Why, exactly? Well, instead of the aforementioned house, the temple where Mocata plans to sacrifice Fleur to Satan is an abandoned monastery on Mount Peristeri (hence the horses). The movie’s deus ex machina reveal that the Satanist’s temple is a former Catholic church seems a little forced, but in the source material it makes more sense. The ritual must take place at the monastery, because this is where the Talisman of Set is buried. What is the Talisman of Set? The celebrants wash it down with a bit of cannibalism, munching “a stillborn baby or perhaps some unfortunate child that they have stolen and murdered.” That was a lot to digest for readers in the thirties. It was an epiphany to horror writers and fans who followed. It was unspeakable and yet so plausible it became a nightmarish daydream. It was as ancient as the dawn of belief and as modern as a sports car. During the Second World War Wheatley was a member of the London Controlling Section, which secretly coordinated strategic military deception and cover plans. His literary talents led to his working with planning staffs for the War Office. He wrote numerous papers for them, including suggestions for dealing with a possible Nazi invasion of Britain (recounted in his works Stranger than Fiction and The Deception Planners). The most famous of his submissions to the Joint Planning Staff of the war cabinet was on "Total War". He received a direct commission in the JP Service as a Wing Commander, RAFVR, and took part in the plans for the Normandy invasions. After the war Wheatley was awarded the U.S. Bronze Star for his role in the Second World War.

Fisher’s outlook in The Curse of Frankenstein and his subsequent films draws heavily on conservative Christian themes. Fisher believed that life was fundamentally about Good versus Evil, which he described as a truism and he attempted to underline this conflict in every film. His heroes are often sexless or pure, as opposed to his villains who are ruled by their baser desires. Although Fisher attempts to show the lure of villainy, in the end, innocence is rewarded and good always triumphs. This ethos gels perfectly with Wheatley’s Manichaeism, which also divides the world into a struggle between spiritual light and material darkness. The Devil Rides Out, therefore, punishes the sins of the flesh and rewards the pure of heart, both symbolically and through its characters. Terence Fisher and Christoper Lee on the set of The Devil Rides Out

Led by the Duc de Richleau, his friends begin a race against time and encounter the terrifying experience of Satanic entities. Mitchell, Charles (2015). The Devil on Screen: Feature Films Worldwide, 1913 through 2000. p.77. ISBN 978-0-7864-4699-5. It isn’t cowardice, though Lee’s eyes are filled with terror. It is timing. He knows it is up to him to live to fight another day. This Week's Openings". New York Daily News. New York City. 15 December 1968. p.209 – via Newspapers.com.

Do you remember the book or the film 'Lost Horizon' - a story about Shangri- La where people seemed to age at a much slower rate. To locate the talisman he needs the unwilling assistance of Simon Aaron and hypnotises him into becoming a satanist. Given the title of this novel, and the fact that the antagonists in the plot are Satanists, it seems incongruous that Wheatley puts into the Duke's mouth the claim, "There is no such person as the devil..." (Chapter 7). But that makes sense given the worldview he's taking here as his premise. Satan, of course, is a creature of God, a fallen angel who's rebelled against his Maker; he's not God's co-eternal and co-equal opponent. But Wheatley is consciously basing his picture of reality here, as laid out in great detail in Chapter 3, on the schema of Zoroastrian dualism (which he explicitly refers to there) with its co-eternal and co-equal powers of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, perpetually warring for control of the universe and mankind. (With some writers of supernatural fiction, this would simply be a literary conceit, but Wheatley apparently actually believed in something like this.) All of his research --which was quite considerable-- into occultism and primitive/ancient religion is interpreted in that light, and all religions (including Christianity) are re-interpreted and homogenized into harmonious expressions of that idea. The goal of all "true" religions of "the Right Hand Path," supposedly (as he also states explicitly) is progress towards "perfection" through successive reincarnations. Not surprisingly, to paint this picture (through the Duke's lectures at various places in the book, which can have an info-dumpy quality), he misinterprets and garbles factual and historical material in significant ways, sometimes makes outright factual errors, and at times makes use of spurious or intellectually discredited sources. I did a lot of eye-rolling during this read, in quite a few places. He also treats astrology, palmistry (in which another character is conveniently but improbably well-versed) and numerology as legitimate sciences to be taken seriously --which I don't. To me, the rather long numerology lesson was particularly eye-glazing. The Eunuch of Stamboul [Swithin Destime] (Espionage, July 1935) – filmed in 1936 as Secret of StamboulTwo weeks before his death in November 1977, Wheatley received conditional absolution from his old friend Cyril 'Bobby' Eastaugh, the Bishop of Peterborough. He was cremated at Tooting and his ashes interred at the South Cemetery section of Brookwood Cemetery, under a tall tree near the entrance. He is also commemorated on the Baker/Yeats family monument at West Norwood Cemetery. Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity". BBC Four (bbc.co.uk/bbcfour). 2005. Archived from the original on 8 January 2006 . Retrieved 3 November 2013.

