Masterful Movie

Good concept, poorly executed.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A heavily pregnant woman arrives at a house and is led in to a bedroom by some members of the clergy one of which resembles Rosa Klebb while another looks like Dracula . They then bind her legs together and if the clergy are binding the thighs of a pregnant woman it's obvious that they've closed the stable door after the horse has gone and bolted With this film the horse has also gone and truly bolted for Hammer Studios . While New Hollywood was coming out with hugely interesting and successful movies with contemporary settings and directed by movie brats Hammer was still bringing out movies with Dracula and Frankenstein and when they did try to move the market in to a modern setting it was obvious they were out of their depth as this movie showsThis is really terrible turgid stuff . . Some scenes such as pregnant woman has her legs tied together don't make much sense but at least you're able to read between the lines to understand that the baby will tear itself out of her mother's womb as a sort of precursor to ALIEN . Most of the scenes involving plot turns don't even begin to make the slightest bit of sense except to the screenwriter . You could easily chop the whole film in segments , rearrange them in any order and you'd still have the exact same movie . I notice the director is called Peter Sykes but if it was directed by Eric Sykes the movie would have improved . It says something that Dennis Wheatley the author of the source novel wrote to Hammer saying he didn't want the company to produce any more of his books . He needn't have worried because this was the last horror movie the studio made and is amongst the very worst movies it made

An occult writer(Richard Widmark)attempts to prevent a young nun(Nastassja Kinski)from falling into the hands of a satanic priest(Christopher Lee)and his heretical religious cult,who plan to use her as the human host for their dark god."To the Devil a Daughter" is Hammer's last theatrically released horror film.The lush photography and memorable performances are the main reasons to see this underrated gem of occult horror.There are some bizarre and highly unsettling dream sequences and a bit of graphic nudity and gore.The childbirth scene is particularly gruesome.Very young 16-year old Nastassja Kinski provides some sleaze and Christopher Lee is gloriously evil as a devilish priest.8 out of 10.

Popular occult author Dennis Wheatley was so pleased with Hammer's 1968 movie version of his novel The Devil Rides Out that he happily agreed to them making further adaptations of his work, even going so far as to granting the rights for nothing. It was an offer that, eventually, the ailing studio could not afford to ignore.Choosing to develop To The Devil A Daughter, however, was probably a bad decision: budgetary constraints meant that a faithful interpretation of Wheatley's book was impossible to achieve, and after much script wrangling, filming went ahead whilst further revisions were still being made.To add to Hammer's problems, star Widmark was not a happy bunny on set, being displeased with the non-Hollywood film making process employed by director Peter Sykes and his crew.However, despite all the problems, somehow, eventually, a finished product was delivered—only to suffer from some hasty re-editing when some bright spark commented that the original ending bore too much resemblance to that of an earlier Hammer movie, Scars of Dracula. With such a troubled production, To The Devil A Daughter is an understandably less than perfect film, but despite its flaws, it still proves to be an entertaining dose of Satanic nonsense.Widmark plays John Verney, an American occult novelist who is approached by a strange man named Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot), who claims to be involved with a cult named The Children of the Lord, led by the sinister Father Michael Rayner (Christopher Lee, in fine form). Intrigued, Verney agrees to pick up Beddows' daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) from the airport and look after her until they can meet again. In reality, Beddows is trying to protect his daughter from Rayner, who selected the girl at birth for a ritual—scheduled to take place on her impending 18th birthday—that will see her becoming an avatar for the demon Astaroth.With such a great cast (that also includes Honor Blackman), and Wheatley's well researched black magic mumbo jumbo forming the basis of the script, To The Devil A Daughter trundles along quite nicely for the majority of its running time, offering audiences plenty of fun devilish goings-on, including the nasty birth of a demon child (which exits via the abdomen), Blackman being stabbed in the neck with a metal comb, one poor character going up in flames, Lee terrorising a trembling Elliot over the phone, and the lovely Nastassja giving viewers an eyeful of her hot bod.Unfortunately, the messy finalé (which sees Lee's character disappear mysteriously after receiving a bump on the head) does mean that the film closes on something of a bum note and admittedly cannot hold a (black) candle to the real Satanic hit of '76, The Omen, but it's also nowhere near as bad as some Hammer fans would have you believe.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

There's not a single scary moment in this boring albeit well made Hammer entry. Christopher Lee is an excommunicated priest who somehow manages to promise to give the Devil a daughter. Richard Widmark is the hack horror novelist trying to stop him. The idea of teaming these two famous screen baddies is promising, but they share scant screen time together. A dubbed Nastassja Kinski plays a young nun and Denholm Elliott is her father, who tries to renege on his deal with Lee. It's a lousy movie all around and even manages to wastes Honor Blackman (as Widmark's sharp tongued literary agent). Based on the (presumably better) novel by Dennis Wheatley, this film surely exists solely to cash in on the EXORCIST craze of the early 70s.