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Bourgeois twits are closet occultists, their fully-clothed orgies in the woods are swinging parties that sneak 1968 into the Fitzgeraldian setting—just a few of the wry conceptions that jolt Terence Fisher's somber surface. The structure is a series of elaborate diabolical spheres into which the vertical starkness of Christopher Lee's Christian warrior is inserted, Tourneur's Night of the Demon is a clear model of composition. The surrogate son (Patrick Mower) has some guests over, "a little astronomical society I've joined," the curious apparatus in the observatory bemuses the disbelieving chum (Leon Greene): "Chickens in a basket, diagrams on the floor. Do these mean anything?" (The grinning spirit that materializes out of smoke in a red loincloth quells his doubts.) An intervention at the sabbat, sacramental bloodletting followed by a tasteful bacchanalia with a special guest appearance by the Goat of Mendes. The hero fights worshipers with evangelical outrage but to the dapper guru (Charles Gray) Satanism is merely a science, "the sinister reputation attached to it is entirely groundless." To clinch his point he turns his mesmeric glare upwards, and the ingénue on the second floor (Nike Arrighi) slips into a trance and picks up a knife. (An earlier scene finds her in a car barreling down the road while her master's eyes float in the rear-view mirror, cf. Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse.) The capper is a spiritual showdown in an empty drawing-room, a fragile human circle pitted against infernal apparitions ranging from fake children to gigantic spiders to the Angel of Death himself. "A real rouser," as the medium in Blithe Spirit puts it. The cross emerges triumphantly from behind the unholy altar, though not before Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon-Davies' snooty-baleful cameo brings the show closer to Polanski's concurrent sardonicism in Rosemary's Baby. With Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington, Rosalyn Landor, and Russell Waters.
--- Fernando F. Croce |