peggy for some reason. What is, was it that he says it's the transference of souls? I think it's like if he sacrifices Peggy, then Tanith will be brought back to him maybe. Yeah. And they need Tanith for, um,

Satanic reasons for something. Yeah. And then in the end, the ghost of Tanith speaking through Marie says the same dangerous spell that Christopher Lee said earlier, or gets the child to say it. And this destroys the cult, destroys Makata. And then we get, oh, this ending. It is a causally justified, it was all a dream ending. Yeah.

where they wake up back at Richard and Marie's house in the magic circle. Everyone who is dead is now alive, except Mokata, who has been killed in the, in exchange. And, uh, and the Duke explains time has been reversed. Everything that happened happened, but now it has not happened. And then the movie just ends with a very stern insistence that God is in charge. Um,

Yeah, nothing like a time travel out of nowhere ending with the off-screen death of the villain, which also seems an awful lot like speculation on the Duke's part. He's just like, what happened to Mokato? He's like, oh, well, he died now in this new version of things that happened. I'm not going to show it to you or tell you what it looked like, but trust me, it happened.

And then one of the characters, maybe it's Rex or Simon, is like, thank God. And the Duke is like, yes, all thanks to God. It is he we must thank. Yes, yes. So all thanks go to God for intervening, wiping out all the villains. But unlike, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, where pretty much a similar thing happens, like God enters the picture and just fixes everything. Mm-hmm.

I mean, we get to see it and Nazis explode and melt and so forth. Uh, instead we're just told it happened. Don't worry about it. Everybody can go to bed. Yeah. It's kind of a deus ex machina. Uh, and for some reason, why does the deus ex machina work in Raiders of the Lost Ark where it almost never works otherwise? I'm not sure. Because we get to watch the deus. That's the thing. Like we, we get to see the forces of heaven come down from above. Uh, we get to see the Hebrew God, uh, avenge, um,

himself and his people against the Nazis and just utterly decimate them with splendid special effects. And, you know, so obviously this film didn't have the budget for that sort of thing. Yeah.

But I think that's one of the reasons it works so well in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah. I guess it's also the fact that at the end of Raiders that Indy and Marion, their insight that they have to survive at the end is humility and that they must humble themselves and close their eyes. Yeah. But I could imagine something like that happening in this film and I wouldn't have bought it with the Duke because the Duke would be like, I know exactly what's happening. Everyone close your eyes. Simon, shut your eyes. Pat. Yeah.

Shut your eyes. I will keep my eyes open for the rest of you. I can peek. It's okay. I know what I'm doing. Well, that brings up a really good question about, I'm curious about the religious sensibilities of this movie, which are clearly mostly, you know, they're anti-devil and they're conservative, but what exactly is the religious affiliation of the Duke supposed to be? He seems to be nominally Christian and,

at least insofar as Christianity is opposed to the devil, which is the bad guy. And there is one line where Christopher Lee like grills the ghost of Tanneth with that question. He says like, do you acknowledge Jesus Christ? Um,

But then Lee is just straight up doing occult magic and defeating the enemy with esoteric spells. So is he supposed to be a down-the-line conservative Christian, or is he supposed to be an occult wizard? In at least all the environments I'm familiar with, these things are supposed to be mutually exclusive.

Yeah, like, I mean, they don't really play up the idea that there's like good magic and bad magic. Like that would have, I think that would have been kind of ultimately maybe a more modern telling of this and maybe it would have been more fun if it was like we have just dueling occultists here.

just one occultist is leaning hard into the black magic and the other one is a little more sensible about how he's using everything. But yeah, ultimately I think we get more of that. It's more like the, it's more of the satanic panic energy. It's ultimately kind of more like the, like the Heinrich Kramer or Hammer of the Witches kind of energy where it's like, I can be super knowledgeable about all of this stuff and like weirdly super into it, but it's okay because I'm here to stamp it out.

you know? Uh, but yeah, we don't see Christopher Lee's character, the Duke going to church or anything. Uh, he just name drops Jesus and, uh, and God, you know, twice in the whole picture. And throws the, uh, the crucifix grenades. Yeah. He'll throw, he'll heave some, some crosses around for sure. So yeah, ultimately, uh, it's, it's a very fun picture. There's a lot, a lot to think about if you approach it from the right direction. Um,

So I recommend it. You can pick this one up in a few different places. There are some different Hammer DVD packs and so forth. But in 2019, Shout Factory put out an absolutely amazing Blu-ray edition. This is the one that we rented from Videodrome for this episode. And yeah, this one would make the great he-goat proud. Lots of extras, wonderful bright yellow he-goat images.

menu screen that I was very impressed with and just more more extras and special features than you could conceivably even want like Christopher Lee has his own commentary track on this one so I recommend picking that up or renting it if you have the opportunity to do so you might find it streaming somewhere as well I'm not sure what the exact streaming options might be for this picture

We'd love to hear from everyone out there, though. If you have thoughts on this picture or others, what are your favorite Hammer horror films? We know we have some Hammer fans out there. Write in, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Weird House Cinema comes out every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays, we set most of the serious matters aside and we just talk about a weird film such as this one. I also go ahead and mention that

I maintain a blog, samutamusic.com, S-E-M-U-T-A-M-U-S-I-C. And that's just a blog where I'll list the episodes that we have done on Weird House Cinema. So if you want a complete list of the films we've looked at, as well as some embedded media here and there, you know,

that we discuss, bits of music that we discuss, I will host them there. Big thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. But he is out this week, so huge thanks as well to our guest producer, Paul Deccant. Really appreciate you stepping in, Paul. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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