But to seal the devilish deal he needs to implant the already living baby into the body of Sister Catherine, an innocent nun played by the alluring Natasha Kinski. On screen it’s the tale of Father Rayner, played by the great Christopher Lee who has brought forth the child of a demon named Astaroth. The whole communist angle is thankfully dropped, along with about eighty five percent of Wheatley’s storyline, in fact it’s right up there with 1979’s Moonraker (one of the best Bond novels) among cinema’s least faithful book adaptations. In the film adaptation the characters Maggie and Colonel Verney merge, becoming occult author John Verney played by Hollywood veteran Richard Widmark ( Kiss of Death, 1948). With the assistance of her old pal Colonel Verney she discovered that the evildoers are not only Satanists but also commies to boot! It’s important to note that while Wheatley loathed occultists he really, really hated communists.
The book’s lead character Molly Fountain was a mystery writer who stumbles onto an occult conspiracy. Hammer had already had success with Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out (1968) so at the peak of the demonic possession craze they returned to that well by adapting To The Devil a Daughter.Īnd a very loose adaptation it is. Their once popular gothic films were barely breaking even at the box office, choked out by more modern shockers like The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976). The 1953 bestseller To the Devil a Daughter continued his tradition of well-researched chillers.įast-forward twenty-four years to 1977 when Hammer Films found themselves at a crossroads. Wheatley professed to loath such occult practitioners even while he was making an unholy fortune from their antics. In the process he met with such luminaries as occultist Alestair Crowley and the fascinating author/researcher Reverend Montague Summers (See my Terrifying Trailblazers article for more on him). Despite his novels being dismissed as “pulp fiction,” Wheatley took his work seriously, conducting vast amounts of research. The book’s success inspired him to pursue the genre, eventually becoming the dean of British supernatural fiction. Although he’d had some initial success writing historical fiction and spy novels Wheatley really hit his stride with the 1934 occult thriller The Devil Rides Out. To the Devil a Daughter is based on the novel by Dennis Wheatley- a British author who was popular from the 1930’s through the 1960’s.
The Satanists quickly discover the nun’s whereabouts and set out to kidnap her as part of a diabolical ritual. Verney is surprised to discover that the woman he’s protecting happens to be a sheltered nun with little experience in the secular world. A mysterious man recruits occult book author John Verney to protect his daughter from a cabal of Satanists.
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