With the fateful day now approaching, Beddows has sent her away from England, hoping to protect her from what he has subsequently learned is to be her fate: a human sacrifice in a black magic ceremony.Īs noted in the first part of this blog trilogy, notwithstanding the ‘black magic’ label, Wheatley offers up “a largely standard adventure-novel diet of kidnappings, escapes and manhunts, served up with lashings of derring-do.” The action switches between the French Riviera and the rather less glamorous English countryside. To redeem this ‘bond’ he must deliver his daughter Ellen to a group of devil worshippers on her twenty-first birthday. Wheatley’s novel, published in 1953, opens in France with the mystery of Molly Fountain’s reclusive young neighbour who - we eventually learn - had the ultimate bad start in life: she was the trade in a pact with the Devil, exchanged by her good-for-nothing father, Henry Beddows, for business success and material wealth. And both feature towering performances from their star - Christopher Lee. Both feature iconic scenes and quotable dialogue.
Both are far superior to the original source novels. Looked at together, the two films - The Devil Rides Out and To the Devil a Daughter - have a lot in common, much more than just dodgy special effects. Yet, for all its undoubted flaws, I am a big fan. A rich (in more than one sense) history stretching back to the 1930s came to an abrupt end: To the Devil a Daughter was the last film Hammer Film Productions made in the twentieth century.
Wheatley disowned it and refused to allow Hammer to film any more of his novels, having previously given them free rein.
The production was beset by problems and the film itself is controversial. However, though a box office hit on its release in 1976, the film is much less fondly remembered than its predecessor. After the runaway commercial and critical success of Hammer’s version of the Dennis Wheatley novel The Devil Rides Out in 1968, the actor Christopher Lee, the film company Hammer and Wheatley himself were all keen to have a go at filming another of Wheatley’s black magic novels - this time To the Devil a Daughter.
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