The Devil Rides Out

The Devil Rides Out deals in some of the usual Hammer Films tropes, but adds a spin with its roaring 20s setting and by making an actor who is usually the villain into the hero. Also known as The Devil's Bride, the film was based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley.

Christopher Lee usually played a bad guy--hell, the baddest of guys--but he was equally as effective as a hero. He gives the comforting feeling that, whatever evil is coming your way, Christopher Lee knows it well and will shut it down. Oddly, this is kind of accurate: During World War II, Lee was a member of the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare--also known as the Special Operations Executive, an actual unit, dedicated to taking out Nazis by means that were... well, sometimes rather ungentlemanly. He was also six-foot-five and a direct descendant of Charlemagne.

But things kick right off with a set of opening credits that could easily be a heavy metal video if you just swapped out the soundtrack (perhaps one of Lee's own, as he had a late-in-life career as a heavy metal vocalist and was apparently a big Black Sabbath fan). Another twist to The Devil  Rides Out is that it's set in roaring 20s Britain and Satanism is just another lark for upper-class Bright Young Things.

The Duc de Richleau, aka Christopher Lee shows up to visit a friend who is hosting a "meeting" or his "astronomical society." Yeah, you ain't fooling the Duc, who has been around all the blocks, many times. Of course the meeting is actually a congregation of devil worshippers, led by none other than Charles Gray, whom you know from Diamonds Are Forever and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Here he is Mocata, the utterly unctuous leader of the local Satanic coven.

"Chickens in a basket, diagrams on a floor. Do these mean something to you?"

Rather like those in The Black Cat, it's one classy, well-dressed group of Satanists--the manor house is gorgeous, the patter is literary and the wine exquisite, and the crowd is strictly black tie and pearls, with the occasional dashiki or sari. But Christopher Lee feels nothing but disdain, as those who are "meddling with black magic" rank about as high in his esteem as Nickelback fans.

Christopher Lee waves off the devil worshippers and carries off his wanabe Satanist pal, but he's going to have to rout this bunch of vermin from the neighborhood. Any gentleman would. Really, it is interesting that The Devil Rides Out chooses as its main combatant against evil, not some radiant creature of pure goodness, but a guy who seems to know exactly what he's up against because he's been there and rolls his eyes at your puerile edgelord nonsense. You think you're a powerful mage summoning Baphomet to do your most vile and stygian bidding, to Christopher Lee you're just a spotty teen playing Marilyn Manson loud until mom makes you a Hot Pocket.

Yet another of the main differences between The Devil Rides Out and your typical Satanist horror flick is that it almost entirely dodges the conventional Judeo-Christian angle for a more ego-centered version. When he goes off on the power of his will, it's not hard to hear the distaff Alestier Crowley` philosophy. It's a choice more suitable to the film's 1920s setting as well as the post-hippie/summer of Manson period in which it was released. (I bet Jimmy Page loves this movie.)

According to the Duc de Christopher Lee, "the power of darkness is more than superstition. it is a living force that can be tapped at any given moment of the night." Something like William S. Burroughs' "ugly spirit," that malevolent force that touches some more than others, and which one must struggle to control, regardless of whether one is suppressing or focusing its darkness.

So, anyhow, the deal is that Duc de Christopher Lee's buddy is in love with this girl who's already engaged to the devil--ergo the movie's stateside title, The Devil's Bride--and Charles Gray has to make sure that nothing interferes with getting her to the church--or coven--on time. One of the ways Charles Gray tries to keep his Satanic wedding planner mojo going is by causing a rather groovy car chase with old timey cars: His eyes appear in your review mirror and next thing you know you're driving a perfectly lovely Buick Roadster off the road and getting your cloche all askew.

So Christopher Lee has to disrupt the Satanic baptism--Baptism before wedding because, hey, we're Satanists!--which he seems to be intent upon disrupting not just because it involves sacrificing souls to evil incarnate, but because it's so damned tacky. I swear that as he drives his Hispano Suzia into the center of a group of frolicking devil worshippers, he's not only chanting prayers, but muttering something about "cheap Woodstock knockoff" and "ill-fitting hospital gowns" and various maledictions against those who would drink Captain Morgan's.

"As part of one's initiation, one has to choose the name of some past great practitioner of the occult."
Oooh! Can I be Jayne Mansfield?

"The goat of Mendes! The devil himself!"

Some friends come by to visit for not other apparent reason than to supply the plot with a child to be sacrificed to Satan later--meetings, baptisms, weddings, sacrifices... I can see why one has to be upper-class to belong to this coven. One would have to be independently wealthy to have enough free time--not to mention all of the appropriate outfits--for the many mandatory activities.

Charles Gray stops by to be all shady and mind-control-y. "In magic there is neither good nor evil, there is merely a science. The science of causing change to happen merely through one's will." When his cover his blown, he flounces out, proclaiming, "I shall not be back. But something will." Could be a campy British closet case or an Avon lady, could be a bomb cyclone or a giant spider, who knows...

The climax is when Duc Lee Richleau and his cronies do some kind of magic circle thing in the library to ward of an attack by Macaca that involves wind, lightning, bats and giant spiders. And you know what's worse than giant spiders? The Angel of Death! Okay, maybe nothing is worse than giant spiders, but it's still all kinds of bad stuff...

"Don't look at the eyes!" Lee does a lot of telling people not to look at shit, or not to leave someone alone or not to turn off the light or not to remove the crucifix and they always do. Why? I have no idea: If Christopher Lee tells you to do shit, you fucking do it. Fortunately Christopher Lee can pretty much always shut evil down, since he's a 12th level magic user, as well as a 7th level fighter--and his character in The Devil Rides Out clearly has a number of mystical powers as well...

I'd rather see you dead than meddling with black magic!

This is really the big scene of the film. Sure, everyone rushes over to disrupt the human sacrifice of some woman's daughter and flip off Charles Gray but that's basically a bunch of deus ex machina and an improbable happy ending. Because even more ridiculous than "it was all a dream" is "We time-traveled back to right before all of this happened."

The Devil Rides Out is a relatively short, fast-moving horror film and one wishes it had spent a little more time developing its unorthodox Crowley-esque vision of Satanism and the humanist magic Lee uses to defeat--or at least thwart--it.

And, well, they had Charles Gray and Christopher Lee to put this over. I would sit and watch those two recite the phone book or the dialogue from an Adam Sandler movie--much less act imperious and make dismissive gestures while reciting the names of Egyptian gods and random bits of Latin.

Overall, The Devil Rides Out is a solid horror flick--it may be light on the scares, but it makes up for it with atmosphere, characterization and a unique take on an old topic. Also, it's got Christopher Lee. And, even with 280 entries on the man's IMDB page, there's never enough of that.

The Manitou

The Manitou was one of the wave of occult horror flicks during the 70s--this time with some of that fashionable Native American culture and a few of those newfangled computers thrown in. Other than that, it's just your standard flick about a chick with a tumor on her back that has an undead Native American medicine man living in it.

Wot? I know--weird even by the addled standards of the Quaalude decade...

Our star is Tony Curtis, slumming--if you can call anything Tony Curtis does slumming, he always just seemed happy and bemused to be there, glad you see you, thank for the check--plays a two-bit psychic who hustles old ladies (so many Tony Curtis roles involve the words "two-bit" and "hustle")...

C'mon, sweetheart, let's go. I gotta get this schmatte back to Williams Costume by five
or I pay for another day's rental.

He's got a sweet San Fran bachelor pad with an awesome stereo, drinks beer out of a wineglass and knows lots of babes. Among said babes is his ex, played by Susan Strasberg with a pussycat bow at her neck and a fetus on her back. (Yes, Susan, your father was a guru of the American theatre, you fucked Richard Burton and Warren Beatty, you hung out with Marilyn Monroe, but here you are in The Manitou. And just wait until the topless laser scene...)

Strasberg shows up on his doorstep and they wander around the various tourist locales of San Francisco, as they always do in movies set there--everyone always goes to Fisherman's Wharf and the steep hills. No one ever goes to a Kwik-E-Mart. She tells him about this tumor she's got and Curtis is all, "Oh, that's too bad. But it's on your back, right? Not on your front? Like, not your lower front? Okay then." I mean, I was in New York during 9-11 and i know what fucking in the face of death is like but I'd consider "removal of a large tumor tomorrow" more of a "let's cuddle" occasion.

