The Devil Rides Out (1968, Unclassified 18+)

Dir: Terence Fisher, UK, 96mins, 16mm

By the mid-1960s, Hammer and other Brit-horror producers were evolving beyond the mere Grand-Guignol, into edgier explorations of the occult and the demonic that took up the challenge offered by the more sensual, rawer and erotic horror/chillers from Italian and Spanish pop cinema. Adapting Dennis Wheatley’s early 1930s novel of the battle for the soul of middle-class England between aristocratic rationalism and satanic forces, the work of screenwriter Richard Matheson, Hammer’s emeritus director Terence Fisher and star Christopher Lee – who spoke of the film as a personal favourite – marked this out as one of the most genuinely frightening films in this evolution. The Devil Rides narrative offers a vision of terror and mind-control (and a 1960s elaboration of Wheatley’s original metaphor for totalitarianism deeply mindful of the sway of messianic cults and political terrorism) that opened cinematic doors to the moment when The Wicker Man and The Exorcist would be possible.

From the collection of the NFSA.