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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A well-written, scary tale with excellent factual bases., July 22, 1998
This was the first Dennis Wheatley book I ever read. I now have the full collection. The premise of the story is one of fantasy, however, as the plot unfolds, Wheatley sprinkles in liberal amounts of facts pertaining to the occult, numerism,Devil-worshpping and just plain history to make it credible. I defy anyone who gets to the chapter 'Within the Pentacle' to be able to put it down until at least the chapter after that! Never have I been so scared while reading a book. I have read most of the more contemporay 'horror' writer's offerings, but they pale when compared to this man, who was the master of his craft. If I have one criticism, it's the rather 'snobbish' english, but allow for the fact that the book was written in the days when the upper-class in Britain actually DID talk like that!
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Classic Tale of Occult Horror, August 30, 2004
Dennis Wheatley's fabulous supernatural thriller 'The Devil Rides Out' on its publication in 1934 was hailed as the best thing of it's kind since Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and the comparison is entirely justified. This classic tale of devilry might also be said to have been strongly influenced by the ripping occult fiction of Sax Rohmer as well. Set amidst the dashing world of the wealthy in 1920's England, Wheatley conjures up an amazing yarn of satanic horrors and hidden diabolism lurking amid the shadowed mansions of St.John's Wood and in luxurious West End hotels, of midnight car-chases through the English countryside in Hispano limousines and bottle-green Bentleys - we are transported into a glamorous era of aristocratic manners, exotically beautiful women, regally-appointed apartments, burgundy smoking jackets, fine aged cognacs and Hoyo cigars. The narrative is fast-paced and truly thrilling with many episodes of chilling terror and laden with a genuinely dark atmosphere of oppressive supernatural evil. The eternal Manichaean struggle, the world-old conflict between the forces of Light and the powers of Darkness is epitomised in the battle between the elegant connoisseur the Duc De Richleau and the suavely malevolent Satanist Mocata who has Simon Aron in his clutches. Wheatley researched the occult elements in this book to quite an impressive degree , garnering many details and esoteric data from Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers and the Jamaican occultist Rollo Ahmed whom he knew in the 1930's. 'The Devil Rides Out' is certainly far superior fare to much of todays etiolated, depressing and confused horror fiction and in no small part this is due to the almost mediaeval dualism which pervades Wheatley's mindset.
This is a fantastic read by the 'Prince of Thriller Writers' as he was called in his heyday and as Dennis Wheatley's friend Christopher Lee has eloquently commented, it also conveys a timely warning against injudicious incursions into the darker regions of the occult with their attendant psychic pathologies. Superbly entertaining and a real 'old school' classic of the genre.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE HAMMER FILM, November 30, 2006
When I first saw the 1968 horror film "The Devil Rides Out" several years back at one of NYC's numerous revival theatres, I thought it was one of the best Hammer films that I'd ever seen, and made a mental note to check out Dennis Wheatley's 1934 source novel one day. That resolve was further strengthened when I read a very laudatory article by Stephen Volk on the book in Newman & Jones' excellent overview volume "Horror: Another 100 Best Books." Now that I have finally read what is generally deemed Wheatley's most successful and popular novel, I can see the Hammer film for what it is: a watered-down filmization that can't hold a Black Mass candle to its superb original. The great Richard Matheson's screenplay condenses much, simplifies more, excises whole sections and changes the central plot entirely. In short, the book is where the real thrills and chills reside. In it, readers once again meet the Duke de Richleau and his friends Rex Van Ryn (an American), Simon Aron (an English Jew) and Richard & Marie Lou Eaton, whom Wheatley first introduced to the world in his earlier novels "Three Inquisitive People" and "The Forbidden Territory." When Simon comes under the power of a group of Satanists and their Aleister Crowley-like leader, Mocata, the Duke must take quick steps to save his young friend from their sinister hold. Wheatley obviously did a prodigious amount of background research before the writing of this, his first of an eventual nine novels dealing with black magic and the supernatural. He throws reams of information at us dealing with witchcraft, numerology, werepeople, vampires, the undead, seances, Egyptology, Kabbalah, and Crowley's "The Book of the Law." The effect of all this detail is to make the reader really buy into the increasingly evil events and suspend disbelief. As our heroes one by one find their skepticism eroded by the book's horrifying events, so too is ours. As in the film, the book's two main set pieces are the midnight Sabbat (more atmospheric and chilling in the novel, taking place on the Salisbury Plain; not to mention more licentious) and the defense of our heroes within the pentacle as Mocata visits on them one evil conjuration after another. The film's oversized giant spider in this scene cannot possibly compare to Wheatley's leprous, sluglike blob creature that leaps, laughs and pulsates. These two passages alone would guarantee Wheatley's book a place in the horror pantheon, but almost as fine are the scenes dealing with Simon's party, the initial materialization of the demon in the observatory, a minutely detailed car chase, Mocata's attempt at hypnotizing Marie Lou and, finally, a breakneck trans-Europe plane chase, culminating in the crumbling tombs of a Grecian monastery, and a showdown with Mocata for the legendary mummified phallus of Osiris--the Talisman of Set--which will enable its possessor to start a world war. Matheson jettisoned the entire central plot point of the Talisman in his screenplay...unwisely, I feel, as it is necessary for increased suspense and a greater atmosphere of urgency. Wheatley has been justifiably accused of racism and bigotry in his writings (55 novels over a course of 39 years), but happily, this early novel of his contains no statements that should grate on modern-day PC sensibilities. At worst, he can be accused of some fuzzy writing on occasion, of having his characters lecture at times rather than speak realistically, and of continuously mistaking the word "aesthetic" for "ascetic." Minor quibbles, indeed, for a book as exciting, innovative and, yes, downright scary as this one. At one point in this longish tale, Rex Van Ryn tells us that his taste in literature tends to "popular novelists who can turn out a good, interesting story." I think that Rex would have been a fan of Dennis Wheatley, based on that statement. Although enormously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, Wheatley today seems to be little mentioned, but I for one am going to be seeking out more...
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