So, they bang, and as Strasberg and her tumor sleep, she mutters, "Panna witchy salatoo." It is not the last time we will hear this nonsense phrase repeated portentously. Nay, it will be repeated over and over until one longs for the simplicity of a "Klaatu barada nikto!" or "Pazuzu!"

So, they X-ray the tumor and the mop-topped and pastel-coated doctor declares, "They are sure that the tumor on her neck is actually a fetus." I cannot think I of something I would less want to hear from a medical professional. I' think I'd rather hear "malignant" than "monster fetus."

Of course, Tony Curtis rolls with this as he rolls with everything in The Manitou (or anywhere else) and goes to rip off another old lady. (Curtis would go on to remain unphased by the weird and the undead in Sextette.) However, when old lady goes full Linda Blair in the middle of a tarot reading, levitates and chants "Panna witchy salatoo," he finally freaks out. Bitch's monster baby tumor is fucking with my livelihood!

So he goes back and tells the doctor all about "Panna witchy salatoo"  and the doctor is like, "Whatever" and messes with his giant mainframe computer some more before stomping off to operate to remove said tumor. I'm waiting for some right-wing politician to run in and stop him because Unborn Undead Native American Mutant Demon Parasites have a right to be born, even in the case of threatening the life of the mother and jeopardizing all the lives and souls on Earth. But i'm getting ahead of myself in the story...

Holy diver, Batman!

Anyway, the doctors try to X-ray the tumor, Strasberg has seizures and speaks in "possessed voice." They try to cut it off, the surgeon slits his wrist. They try to laser it off, the laser goes nuts like a Spinal Tap stage prop gone wrong. So Tony Curtis flounces off to to find Stella Stevens, who is slathered in self-tanner to the edge of blackface and is apparently some kind of California psychic buddy of his.

They have a seance with a Gabor sister, some weird shit goes down with heads rising up out of the table and people speaking in tongues and freaky wind (But isn't there always freaky wind?) Stella's stoner hubby finds a passage in a book that seems to mention the human-tumor phenomena as well as the "panna witchy salatoo" and the gang is off to find the author...

Burgess Meredith! Yes! You loved his kung fu battle in Foul Play and leading motherfuckers straight to hell in Torture Garden, so here he is! The Scooby Gang asks for his help, he yadda yaddas about some more old books. Then they go up in his attic, which is a mere staircase above his paneling n' shag, ferns n' pre-Columbia art living room, but shrouded in yard-square cobwebs and inches of dust because, y'know, attic.

Burgess Meredith tells them that what they need is a non-parasitical undead Native American shaman to battle the Native American shaman that is attempting to resurrect himself. Tony Curtis hustles and bribes (via a deus ex machina "aunt" who has $100,000 to donate to the little Indian kids or whatever because Tony Curtis knows motherfuckers don't do shit for free). In the meantime, the tumor has finally given birth to itself--although it's a dwarf thank to the goddamn X-rays, which means it looks kind of like Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages drag.

Tonight, the role of the undead medicine man will be played by Glen Danzig...

So Tony Curtis and Live Shaman do battle with Undead Shaman. There's ice storms and computer malfunctions and random gore. Little Undead Shaman seems rather arbitrary in his attacks--he might use mind control to force a doctor to cut himself with a scalpel, or it might somehow create a giant lizard to chew on your hand, he might throw a possessed old lady at your or he might just rip your skin off. But, well, we already understand that logic isn't part of the The Manitou's universe. Panna witchy salatoo. Anahl nathrak, uthvas bethud, do cheol dienve...

Anyway, The Manitou is what happens when no one's really paying attention, just throwing casting options and plot points against the wall like so much chimp scat and seeing what sticks. But that's what makes it fun to watch: If you can't come up with good snark for The Manitou, no one can help you....

This Island Earth

This Island Earth: It's got everything you come to schlocky 50's sci-fi movies for!

