The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Devil Worship or Satanism refers to the practice of worshipping The Devil. There have been screen depictions since the 1940s but the theme was popularised by the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
Devil Worshippers are usually outfitted in black or red robes, chant rituals in Latin, engage in orgies and conduct sacrifices to further their objectives. These may sometimes require a human sacrifice or the corruption of an innocent. Often their goals are to either raise The Devil or impregnate an innocent woman in order to give birth to a Devil Child/The Antichrist.
Devil worshippers are secretive in nature and can often pose as neighbours, friends or husbands and wives before their true nature is revealed. They often have a secretive network that can stretch to hold positions of power and their influence can be spread throughout the country.
An Old Dark House film from the silent era. Haxan director Benjamin Christensen turns the mansion into a fantastical netherworld and creates a compulsive atmosphere of weird and fascinating happenings that is is only marred only by a contrived mundane ending
One of the classic films from producer Val Lewton concerning a secret society of Satanists. An oppressive atmosphere of gloom and morbidity hangs over the film and, as always with Lewton, it comes with striking directorial effects that play on the imagination
Sequel to the Stephen King adapted film about hoodlums resurrected from the dead, this descends into an incredible silliness. Featuring a teenage Hillary Swank
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
Modest 1980s video release that builds with some unnerving effect as Timothy Daly grants shelter to Kelly Preston only to earn the wrath of a pursuing Satanic cult
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
The second-to-last Hammer film, an adaptation of one of Dennis Wheatley’s occult novels, shows them trying to catch up with The Exorcist and its ilk
Set in a British boarding school/military academy, this starts out seeming like a ghost story but does a mid-film flip to reveal something else altogether is going on. I held out promise but between a low budget and a contrived end explanation this fails to work
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
Richard E. Grant is a witchfinder who pursues warlock Julian Sands through a time vortex into the present day. David Twohy’s script takes all the Old Wives’ tale aspects of Middle Ages superstition seriously to immensely entertaining regard
Sequel to Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork, which ups the number of horror homages but suffers a low budget
A film that feels as though it is written by someone who is a fan of 80s heavy metal bands and was there during the day. This throws Satanic ritual sacrifice into the equation and rather enjoyably turns everything we think is going on on its head
The third of Spanish star Paul Naschy’s films about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. This becomes a crossover where Daninsky meets up to fight Countess Bathory
The werewolf underwent some bizarre title mashups in the 1970s. This has the amusing idea of mashing the werewolf film up with the biker film. The results are played surprisingly seriously.
A horror film premised around Nicolas Cage beating the crap out of a series of possessed animatronic robots, a fairly blatant copy of the Five Nights at Freddy’s videogame
A fascinatingly different and original work. A scrupulous effort is made – from the dialogue and clothing – to place us inside a 17th Century setting dominated by insanely legalistic religious superstitions and fears, at contrast to which there lie a series of phantasmagoric visions of witches
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters