Rating: 2.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2016 | 48/52 | Hammer Horror
98% of so-called Satanists are nothing but pathetic creeps.
Father Michael Rayner refuses to recant his heretical views. So, the church excommunicates him. Twenty years later, Rayner oversees a convent called the Children of Our Lord. They release Catherine Beddows on her eighteenth birthday.
John Verney reluctantly attends a book release party for his new book, The Devil Walks Among Us, which focuses on the occult. Catherine’s father Henry crashes the party to find John.
Henry asks John to intercept Catherine at the airport and to save her from the Children of Our Lord. He believes the Children of Our Lord are a Satanic cult, which intrigues John.
John questions Catherine and deduces that the cult intends to use Catherine for a ritual on her birthday.
The movie takes its time revealing its purpose. There’s something about a disgusting newborn and the youth of the world needing a change. And the grimoire of Ashteroth.
Christopher Lee is a sick little freak in this. He performs some black magic and has delightfully evil eyes. There’s also a satanic orgy, which is pretty wild for, like, two seconds.
Denholm Elliott also gets to be a strung-out weirdo, but he doesn’t do much else.
Like several of these movies, it hits the 20-minute left mark and says, “Oh yeah, this is a horror movie” and starts having a good time. Even so, it resolves to a “boring white guy” off where they exposit to the last second what they’re doing, like kids play-fighting and one kid refuses to go down because he has a force field he forgot to tell you about.
This was Hammer’s last horror film. The film feels like it’s following the 70s trends of religious horror, which is likely why they stopped making films.
It isn’t terrible, it’s just boring! Satanic panic shit shouldn’t be boring.