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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’! The Great Sabbat itself is a good example of where book can outdo film. Wheatley imagines it well over several chapters. The satanists’ meeting place is a grand house in the village of Chilbury, the sabbat itself somewhere on the plains of Wiltshire in a “saucer-shaped depression”. The duke and Rex follow the satanists in their car; Tanith, meanwhile, is lured there by malign forces. In the (very) low-budget film, on the other hand, the grand house appears to be handily placed just round the corner from where Mocata’s evil powers have caused Rex’s car to crash and Tanith to effect her escape from him. Casting began in 1967 and Christopher Lee did not want to take the role of Mocata: ‘I told Hammer, ‘Look, enough of the villainy for the time being, let us try something different and let me be on the side of the angels for once.’ Clearly, the risk of the Sussamma Ritual was very real indeed, and in speaking it de Richleau has torn apart the fabric of space and time. Upon waking, the protagonists wonder if they have experienced some kind of shared dream. The implication seems to be that, during their pursuit of Mocata across Europe, the five main characters were, in fact, astrally projected versions of themselves. Fortunately, they succeeded and were successfully returned to their physical bodies. Up to this midpoint of the story, the later film (very) roughly follows the original book: Simon Aron, young friend of the Duke de Richleau and Rex Van Ryn, has become embroiled with a group of satanists and must be rescued before his satanic baptism. Though Rex is ignorant in these matters, the duke is something of an expert. The film script — aided by Christopher Lee’s wonderful delivery — conveys gravitas but not pomposity: “Though I have never mentioned it, I have made a very deep study of these esoteric doctrines.”
The book details how de Richleau seals the windows with asafretida grass and blue wax and makes the sign of the Cross in holy water over every entrance and doorway. He sets five white tapering candles at each apex of the five-pointed star along with five horseshoes with their horns pointing outward and five dried mandrakes, four females and one male, in a vase of holy water. He binds Simon’s wrists and ankles with asafcetida grass and strings garlic for everyone. Ah, the Sussamma Ritual, to utter which is to do a thing which shall never be done except in the direst emergency when the very soul is in peril of destruction [italics added by Wheatley, presumably in case we didn’t grasp how dire things need to get before it can be called upon]. Its words are right up there with ‘Klaatu barada nikto’ from The Day the Earth Stood Still as truly iconic gibberish: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. Birkenhead, 1973. The eighteen-year-old Paul O'Grady gets ready for a big Saturday night out on the town. New white T-shirt, freshly ironed jeans, looking good. As he bids farewell to his mum, who's on the phone to his auntie, and wanders off down the street in a cloud of aftershave, he hears her familiar cry: 'Oh, the devil rides out tonight, Annie. The Devil rides out!' Two weeks before his death in November 1977, Wheatley received conditional absolution from his old friend Cyril ‘Bobby’ Eastaugh, the Bishop of Peterborough. In the film, the Duke is given the Christian name ‘Nicholas’ whereas, in Wheatley’s novels, his full name was ‘Jean Armand Duplessis’ before he inherited the tile of Duke de Richleau. 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?
Almost, it seemed, the end had come. Then the Duke used his final resources, and did a thing which shall never be done except in the direst emergency when the very soul is in peril of destruction.’ – Chapter 27, Within the Pentacle One of the best occult horror novels that I have come across. If you are familiar with the Christopher Lee movie, it follows the book pretty closely, but where the movie ends, the book is just getting going. 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. If we take the book’s explanation that, during their dream journey, they were ‘living in what the moderns call the fourth dimension – divorced from time,’ then we can assume that everything that takes place between de Richleau’s incantation in the face of the Angel of Death and him waking up again within the chalk circle as having happened on the astral plane, then the words of the Sussamma Ritual serve almost as cosmic book ends to their out-of-body experiences, brought about by the ritual itself. Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out 1968 RacismLed by the Duc de Richleau, his friends begin a race against time and encounter the terrifying experience of Satanic entities. The iconic scene in the pentacle is very similar in both the film and the book. (Although instead of the film’s giant spider, they are menaced by a kind of demonic white slug – Mocata, perhaps?!) When the Angel of Death is summoned, de Richleau saves them by pronouncing ‘the last two lines of the dread Sussamma Ritual’.
The story is really quite neatly tied up here – the fact that time has been undone and the Angel of Death has claimed Mocata in place of Tanith means that Tanith’s prophesised death was both true and untrue. She was indeed fated to die before the year was out, but only in an altered reality, leaving her free to give her remaining days to Rex, ‘whatever their number may be.’ 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. Uriel Seraphim Io Potesta, Zati Zata Galatim Galata. The final two lines of the Sussamma Ritual, as spoken by the Duke de Richleau Another thing I enjoyed was the American character of Rex. Being a proper British author, Wheatley made Rex the most steretypical loud-mouthed gung-ho kinda dense but lovable character he could. It’s pretty clear that Rex epitomized Wheatley’s opinion of Americans and I found it quite entertaining. I also wanted to reach into the book several times and choke Rex out. He’s a nice guy, but damn he’s dumb. Best to think of him as a huge lovable dog. Hammer’s special effects budget was so low that they used an asthmatic horse with one lung, to carry the Angel of Death. Lee often spoke of how he would like to remake the film, using modern technology.
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James Hilton, reviewing The Devil Rides Out, described it as "The best thing of its kind since Dracula". [2] Hammer slams at the righteous combatants with the very best special effects they had to offer at the time, from giant spiders to disembodied spirits, but it is really sold by the camerawork and the horses. Lee is marvelous, keeping himself sane as all the world around him is spinning into the abyss. Everyone around him is weaker than he is and more easily drawn into the Mocata’s workings. The weakest link is Richard Eaton (Paul Eddington), the skeptical member of the reinforcements. Lee keeps him in line by admiring the fearlessness that comes from ignorance and admitting that he is too scared to work alone. So 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. After successfully defending themselves through the night the group find that Mocata has kidnapped the Eatons’ daughter. Simon exchanges himself for her. Mocata is using Simon to find the Talisman of Set, a powerful satanic object. The book culminates in a desperate chase across Europe to an abandoned Greek Monastery where Mocata is defeated. The group wake up in the Eatons’ home and realise that during the ceremony they entered the fourth dimension. Mocata is found dead outside the house. The Duc wakes up clutching the Talisman and destroys it. Tanith is found to be alive - Mocata’s soul has been exchanged for hers. Duc: The sixties were a time when satanic worship could be explored in film without the gore associated with later horror films, while still holding true to Wheatley’s vision.
Nike Arrighi who played Tanith was born in Nice and worked as a model in Paris, before moving to London to study at RADA. She was earmarked to become one of Hammer’s stars but didn’t work with them again. However, she did go on to work with several New Wave directors including Ken Russell, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.Christopher Lee as the Duke de Richleau — an utterly inspired piece of casting. It seems that Wheatley and Lee knew each other well, that Lee shared Wheatley’s interest in the Occult and that Wheatley had pressed for Lee to be cast in the role of the duke. Lee himself was not keen on playing the Mocata role, it seems: “I told Hammer, ‘Look, enough of the villainy for the time being, let us try something different and let me be on the side of the angels for once.'” Casting Charles Gray — smooth, suave, debonair — as Mocata was also an excellent decision, a deliberate move away from the repulsive Mocata of the book. The oddest piece of casting is perhaps that of the opera singer Leon Greene as Rex; he has the chiselled good looks and the action-man physique but it was decided that his voice needed to be dubbed. Having read this, the film’s ending has made more sense on subsequent rewatches. Interestingly, the Sussamma Ritual is mentioned but never quoted in the book, nor were those last two lines given in Richard Matheson’s script. It was Christopher Lee himself who researched the invocation. He could find no record of a ‘Sussamma Ritual’ and suspected it to be an invention of Wheatley’s. However, he did find a genuine charm to banish evil spirits, which he famously hollers in the film: ‘Uriel, Seaphim! Eo Potesta! Zati, Zata! Galatim, Galatah!’
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