Amazon.com
Christopher Lee, long Hammer Studios' house villain, takes a rare heroic turn as scholar and occultist Duc de Richleau, the kind of role that Peter Cushing had made his métier. Lee plays Richleau with a dark elegance and intensity--he's a commanding figure with a trim goatee who discovers that the son of a war buddy has joined a satanic cult lorded over by the quietly malevolent Mocata (Charles Gray, best known as the narrator in
The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Director Terence Fisher, working from a literate script by genre scribe Richard Matheson, creates a strikingly handsome period piece (set in 1920s rural England) dripping in dread as Richleau and Mocata battle for the souls of two young lovers on both physical and spiritual planes. The action scenes are well handled and the towering Lee cuts quite a figure leaping through hoards of robed devil worshippers to save a sacrificial victim, but the film peaks in an eerie supernatural battle in which Richleau and his skeptical party confronts Mocata's demons while protected in a giant pentagram. The effects are coarse and dated by today's standards, but the gorgeous period detail, vivid color, and unsettling imagery create a sinister ambiance, and Fisher's mix of psychodrama and swashbuckling action makes for an engrossing thriller, a life-and-death struggle between two masters of the forces of light and darkness.
--Sean Axmaker
