The last Hammer horror (the film only made one more film, a remake of The Lady Vanishes), this wasn’t a bad one to go out on. At least it has Christopher Lee, giving one of his best ever performances as a Satanic priest. There’s also a role tailor-made for Peter Cusing, a writer who specialises in the occult and who gets mixed up with the daughter of the devil (Natassja Kinski as a nun). Unfortunately the Cushing role is played by Richard Widmark who is not only unconvincing but looks bored. Much better is Denholm Elliot as Kinski’s father.
This one has a decent story – Lee is chasing after Kinski so he can perform a Satanic ritual – and has some decent moments but ultimately its done in by indifferent handling, and lack of development (for instance it cries out for some more stylised atmospheric production design and interesting support characters). It also lacks a decent climax (apparently they ran out of money). Kinski is beautiful and charismatic – but can’t act at all (it’s a shame they didn’t keep her dialogue to nothing); she also does a full frontal nude scene, an attempt to seduce Widmark – which is pretty confronting since she was under-age at the time.
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