recommended

Best movie of this year hands down!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

One wonders what the thinking behind this Hammer production was ? Something about dark family secrets involving insanity and incest and murder and the occasional religious maniac thrown in for bad measure . The narrative as it appears on screen is very confused and confusing and the production team don't seem to have put much thought in to developing things to any large degree . As it stands there seems to be a bizarre contest going on between Robert Hardy , Patrick Magee and Michael Hordern as to who can give most ludicrous and hammy performance in thespian history - all in one 90 minute film . It's kind of like one of those competitions you'd get between Hitler , Stalin and Mao as to who could kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time . Make no mistake that Hardy , Magee and Hordern capture , mutilate and execute every single syllable in every single line to its fullest potential possible while pulling an emotive face . When you've got three well respected actors showing off in their distinctive velvety tones what hope for the rest of the performances ? Slim hope and no hope and slim died long before filming started . The rest of the cast are very wooden in comparison especially Gillian Hills as Elizabeth who looks as thought she's wandered on to set after smoking a spliff the size of a telegraph pole . This isn't a highly regarded Hammer Horror and it's not difficult to see why

Fabulous and thoughtful, near delirious madness and mayhem from Hammer. Not at all your typical Hammer movie, this has no respectful and predictable plot and instead a wild and roaring reality of its own. We struggle to keep pace with the craziness and the violence as this gradually reveals itself to be a most demonic monster. Helped enormously by near hysterical performance from Robert Hardy offset by Patrick Magee doing marvellously what he always does and out in the woods is Michael Hordern portraying a deranged priest to the hilt and beyond. Unlike some viewers I loved every second of this until the end when, for me, there was just too much time with everyone running around in the forest. But it least it gave time to get your breath back before the final outrage. Truly excellent stuff comparable with the very best giallo.

With this film, Hammer attempt to break out of the Monster theme which had been so successful for them, the results are mixed. It all starts well enough with some kind of romance flashback but basically it's all downhill from there. The premise seems to be that a taste for strangling the locals runs in the family, in an effort to put a stop to this, the father figure has imprisoned his son and daughter and hired a psychologist to come and sort them all out. What happens from there on in is a little hard to say, characters randomly appear and disappear, the plot goes nowhere. In the end this meandering is put to bed by that old Hammer standard of the torch bearing band of angry locals. The movie has all the trappings of a good Hammer film, a little gore, some nudity, odd facial hair, but it just never comes together. In the end it commits the ultimate sin for a horror movie, it's just a little bit boring.

Baron Zorn (Robert Hardy) is obsessed with the idea that his children may have inherited the family traits of madness and incest, and so locks his daughter (the rather lovely Gillian Hills) and son Emil (Shane Briant) away from the world, keeping them in a weakened state with regular bleeding. However, Zorn's extreme preventative measures against insanity and deviancy in his offspring do not seem to be working as well as he had planned...I'm a huge fan of Hammer, but with Demons of the Mind, I was more horrified by the approach taken by director Peter Sykes than the actual content of the film. Displaying a hallucinogenic vibe more akin to continental movies of the period, the film regularly strays into iffy art-house territory, and the free-floating narrative, which is at first intriguing, soon becomes confusing, and ultimately irritating.Sensing the director's willingness to dabble with the avant garde, some of the cast experiment in over-acting, with Hardy hamming it up at every opportunity and Michael Hordern showing zero restraint in his portrayal of a crazy priest. Meanwhile, Shane Briant, who was being groomed by Hammer to be their latest leading man, is content with giving an unenthusiastic performance which makes one wonder how the hell the studio ever thought he could compete with their other up-and-coming star, the marvellous Ralph Bates.Those looking for the more sensational elements that one generally associates with later Hammer movies will be disappointed by the lack of gore—there is very little in the way of bloodletting (the most violent scenes being slightly obscured in a flashback)—but should be pleased with some full-frontal nudity from the gorgeous Virginia Wetherell (as a comely village maiden) and a brief flash of a bare breast from Hills.As always, the production values are high, and the cinematography is great (with lovely use of colour during a couple of murders), but Demons of the Mind's plodding pace and irksome 'progressive' style make this a difficult film to watch, even for a total Hammer addict such as myself.