Devil Rides Out, The (1968)

Christopher Lee stars in this enjoyable little witchcraft chiller. Lee plays Duc de Richelieu, an older man who discovers that a young friend of his has become involved with the black arts, his coven led by Mocata (Charles Gray between Bond films). He takes it upon himself to prevent this young man (Patrick Mower) and an associated young woman (the lovely Nike Arrighi) from their unholy Baptism into Satanism. Charles Gray plays a serviceable villain in this, while Christopher Lee excels as the dreadfully serious no-nonsense doomsayer and protector. The only other noteworthy member of the cast is Nike Arrighi as Tanith. She's one of the more irresistible actresses I've seen in a Hammer film--it's a shame she retired from acting so early. I wish I could figure out what kind of accent she has. With several fun sets considering the budget and a couple tense, exciting scenes involving magic, The Devil Rides Out is one of the better Hammer thrillers from the late 60s (although still not as excellent as Quatermass and the Pit). Definitely worth a watch. Good occult thrillers are not easy to come by.

7/10

A Note on the Restoration: The version I watched was the recent restoration in which Hammer chose to "fix" some of the effects left unfinished by either lack of funds or time. While the improvements are mostly unnoticeable to someone unfamiliar with the film and done tastefully (The only effect that was obviously digital a strike of lightning--don't they know lightning never looked like that in the 60s?), it does bring up the question of what level of alteration is acceptable if at all. I'm not sure I can provide a clear answer. The improvements didn't seem to be for stupid reasons like "to update the film to younger generations," or needlessly adding garbage to fulfill some delusional director's vision, but rather because they wanted to put a finishing touch on effects that were obviously unfinished due to circumstance. It's kind of like Harryhausen colorizing Merian C. Cooper's 1935 film She because their original intentions were to shoot in color, so he colorized it as a gesture of appreciation for the film. Does that justify the alterations? I'm not sure. Regardless, they should at least provide the original unaltered version for the purists.