The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Devil Rides Out (1968)

poster

I am 100% a fan of Hammer Horror. I love the production designs, the sets and costumes, and the way their films looked. I love their stable of great British actors including Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I’ve watched something like 28 of the 70 or so films the studio made in the horror genre. So again I say I am a fan.

But I have to admit, that while I love a great many things about these films, I often find them rather dull. The films look gorgeous, and there is often a wonderful amount of sex and violence for a 1960s production, but the plots often have this staidness to them. There is a lot of boring talking and exposition that takes place that just causes me to nod off.

The Devil Rides Out (or The Devil’s Bride if you prefer) kept me completely enthralled from start to finish. It is quite wonderful throughout.

Christopher Lee stars as Nicholas, Duc de Richleau (who was apparently a recurring character in a popular series of novels from 1933 to 1970) a nobleman with a sturdy education and who is well-versed in the occult.

When his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) returns home from a long voyage they decide to stop at their mutual friend Simon Aron’s (Patrick Mower) house. There they are met by a strange group of people Simon calls his Astronomy Club, but whom Richleau quickly deduces is a satanic cult.

They manage to rescue him from the house but almost immediately lose him again. They rescue him a second time, this time from a Satanic Orgy/Baptismal ceremony where a goat-headed Satan has been summoned. They also rescue Tanith Carlisle (Niké Arrighi) who was also supposed to be Satanically baptized that night.

Simon and Tanith are both somewhat under the spell of the head Satanist Mocata (Charles Gray). He can sometimes mind-control them into doing things for him (and sometimes he can’t depending on the needs of the script).

It is all a bit silly, but it won me over by the power of the performances (especially Christopher Lee who is always great, but especially wonderful here). Unlike a lot of Hammer films which tend to lean into their silliness, The Devil Rides Out is completely serious in its presentation and it is all the better for it.

There is a scene in the back half of the film in which Richleau creates a circle of protection that he and his cohorts must stand in to resist the power of Mocata. It begins with most of his friends being skeptical. It is a bit silly to think a chalk circle with some Latin written in it will protect them from anything. But then there is a loud knocking on the door and the sound of Simon yelling to be let in. Then a giant spider attacks, followed by Death riding a horse. The effects are cheap and goofy, but somehow effective. By the end, everyone is terrified, including me.

It is a scene that shouldn’t work. In the hands of less competent people, it wouldn’t work. And yet it is one of my favorite scenes in all of Hammer Horror. The entire film is like that. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but somehow it is all pulled off magnificently.

Chiller: The Complete Television Series

cover art

The thing about being an amateur reviewer is that you gotta take the good with the bad. Since I don’t really get paid, I do get to choose what I review, but I’m always taking chances. Sometimes they pay out and I find something amazing, sometimes they don’t and I’m stuck watching (and then talking about) something awful.

Chiller was apparently awful. I don’t remember anything about it, actually, but you can read my thoughts here.

Blues Traveler – Ventura, CA (05/23/92)

Blues Traveler
May 23rd, 1992
Ventura Theatre
Ventura, CA

Master:
Aiwa CM-30 Stereo Cardioid >Sony WM-D6C >Cass(m)
Front Row, Left; Balcony

Conversion:
Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800 PRO Standalone >CD

Extraction:
CD >xACT 1.69 (cdparanoia) >AIFF >xACT 1.69 >FLAC
by Dave Mallick

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC Tags, & Front-Cover Artwork By Oldneumanntapr

Disc 1 [77:35.51]

  1. Intro                         [03:07.48]
  2. M//ulling It Over             [07:10.70]
  3. Optimistic Thought            [04:00.49]
  4. Out Of My Hands >             [04:12.31]
  5. Should I Stay Or Should I Go? [08:52.59]
  6. All In The Groove             [07:05.34]
  7. Ivory Tusk/                   [06:53.16]
  8. American Way                  [06:36.14]
  9. Trina Magna                   [08:15.40]
  10. Gotta Get Mean >              [04:24.42]
  11. Gloria >                      [14:52.59]
  12. Gotta Get Mean/               [02:03.39]

Disc 2 [65:48.43]

  1. 100 Years                     [06:11.11]
  2. Manhattan Bridge              [07:13.31]
  3. Sweet Pain                    [10:46.30]
  4. Sweet Talking Hip//pie        [19:49.26]
  5. Dropping Some NYC >           [02:46.07]
  6. As We Wonder                  [04:50.34]
  7. NY Prophesie                  [07:06.14]
  8. But Anyway (encore)          [07:05.40]

Notes:

  • Brief skip forward in d1t02. Tape flip at 18:00 of d2t04.
  • Single slashes denote tape flips or stoppages where no music
      is missing.

