Director: Peter Sykes (Don Sharp did uncredited work)
Year: 1976
Country: United Kingdom/West Germany
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Cult
Plot:
After running away from a Satanic cult, a man tries to have a cult expert keep him and his daughter away from the cult's mastermind, who intends to sacrifice her to Satan and bring about the end of the world, putting them in jeopardy when the cult stops at nothing to reacquire her.
Review:
This was an overall decent, if not all that spectacular, effort. One of the film's few bright spots is the rather impressive atmosphere here surrounding the use of the cult and their powers, as this one really tends to let loose with this more often than expected. Scenes like the snake transforming from the telephone cord or the hallucinations of the previous rituals make for quite a fun time here, as not only are these scenes quite fun, but the jump from the former and the sleaze and depravity found in the latter complement each other nicely. The first flashback hallucination scene, which is the big shock here, also manages to get really creepy with its use of Satanic imagery and ceremonial artifacts to really make for a demented sequence before it really gets going with the implied impregnation at the finale, which is quite surprising throughout here, with this one really going full-on to match its contemporaries in the genre who were far more at ease with such demented showings. Likewise, the finale, which is the epic battle between the two with the Satanic powers coming to full bore, makes this one quite exciting, with the full powers of each side getting a chance to show themselves and really making for quite a fun time.
Still, there's not a lot else here that really works since this one tends to spend a large portion of time as a thriller rather than an out-and-out horror film. Not much of anything really happens here, as there's more talk about what happened to cause his exit from the priesthood and how he turned to the Satanic arts than anything else. There are a lot of scenes of the father wandering around with a worried expression on his face, and the tormented girl not doing much of anything else but complaining that this one tends to move about so agonizingly slowly it takes way too long to get going and doesn't really feature a lot of interesting marks when it does happen, which ends up being the biggest flaw against this one. Likewise, for as much fun as it is to witness the final battle in here, this one tends to utilize its powers so quickly it's over quite suddenly without much happening to really offer a lot of coherent basis for what happened. It's too sudden for all the drawn-out fun it could've had and really tends to lower this one a lot, along with the really dreary and dull pacing throughout here.
Overview: **/5
A mildly enjoyable and problematic devil-cult effort, there are some worthwhile factors to be had here that give this some potential, while the majority of the flaws here are enough to keep this down. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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