I always love a Christopher Lee film where he has dialogue and doesn’t just go around hissing a la Dracula.

I didn’t particularly like To the Devil a Daughter, but I didn’t hate it either. (SPOILER: Good wins over the bad – but not as sensationally as it would have if they were true to the book.) He reputedly called it a “Mickey Mouse” Production because the script was being rewritten each day.ĭennis Wheatley hated the film because apparently it diverts a lot from the novel, such as the finale – which would have been cool if they filmed it. Richard Windmark was reportedly disgusted with the lack of professionalism on the set caused the unravelling of the Hammer empire at the time. But pretty pictures of boats does not an awesome horror film make. It’s got some nice scenery of London’s Katherine Dock in it though. Now, there is nothing really in the film that we haven’t seen before. The writer then goes about trying to save the girl, while people are killed in various ways. The story is relatively simple – an American horror writer John Verney (Richard Widmark) is approached by a distraught man Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliott) at a book signing, who tells him his daughter Catherine (played by 14-year-old Nastassja Kinski) is in danger from a satanic religious cult led by defrocked priest Father Michael Rayner played by always fantastic Christopher Lee, who is obsessed with creating a vessel for the rebirth of the Devil. But despite some very fine performances from the actors involved and reasonable special effects for the time, the script is pretty rotten. Having never read the book, I can’t say whether Dennis Wheatley was just being a stroppy author. Not only was it the last Hammer feature film for nearly 40 years – the critics panned it and the author of the book which was based – Dennis Wheatly vowed never to work with Hammer again he hated it so much.īut is To the Devil a Daughter really that bad a film? To the Devil the Daughter (1976) has a pretty bad reputation. (The title of Hammer’s last Christopher Lee Dracula outing, The Satanic Rites of Dracula was no doubt inspired by the demonic film flood as well.) And what made things worse – Hammer had found itself was no longer leading the pack – it was sniffing around for scraps.Īfter the incredible popularity of occult-themed horrors The Exorcist (1974) and The Omen (1976), Hammer headed back to Denis Weatley where they had success with The Devil Rides Out in 1967. The sex and gore that built the once-thriving British horror studio was now old hat and now everyone was doing it. So says Christopher Lee in the most famous words from To the Devil a Daughter, one of the most infamous Hammer horrors and one of the most least thought of to come out of the studio.īy the mid 1970s, the death knell for Hammer was deafening.

To the devil a daughter dennis wheatley