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was the first time that I had seen Blues Traveler. I didn’t know that they allowed recording. I guess I should have asked for a board patch but instead I ran up to the balcony to get a front row spot. The Nakamichi CM-300s probably would have sounded better but for some reason I chose to go with the little Aiwa stereo mic. It was a pretty good show and I still have the t-shirt! The recording is OK but would have sounded better with the CM-300s. I added it to etree because I noticed that this date wasn’t listed at all in the master list. Thanks to Dave Mallick for the help with the set list.

Persona (1966)

cover art

I am not a great intellectual. I’m not even that smart. When I talk about movies I try to impart at least some sense of their themes and meaning, but I’m not very good at it.

I tend to connect to movies with my gut not my brain. I talk about them from an emotional standpoint not necessarily an intellectual one. I don’t know if that’s good, or bad, but that’s the way it is.

I love Ingmar Bergman’s films. He is, perhaps, one of the most intellectual filmmakers to have ever made a film. I do connect to them emotionally, but I have a difficult time understanding why. Persona is one of his most difficult films to understand, and yet I love it still.

I struggled with my review over it because I felt I needed to talk about it from an intellectual point of view, and yet I’m not sure I understood anything about what it means. You don’t have to. It stands on its own as a beautiful mystery.

Classic Drama Collection: Emma, The Woman In White, Jane Eyre, The Death of the Heart, The Lady’s Not For Burning

cover art

I rotate between being a physical media snob and a guy who wants to grab everything, no matter how cheap. There are a number of boutique Blu-ray labels (Criterion, Arrow, etc.) that put out these really nice discs. They restore the audio/video, load them with extras including making-of featurettes, audio commentaries, and more, and put them in attractive-looking boxes and include lovely little booklets to go with them.

They are awesome. They are also expensive. I love them, but I ain’t exactly rich.

Then there are companies who put out lots of cheap sets. They don’t do any type of restoration to the video, they come in cheap plastic, and they include very few extras. Often they’ll bundle multiple movies into a single set.

The snob in me prefers the fancy sets, but my budget often tells me to just buy the cheap stuff. It depends on the day on which part of me I listen to.

Truth be told I don’t care that much about audio/video presentation. I mean there are limits, I don’t like grainy images projected with poor lighting, etc. I want things to look as good as they can, but at the end of the day, I’m not upset if I’m watching something on the lower end of the spectrum instead of ultra-high-quality 4K productions.

I don’t love the way those mult-movie sets look on my shelf, but for the right price, I’ll get down with it.

That’s a long-winded introduction to this set featuring five cinematic adaptations of British literature/drama. It is a nice, if rather bare-boned set. This is actually the kind of thing this sort of set is good for. On their own, I don’t know that I would purchase any of these movies. They are mostly made-for-TV type deals, with not incredible production volumes. But they are still good movies and bundled up like this makes it a good purchase.

Anyway, you can read my review of it here.

Little Orphan Annie, Volume Ten: The Junior Commandos by Harold Gray 

cover

For a little while I was getting a bunch of these really amazing-looking hard-bound comics from The American Library of Comics for review. Half the time I had little interest in the comics themselves, but they books are so beautiful I wanted to own them, so I wrote reviews.

I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly interested in Little Orphan Annie, but judging from my review (written ten years ago) I rather enjoyed this one. Maybe I should give them another try.

Jack Taylor – Set II

cover art

I’ve been enjoying reading all my old reviews, and I hope you have too. Part of the enjoyment for me is thinking about how my writing style has changed – sometimes that embarrasses me, but mostly I enjoy reading my old stuff (does that make me a narcissist?). But I also enjoy seeing what I thought about something many years ago. Sometimes I’ve revisited the stuff and my opinion has changed.

Sometimes, as is the case with Jack Taylor I barely remember watching it in the first place. I have only the vaguest memories of watching this show, mostly I remember Iain Glen who was starring in the immensely popular at the time Game of Thrones. He’s probably the reason I agreed to review this set in the first place.

In my review, I made a crack about how I’d probably sell this DVD set as I didn’t enjoy it all that much. But I didn’t sell it as it is still sitting on my shelves. I kind of want to watch it again as I’ve softened quite a bit on these old mystery shows. I wonder if I’d enjoy it now.

Anyway, you can read my review here.