TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (1976)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

I hadn't seen the Hammer film TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER in thirty years, and even then, that viewing might have been a censored TV cut. I remembered nothing much about it, which usually means that there wasn't much worth recalling. Then I saw that DAUGHTER was offered on streaming. As I'd also come into possession of the 1953 Dennis Wheatley book from which DAUGHTER was adapted, reviewed here, I decided to read the source novel for purposes of cross-comparison. I'm aware of the school of thought that claims that the film adaptation is its own animal, and that comparisons to the source work are untenable. But I believe that the latter proposition is only true when the adapters have brought something new to the game. However, in the case of director Peter Sykes and the three scripters (one of whom, Christopher Wicking, had collaborated with Sykes on the intriguing DEMONS OF THE MIND), there's nothing to their DAUGHTER but a bad parody of the original narrative. 

Wheatley's occult thriller is a dense adventure-tale, with lots of exotic locales, daredevil feats and escapes, and a good smattering of Christian metaphysics (without being compromised by the author's reactionary worldview). Even a film with a multi-million dollar production budget probably would have cut a lot of the book's scenes for simplicity's sake. Yet budgetary limitations are not a sufficient excuse. The 1968 DEVIL'S BRIDE is a creditable adaptation of Wheatley's original work, and it was budgeted at under $300,000 (American), while DAUGHTER was roughly $100,000 over that. (From the look of the film, the extra dough probably went to pay for the star power of the lead.) Wheatley was very displeased with the adaptation, and given that he passed away the next year, the filmmakers might have done better just to steal outright the basics of the "bride consecrated to Satan" narrative and not bother attributing any of their folderol to Wheatley.

I fully understand why Wicking and company wouldn't choose to follow Wheatley's lead as far as introducing the plight of said bride, one Catherine Beddows (Natassja Kinski), since the prose author devotes several chapters to building things up. But even though the script has attempted to streamline the exposition, the pacing remains draggy, and this unfortunately gives the viewer a lot of time to think about improbabilities. In the book, the heroine's father promises her to Satan and then makes a minor effort to liberate her, though the book's main heroes are almost totally responsible for coming to the heroine's aid. DAUGHTER opens with Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliot, giving the film's best performance of a badly written character) approaching occult thriller-writer John Verney (Richard Widmark). The two have never met, and there's nothing to prove that Beddows knows anything about whether or not Verney believes in occult forces. Yet out of nowhere, to make the ramshackle plot work, Verney obligingly takes Beddows' place in picking up Catherine when she flies into London from the continent. Indeed, whatever Verney's plans may have been-- he's in London for a book tour-- he drops everything to take this teen-aged girl, also a nun of a mysterious Bavarian order, under his wing. Meanwhile, Beddows disappears from the story, having given Verney no way to contact him, and at that point Beddows starts to act more like the novel-character, going into seclusion to avoid the vengeance of the Satanist order to which he has sacrificed Catherine.

The novel makes much of the fact that the heroine was not baptized, with the result that it's possible for her to be sold to a Satanist cult, run by a devious ex-cleric of the Church of England. This also gives the heroine a Jekyll-Hyde nature: good girl by day, not so nice by night. I suppose Catherine, who is being pursued by the forces of renegade priest Father Michael (Christopher Lee), was probably not given a standard baptism if she was brought up in a fake Christian order. But the script is similarly weak about telling the audience just why Catherine's soul is compromised, and one result of this failing is that it's never clear to what extent Father Michael controls her. We see the evil priest casting spells from a distance, using sympathetic magic to strangle people with a cord, but Catherine is neither a very good or very bad girl. She's a plot device, and as such, she remains vacant as a character from first to last. She does kill one person charged with watching Catherine in Verney's absence, but she's not interesting as either Jekyll or Hyde. Father Michael is also a pallid villain, though Lee brings his usual gravitas to the role, and Widmark as Verney is never more than adequate. Strangely, the script devotes an unusual amount of attention to author Verney's friends, none of whom are important to the story. Did the writers do so simply so that the star would get more talking-heads scenes?

The one sequence that owes most to the Wheatley book takes place after Father Michael has summoned Catherine away from Verney. By this time Verney is fully convinced that the priest plans to make the innocent girl "a vessel of Astharoth," so the author seeks out Beddows in order to learn where Father Michael does his sacrificin'. Beddows knows the location, but won't tell Verney until the latter brings back a token by which Beddows dedicated his soul to Satan. This sequence is thoroughly logical in the book but thoroughly muddled in the movie, and the latter serves only to give Verney an extra hurdle to traverse before the final confrontation of the writer and the Satanic priest. 

I think I would have found DAUGHTER excessively dull and plodding had I never read the source novel. The writers and director show no insight into the Christian concepts of salvation and damnation, and the result is that all the "Satanic panic" never rises above the level of your basic boogieman. The only halfway compelling scene is a hallucinatory ritual in which Catherine has sex with Father Michael in a golden mask-- although at times it seems it's not the priest, but a golden statue being manipulated by cultists. This resembles nothing in the book, but at least it's one isolated attempt to bring a proper set of weirdness to the proceedings.