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.

Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf

I like to think that Christopher Lee has no shame. So he can look back at  Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf and feel okay about it. This movie is a fine example of the "so bad it's good" concept. I recall first watching this flick at my friend Jeremy's place in Los Angeles several years ago. We had just come home at around 1 a.m. with some last call In-n-Out, flicked on the TV for a brief, idle accompaniment to our double-doubles and landed square in the first ten minutes of Howling II. And we could not look away. Not until the very end. Not until we'd seen Sybil Danning rip off her top 18 times in succession.

The movie (i was going to write "film," but that seems wrong somehow) begins with Mr. Lee floating before a field of stars, intoning from the "Mother of All Whores" passage from the bible. It's kind of like the bit with Lilian Gish that opens The Night of the Hunter, except Christopher Lee has a skeleton next to him and is talking about whores -- and, of course, Lilian Gish is in a movie that all thinking people agree is a masterwork, as opposed to one where even the dimmest bulb in the sign can still tell that it sucks.

So, blah blah, funeral for Karen White, who was murdered. Her blonde denim-clad dunderhead brother is sad, Christopher Lee comes up to him and says some enigmatic shit about her death, then some dipshit blonde newslady runs up and announces, "Your sister is a werewolf!" and we cut to a new wave band in a graffiti-painted basement. A crowd of extras mimes enthusiasm. Get used to the band. They're called Babel and they will never be more than 90 seconds away from here on out. Which wouldn't be (quite as) objectionable if they had more than 1 1/2 songs and had shot more then two minutes of footage.

You know who else is in the crowd?

 

   Yup. Wearing wraparound new wave sunglasses.

This particular scene and this particular song will be revisited literally dozens of times during the movie. Marsha Hunt picks up some repulsive locals and lures them to an abandoned warehouse to rip 'em up and feed. It's kinda of like that scene at the beginning of The Hunger, where Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie pick up Ann Magnuson at a Bauhaus concert except nowhere barely even near as glamorous. Which is too bad. Marsha Hunt should have been able to pull off something -- she was best known in her day as a backup singer for a number of big British bands, Marc Bolan's paramour and collaborator, the woman who "Brown Sugar" was written about and Mick Jagger's original babymama.

So,Christopher Lee shows Denim and Dipshit some footage of sister turning into a werewolf, there's some tussling in the graveyard with some werewolves. I would like to note that, while Dispshit may try to come off all assertive career woman, when the chips are down, she's just an old-fashioned, stand-there-and-scream type of girl. Christopher Lee drops some yadda yadda about Stirba, the evil werewolf overlord (Overlady?) who Must! Be! Stopped!

So we all head for Eastern Europe. Marsha Hunt and her sunglassed co-wolves are picked up by two of the local werewolf sycophants and ride to the local castle. Now, i'm not the Queen of the Werewolves or anything, but even i travel under more luxurious conditions than in the back of a military surplus truck, carrying luggage that was a freebie with a Drakkar Noir giftset. And if i stop for road food it's a milkshake and some kind of ostentatiously garnished fries from Mad Greek or Sonic, not "food" in the form of a pair of lederhosen-sporting German tourist types.

Christopher Lee rides in the back of the minicar while Denim and Dipshit bicker and flirt. This is actually the only time he actually looks pained and/or mortified during the entire misbegotten debacle that is Howling II. Off to the tiny medieval town with its sinister, superstitious, pointy-toothed populace locked into their perennial festival of death, chortling at puppet shows and accordion music and inept dancing.

Meanwhile, the werewolves are having their own shindig, which resembles an HBO After Dark swinger's convention.

After some bullshit, they raise Stirba from the dead -- well, not dead, but really old, which is even worse for a blonde with big tits. Stirba is played by none other than Sybil Danning, who starred in the Giallo glamourslasher The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, the Roger Corman Star Wars knock-off Battle Beyond the Stars, Chained Heat with Linda Blair... and, yeah, under all of that, somewhere in the resume fine print is Howling II. Especially the fine work during the werewolf three-way.  I'm sure her Method training helped tremendously...

During this, we are treated to a simultaneous montage of Denim and Dipshit finally Doing It. I've never understood the whole idea of "We're surrounded by zombies/we're fleeing from Nazis/the Terminator is on his way--let's fuck!" The moment one is out of danger, sure, absolutely, with gusto. (This is one of the many reasons i enjoy the outstanding Romeo Must Die: Jet Li and Aaliyah have chemistry for days and some intense moments, but the "Let's go home," is saved until the bad guys are dispatched,) But as far as remembering to suck in my stomach or suppress my gag reflex or relax enough to enjoy it, no. Dipshit has no such problems. But she seems to be an exceptionally laid-back chick. I mean, i'd have to be married to a man for 30, 40 years before i'd let him see me in a Quacker Factory sweater. But Dipshit: Hell, right after the first bang, she rolls out of bed and puts on her best red n' green n' embellished acrylic knit.

And the werewolves continue to party down.

Impressively, they seem to have flown the band out.  Along with all of the band's fans. And the band's club. Wait... these sequences in The Howling II -- and there are many -- cut carefully back and forth between the Transylvakian palace werewolf orgy and the cheesily graffiti-ed "club" like they want us to believe they're in the same place. But, given that both sets look completely different and we've already seen all of this footage several times already. How could they expect us to believe it? Or do they think -- not incorrectly -- that by this point the audience has not suspended their disbelief, but is simply sitting on it to pad out the running time.

So, Christopher Lee and Denim and Dipshit and some other stooges go off to try to stop the werewolves from doing... whatever it is they're going to do. But i hear it's bad. We get some special effects that might be gruesome were they not so ridiculous. Lots of movies toss dwarves. But tossing an undead dwarf culminating in impalement? Sure, most movies have little demon puppets. But skull-fucking, egg-laying blasphemous demon puppets?

Let's just say we can be sure of one thing: At the end of The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, the band will still be playing. And we'll all be howling....