Due to Hammer’s strict budgets, Robinson was skilled at using the same sets and props time and again in various films. He was particularly known for using twisted pillars to create a sense of unease. A particularly nice touch is the three-headed ornament on the gate leading to Mocata’s house, filmed at a private house called High Canons a few miles from Elstree-Borehamwood Studios. Due to its location, it has been used in multiple TV shows and films including The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Alan Gibson, 1973). Robinson’s sets, in combination with Rosemary Burrows’ costumes, successfully bestow a decadent feel. Rex stands outside Mocata’s house with the three-headed snake designed by Bernard RobinsonSo in a sense he managed to time his own literary demise rather well, as it coincided with just such a sea change in the mid-seventies, which witnessed the beginning of a steady decline in the sales of his novels. A new breed of, shall we say, more socially aware and diplomatic writers was emerging, and the world of debutantes' balls, stiff upper lips and adherence to duty, which had managed to hang on through two world wars, was finally let go of. Set threw a banquet for Osiris, invited the youngest nobles, presented the coffin as a gift and chopped his brother into pieces to ensure a perfect fit. Then Set scattered Osiris’ body across the kingdom. Isis, in great mourning over her one true love, was able to find all but the slain god’s penis. Simon and Tanith’s characters appear largely unchanged except for their physical appearances. Wheatley describes Simon as ‘frail’ and ‘narrow shouldered’, and Tanith as ‘golden haired’, neither of which can be said of Simon Mower and Niké Arrighi. The biggest deviation comes in the form of the main antagonist, Mocata himself. Those who have criticised the Hammer film’s finale as being somewhat anticlimactic might have to be careful what they wish for when reading the novel. Instead of rescuing Peggy/Fleur from the occultists’ house which Rex discovered earlier in the film, our heroes head straight from Cardinal’s Folly (the Eaton’s Kidderminster home) to France in Richard’s private plane, and from there they follow a lead to Greece, which involves a twelve-hundred-mile journey across the alps to Yanina, after which ‘we’ll have to use horses’!

Tanith has to come into his world as he doesn’t have the imagination to give a passing thought to her daily existance. The grinning Goat of Mendes in the film was played by Eddie Powell, who was Christopher Lee’s stunt double in Hammer’s 1958 adaptation of Dracula. a b Hutchings, Peter (2001). Terence Fisher. Manchester University Press. pp.148–151. ISBN 0-7190-5637-3. Carrol L. Fry, Cinema of the Occult: New Age, Satanism, Wicca, and Spiritualism in Film. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780934223959 (p.104). I know that Christopher Lee always used to say that he'd be very sympathetic to the idea of a re-make, and reprising his role as the Duke de Richleau. He thought he was perhaps a little young for the role in 1968, and also that modern special effects could do better justice to the pentagram scene. Now, alas, he'd be too old for any de Richleau adaptation other than "Dangerous Inheritance". She looks forward the upcoming Satanic festival as ‘an extraordinary experience.’ As she argues: ‘by surrendering myself I shall only suffer or enjoy, as most other women do, under slightly different circumstances at some period of their life.’Personally, I wasn't even searching for truths at this stage but after having read the book the seeds were definitely sown!!! I'm still looking!!!! After rescuing Simon from his Satanic baptism, de Richleau and Rex take him straight to the home of the Eatons. In the book, the Duke insists that they find a sanctuary where they can keep Simon safe until the morning. (Even in the film we know that Mocata’s powers are only fully effective during the hours of darkness.) Instead of the repetition of the Sussamma Ritual, Marie Lou instead invokes an angelic being, one of the ‘Lords of Light’ who intervenes to defeat Mocata. De Richleau et al then find themselves transported beyond the physical world, until they are floating above their own unconscious bodies, still lying within the pentacle in the library of Cardinal’s Folly. A set of wealthy people set out to rescue a friend wno has fallen into the clutches of a powerful satanist. Lee went on to star in another Hammer production of Wheatley’s novels, To the Devil…a Daughter (1976, Peter Sykes), marking a turning point for all involved, which we will examine in the final part of this series.