It may look goofy now but, in its time, This Island Earth was some high-end shit. It got good reviews, especially for the visuals and the script. The cast is headed up by Howard Hughes piece Faith Domergue (He picked her up when she was 15; at 17, she rammed Hughes' car while he was out with Ava Gardner.)

The rest of the cast is your standard bunch of B-movie yahoos. Our hero is the hilariously (but actually) named Rex Reason, who looks kind of like Paul Newman's ugly, slow younger brother. We've got some aliens with big foreheads and an assortment of scientist types. And, of course, the large-brained-yet-stupid alien in MC Hammer pants.

Ah, Universal International Pictures, the mark of quality. Of course, anything that is universal is also international, one would assume... So, anyway, Ugly Newman is supposedly a scientist-pilot-genius and babbles about science but i am distracted by his oddly small hands. He flies his plane, he loses control, it turns green and hums.

All the dialogue is like this -- random assemblages of early STEM jargon... Science science compounds science. Atoms science science science electricity. Science? Science. Plutonium. Science science.

Then, the bookcase he ordered from Ikea arrives, but instead the box contains parts for something else and instructions that are even more vague than what he expected to come with the Borgsjo.

Once assembled, it seems to make a really awesome television -- sorry, an interocitor. An interocitor is an alien television that can see you, talk to you and shoot lasers at you if so inclined. The TV is a gift from a spaceman named Exeter, who wants Tinyhands Newman to join his super-scientist super-squad.

And so he gets on a plane with no seatbelts and no pilot -- kind of like Spirit, but with more leg room. He falls asleep on the flight and wakes up to Faith Domergue driving a station wagon and wearing an oil slick of lipstick.

She takes him back to "the club," where he meets the other scientists recruited by the aliens. And Exeter explains why he has been summoned here and what it is the aliens want...

Holy shit, someone tell Tom Cotton he needs to write another letter!

But Jargonbarker Newman is suspicious. Although i don't see why he should be: A group of alien beings tricked him into building a magic television and then flew him in a magic pilot-less plane to a magic science camp where scientists from all over the world are living in an isolated mansion, working on a mysterious project. None of these developments bothered him until now...

Not to mention that Exeter and his buddy Brak (no, really) seem to have ways of convincing scientists to play along, aside from beautifully landscaped grounds and a generous meal plan. And is it just me, or do Exeter and Brak seem to be some kind of varietal of Oompa Loompa? Could it be that they need all of that nuclear power to protect themselves from the Vermicious Knids?

The aliens decide to return to their home planet, but first they have to blow up the mansion and all of the scientists in it... wait, isn't that what happens in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? So they're kind of Oompa Loompas and kind of Transsexual Transylvanians?

The three scientists who managed to dodge the sunlamp lobotomy attempt to escape by car, by foot and by plane, but only  Faith Domergue and Newman make it to getting sucked up by the high-pitched humming of a hubcap...

The aliens have decided to keep the pair, since they seemed pretty close to perpetrating whatever science was supposed to be perpetrated, although i'm still not sure why it is the superior alien race needs humans to solve their engineering problems...

And finally the film picks up and heads off to space! One thing i will say for This Island Earth is, while the scenes of the spaceships and planets are by no means convincing, they do look wonderful. Nice use of color, good drawings, slick aesthetics....

This is the aliens' home planet of Metaluna, which is under attack by the Zagons (which is apparently how you say "Vermicious Knid" in Oompa Loompese) who somehow can remote-control meteors and ceaselessly bombard the surface of the planet with them.

And here comes the monster! Well, actually, a mutant. Now, this isn't a Zagon, but some kind of lower life form that serves the Oompa Loompas. Anyway, planet under attack, Earthling scientists, genius aliens, powerful-but-dumb mutants, meteors exploding everywhere... can't help but end well, really.

Like The Angry Red Planet, This Island Earth earns punk rock points for being name-checked by the Misfits. And then of course there's the comic books, action figures, greeting cards, tattoos and T-shirts. It's also gotten the MST3K treatment -- it actually ranks as one of the less goofy films in the series. Sure, it's cheesy, but it's no The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent or Amazing Colossal Man and certainly no Brain That Wouldn't Die: This Island Earth is not that level of bad. Of course, how much you (or i) consider that good remains up for discussion...