The Devil Rides Out 1968

Charles Gray goes to work in The Devil Rides Out
Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out manages to make Satanism dull. The literary reputations of Richard Matheson and Dennis Wheatley have helped this late Hammer production achieve cult status, but I am baffled as to why. Fisher's direction is square and stolid, as it is in all the other Hammer films he did. That is part of the problem. This movie filmed during the Summer of Love looks and feels like could have been made ten years earlier. 

Christopher Lee and Charles Gray both manage to convey learned virtue and urbane villainy, respectively, but anyone who is not a horror aficionado should skip this one. 

The prominent use of Gray's baby blue eyes led me to ask, Is Charles Grey the British John Vernon? Pretty much. Vernon's villainy is the creepy corporate kind while Grey is more of a decadent Marquis. 

Piercingly villainous baby blues: Charles Gray

and John Vernon

                               


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