The Devil Rides Out is a 1968 horror film, produced by British company Hammer Films, adapted from Dennis Wheatley’s best-selling 1934 occult-thriller novel of the same name. Directed by Terence Fisher, The Devil Rides Out is frequently regarded as one of Hammer’s finest and most effective features.

The film relates the physical and spiritual battle of the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) to rescue two young people, Simon Aaron (Patrick Mower) and Tanith Carlisle (Niké Arrighi), from the urbanely menacing Satanist, Mocata (Charles Gray). Richard Matheson’s screenplay makes several major changes to Wheatley’s novel, excising not only many of his extraneous mystical longueurs but also Mocata’s original plan to unleash international chaos by obtaining an ancient occult artefact of great power, known as the ‘Talisman of Set’: the mummified phallus of the god Osiris.

Although this narrative thrust has been almost entirely erased, Matheson’s screenplay retains aspects of Egyptian religion, possibly preserved from earlier drafts, which are incorporated into the fusion of largely Judeo-Christian inspired witchcraft, utilised by both the Satanists and, indeed, by de Richleau, himself, as he combats their efforts.

One of the film’s major set-pieces is an alfresco Satanic ritual, which commences with Mocata invoking the god Osiris, alongside divinities from Hebraic and Thelemic beliefs. The subsequent, discreetly orgiastic rite culminates in Mocata conjuring the seated apparition of a naked man with the head and legs of a goat, which horrified witness, de Richleau, pronounces as, ‘The Goat of Mendes: the Devil, himself!’ In so doing, he refences the Greek name of the ancient Delta city of Djedet, cult centre of the Egyptian ram deity Banebdjedet, later identified by Herodotus, Strabo, and Plutarch as being conflated with the god Pan, and being caprine rather than ovine in nature. Their writings have informed European occult traditions since the Middle Ages.

Later in the film, de Richleau is forced to draw upon his recent researches at the British Museum in order to communicate with the deceased Tanith through a ritual calling upon powerful Hebraic spirits and performing, what he describes as the ‘sign of Osiris slain,’ and, in turn, the ‘sign of Osiris risen.’

Towards the film’s conclusion, Mocata prefaces a human sacrifice with the incantation, ‘Almighty and all-powerful Set, father of darkness, king of death, I pledge this knife to thee to do thy work and be thy servant.’ Although rather free with his epithets in respect of the Egyptian deity, Mocata is forced – by heroic interventions – to repeat the incantation, ensuring that the name of Set is emphasised as the film nears its finale.

In terms of Bernard Robinson’s typically immaculate production design, the homes of all, save de Richleau, are seen to have faunal architectural elements at their entrances. The front door surround of Simon Aaron’s home is subtly embellished with small ram heads, resembling those of Criosphinxes, while the entrance to the Eatons’ mock-Tudor mansion is flanked by two muscular stone Sphinxes, resembling those designed in bronze by Max Dennert in 1897 for the Villa Krupp in Essen. However, whilst the film’s dialogue references a winged serpent atop the gates of Mocata’s elegant Palladian mansion, replicated as a smoking, bronze lamp outside the entrance to his converted basement chapel, it is not identifiably Egyptian in form.

There are clear efforts by the filmmakers to embed religious elements of ancient Egypt within The Devil Rides Out in the spirit of Wheatley’s source novel, whilst concentrating, overall, on the more expected European conceptions of Satanism and in commercial filmmaking, audience expectations are an important consideration.

Author: John J. Johnston