A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Thursday, September 4, 2025

To the Devil a Daughter (Peter Sykes, 1976)

Nastassja Kinski in To the Devil a Daughter
Cast: Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Nastassja Kinski, Honor Blackman, Denholm Elliott, Anthony Valentine, Michael Goodliffe, Eva Maria Meineke. Screenplay: Christopher Wicking, John Peacock, based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley. Cinematography: David Watkin. Art direction: Don Picking. Film editing: John Trumper. Music: Paul Glass. 

Peter Sykes's To the Devil a Daughter was disowned by both its credited screenwriter, Christopher Wicking, and the author of the book on which it was based, Dennis Wheatley. It's easy to see why: It's muddled and uninvolving, a routine horror thriller that borrows its best ideas from The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) and Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), throws in a nude scene for Nastassja Kinski, who was only 14 at the time, and wastes the talents of Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, and Denholm Elliott. 
 

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