American expatriate occult writer John Verney is asked by Henry Beddows to pick up his daughter Catherine from London airport. Catherine is a nun with the Children of the Lord, a mysterious heretical order based in Bavaria and founded by the excommunicated Roman Catholic priestMichael Rayner, where Beddows is allowed to come to visit Catherine only on her birthdays. But after Catherine arrives, Beddows then insists that she stay with Verney. The order, however, under Father Michael, makes all efforts to get Catherine back and uses black magic to stop Verney as he protects her. Verney learns that the order really harbours a group of practicing Satanists, who have prepared Catherine to become an avatar of Astaroth upon her eighteenth birthday. The priest kills Verney's friends and tries to get Verney. Using his knowledge of the occult Verney battles the priest and his henchmen to try to rescue Catherine. As the priest Rayner prepares to Baptise Catherine in blood, Verney manages to rescue Catherine by knocking the priest unconscious and carrying her out of the circle of blood created by priest Rayner.
Cast
Production
The film was adapted by Christopher Wicking and John Peacock from the 1953 novel of the same title by Dennis Wheatley. It was the second of Wheatley's "black magic" novels to be filmed by Hammer, following The Devil Rides Out, released in 1968. Wheatley disliked the film because it did not follow his novel and he found it obscene. He told Hammer that they were not to make another film from his novels ever again. Wicking called the film "an awful mess. There was no real focus to it." He wanted to incorporate DNA as part of the storyline but said EMI refused because they felt this would make the film too much like a science fiction movie rather than a horror movie. Michael Carreras said the film "simply didn't work... the people who made it forgot about the ending." Carerras says he asked Nat Cohen of EMI Films for additional funds to do a new ending - "I had it properly written out and we knew exactly what to do" - but Cohen refused. This was Michael Goodliffe's last film, made shortly before he committed suicide while suffering from depression. Christopher Lee's line "It is not heresy... and I will not recant!" was sampled by heavy metal bandWhite Zombie for the song "Super-Charger Heaven". The movie's title was also referenced by White Zombie in the song "Black Sunshine" Kinski was fourteen years old at the time of filming her frontal nude scene.
Critical reception
, To the Devil...a Daughter holds a 40% approval rating on movie review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 10 reviews. Variety called the film a "lacklustre occult melodrama" that "seems padded and tentative, and though horrific in spots the actual shock value is remarkably subdued." Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times found the story "a confusing vacillation between special effects, hallucinations, psychic trances and ongoing narration," but thought the film was "distinguished by engrossing performances," "superior photography" and "eerie music." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post was negative, writing that the film "seems to have been scripted, directed and edited with extreme haste and negligence, as if the filmmakers had to keep one step ahead of process servers or the finance company." Tony Rayns of The Monthly Film Bulletin praised the "expert special effects" and "no-nonsense script," and thought Christopher Lee played his role "with a gusto absent from his performances for many years." Leonard Maltin's home video guide gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, saying it was "well made but lacks punch." Time Out called it "a good deal more interesting than the rest of the possession cycle, but still a disappointment."
