The text for the rite is in Latin, but Father Michael Rayner (Christopher Lee) helpfully clues those of us who didn’t go to private school in to what’s going on by grumbling in voiceover, “Excommunication… It is not heresy, and I will not recant!” Years later, Rayner appears to be running a convent on an inaccessible island in the middle of a Bavarian lake- a convent which I’m sure does not enjoy the official sanction of the Roman Catholic Church. We begin with a bunch of Catholic churchmen performing some sort of ceremony which, to judge from the empty pews ranged out behind them, is closed to the public. Much like American International’s later experience with The Amityville Horror, Hammer scored its biggest hit in years, and yet managed to go bust anyway.

But by the middle of the decade, the financial picture was so bleak, and the terms on which Carreras got his outside funding were so unfavorable, that Hammer was doomed even despite the extraordinarily strong box-office performance of the new film. There would be a daunting procession of headaches and hassles before all was said and done, and the completed film would bear the scars of many of them, but nevertheless, it seems fair to say that To the Devil… a Daughter represents approximately the direction Hammer should have gone in back in 1972, when there was still a realistic chance of reinvigorating the company.

It took a while, but Carreras eventually secured backing from both EMI and the German Terra Filmkunst, enabling him to put up the largest nominal budget in Hammer’s history (although adjusting for inflation would probably yield a real-pounds figure rather below the top of the scale from the mid-1960’s), and of greater importance, the creative team assigned to the project were freed to abandon any semblance of the traditional- and by 1976, hopelessly obsolete- Hammer style. Now not only was it possible for the movie to get made, but the runaway success of imported horror films premised on the infernal suggested that To the Devil… a Daughter could provide exactly the sort of revitalization for which Hammer had been searching mostly in vain since about 1971. Then came both The Exorcist and a major censorship relaxation, and within a couple of years, the long delayed film suddenly looked like the key to staving off the final extinction of the studio. The studio’s last horror film, and second-to-last film in any genre, To the Devil… a Daughter had languished for ages in Hammer’s pile of “one of these days” projects, as studio boss Michael Carreras had been unable to secure either funding or censor-board approval since acquiring the screen rights from author Dennis Wheatley in 1964. If ever a movie were a case of too little, too late, Hammer’s To the Devil… a Daughter is it. To the Devil… a Daughter/Child of Satan (1976) **½

To the devil a daughter dennis wheatley