Duc: One of Wheatley’s finest, you know, he really captured our essence and understands the occult like few others. With increasing tension, we perceive the ensuing chaos, no longer directed at just a few; not random acts of rape and carnage, cannibalism, mutilation of babies and so on, but now applied on a massive scale across all humanity and time. Nature now no longer a neutral force, but twisted to an evil purpose. Bernard starts the opening credits of The Devil Rides Out, with a five-note refrain, that builds to a crescendo, itself repeating five times. Like the score for Dracula (1958), the five notes spell out the title of the film in musical syllables. His score retains a sense of threat, with an almost constant rumble of drums and an eerie string section. Bernard was so proud of the score, that he requested some of it be played at his funeral. Bear in mind that the book was published five years before the outbreak of the Second World War, giving melancholic weight to de Richleau’s warning that ‘Europe is ripe now for any trouble and if [the Four Horsemen] are loosened again, it will be final Armageddon. This is no longer a personal matter of protecting Simon … We’ve got to prevent [Mocata] plunging the world into another war.’

The Satanic ritual, as described in the book, is more decorative for a start, with the leaders of the cult wearing ‘fantastic costumes’. One wears a cat cask complete with furry cloak and dangling tail, another is dressed as a ‘repellent toad’, a third wears a wolf costume and Mocata himself is a bat with ‘webbed wings sprouting from his shoulders’. Casting began in 1967 and Christopher Lee did not want to take the role of Mocata: ‘I told Hammer, ‘Look, enough of the villainy for the time being, let us try something different and let me be on the side of the angels for once.’ The text is littered with all manner of references to satanic practices and daft myth and legend relating to the dark arts, to the point that it just becomes very, very silly. How much bunk the author must have waded through to end up with such a mish-mash of nonsense I can only imagine, but he must have been overwhelmed because he certainly wasn't discerning in the final cut. The effect is an overload that renders any reasonable suspension of belief impossible. I feel bad giving only 2 stars to this book, because I like Paul O'Grady very much. But the second instalment of this autobiography is disappointing.Yet it is not only in Africa that such abominations are practised. A few years ago women were giving themselves up to hideous eroticism with a great carved ebony figure, during Satanic orgies held in a secret temple in Bayswater, London W2.” Beyond general evil and Devil worship, it’s not entirely clear what Mocata’s goal is in the film – and the reason for this alteration in the story is quite a heartbreaking one. In the novel, it is revealed that if Mocata can practise the ritual to Saturn in conjunction with Mars with someone who was born in a certain year at the hour of the conjunction, the whereabouts of ‘the Talisman of Set’ will be revealed to him. But that’s the thing with The Devil Rides Out, whilst the film has aged better than then book, Wheatley – despite his deplorable views on race – certainly laid the foundations for so much British horror that was to come in the latter half of the 20 th Century and it’s interesting to revisit his work to see the origin of so much that was to follow. Dennis Yates Wheatley (8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977) [Born: Dennis Yeats Wheatley] was an English author. His prolific output of stylish thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors in the 1950s and 1960s.

The iconic scene in the pentacle is very similar in both the film and the book. (Although instead of the film’s giant spider, they are menaced by a kind of demonic white slug – Mocata, perhaps?!) When the Angel of Death is summoned, de Richleau saves them by pronouncing ‘the last two lines of the dread Sussamma Ritual’. After the rescue of Simon the duke takes him to the ancient sanctuary of Stonehenge to see out the night safely. (Tanith is also rescued in the film, though not in the book.) We learn that Simon is Mocata’s gateway to acquiring the Talisman of Set, which will allow him to summon the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse into the world. In a twist to what we read in the history books, it appears that the horsemen were last summoned in 1914 and that Germany is therefore absolved of all guilt for causing the First World War: O'Grady gets unsuitable job that he hates, falls in with a crowd at a gay bar, sees a drag act and thinks "I could do that". O'Grady quits job he hates, gets another, starts frequenting another completely different but somehow exactly the same bar in which there is a resident drag act, and thinks "I could do that, but BETTER". Repeat with interchangeable jobs, bars and 'larger than life' queens (again interchangeable) over a period of 6 years, until finally O'Grady (or Lily) decides to start his own act and.....it ends. The film script includes so many memorable lines memorably delivered — Christopher Lee, in particular, often using short … pauses … between … words … for … added … dramatic … effect. Here are some of my favourites: Mocata will stop at nothing to obtain The Talisman of Set and unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on the world.Unable to negotiate out of the deal, the majority of the film’s special effects were overseen by Stainer-Hutchins and both Stainer-Hutchins and Daws remained as associate producers. The only special effects Stainer-Hutchins didn’t work on, was the Angel of Death sequence which was overseen by Les Bowie, who also worked on other Hammer productions including Dracula (1958) and The Kiss of the Vampire (Don Sharp, 1963). Bowie was later part of the team that won an Oscar for the special effects on Superman (Richard Donner, 1978). She looks forward the upcoming Satanic festival as ‘an extraordinary experience.’ As she argues: ‘by surrendering myself I shall only suffer or enjoy, as most other women do, under slightly different circumstances at some period of their life.’ James Hilton, reviewing The Devil Rides Out, described it as "The best thing of its kind since Dracula". [2]

The Duke measures a perfect circle seven feet in diameter, marking it in chalk and drawing a five-pointed star inside. It is done with geometrical precision, or else the pentacle could be dangerous. Inside the circumference he writes an exorcism, along with other ancient symbols including: “Cabbalistic signs taken from the Sephirotic Tree; Kether, Binah, Ceburah, Hod, Malchut,” the Eye of Horus and some ancient Aryan script. Duc: The sixties were a time when satanic worship could be explored in film without the gore associated with later horror films, while still holding true to Wheatley’s vision.

Christopher Lee’s Nicholas, Duc de Richleau, is as omniscient as god, but not quite pure enough to stand against the devil during a blood rite. He is a completely capable man, an expert on many things and a lover of the finest of them. A former soldier, he is disciplined and commanding and Lee is utterly convincing. We know he’s right. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right, just like Wheatley himself. He’s done it all, researched it extensively, rolled it over in his brain and decided what is right and what is wrong. And that it is wrong to allow the young rapscallion Simon to be baptized a Satanist. Oh, he understands the allure, but no, it’s just not proper. Dennis Wheatley did not invent his own mythology, as H.P. Lovecraft did. He wrote as an informed insider, who knew Satanists in real life. He was personally acquainted with Aleister Crowley and also the most renowned occult expert at the time, the Reverend Montague Summers, who translated the “Malleus Maleficarum”: a witchhunter’s ”bible”, used by both Catholics and Protestants. First published in 1486, it includes everything known at the time about cults, illicit sex, dealings with the devil, and so on. This is a very religious book, but more along the lines of Light versus Dark, Good versus Evil, and the Powers of Good. If that isn’t enough, there is also cannibalism. Mocata and ‘half a dozen masters of the Left Hand Path’ sit at a head table before the Goat where they feast upon the flesh of ‘a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen’. The Duke’s suspicions are confirmed when a human skull is cast into a cauldron before the throne of the beast.