DEMONS OF THE MIND

Essential!

Nowadays, we're all film critics.

Due to the growth in popularity of film studies courses, the overload of information on the internet (including customer reviews, blog sites and not forgetting imdb.com) and the abundance of extras offered on DVD releases, today's film spectators are more inclined to think about what they are watching in some detail. But thought can so easily lead to thoughtlessness, which has crippled the appreciation of films not inclined toward comedy. Thanks to the 90s generation of post modern slashers, the horror genre has reared its own breed of 'wise ass' viewers on the lookout for clichés and formulas to do little but have a good, ironic laugh at.

As such, writing about a Hammer horror is a daunting task. If we're all aware of the clichés belonging to these made to type chillers (especially from the 70s, when the British studio had worn out all of their once ghoulish charm) it's hard to come up with anything constructive to say. Thankfully, this 1972 effort is as far away from Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing playing the same old character as is possible, amid creaky settings and dialogue of similar quality. Away from the stolid period simulacrum, this is still a film fresh and invigorating enough to surprise even today's Cine Cynics thanks to the ambitions of a young and unconventional writer-director combo. Perverse, oblique and stylish, DEMONS OF THE MIND is an unsung little mindbender.

Desperate to keep his son and daughter separated, the obsessive Baron Zorn locks them both away from the public. Believing that they suffer from a hereditary sickness, the aristocrat keeps Emil and Elizabeth under lock and key at his mansion, made docile by an elixir. Fearing that an affliction of "incest and insanity" has been passed down to them from his own experiences with women, Zorn enlists the help of discredited quack Dr Falkenberg. Whilst they prepare a role play to cure Emil, in which the town slut will impersonate his sister, angry villagers get ready to storm the Zorn home, their concerns stemming from a spate of killings involving attractive young women…

Avoiding the notion that horror comes from Transylvania or Frankenstein's laboratory, this collaboration between Peter Sykes and Chris Wicking reminds us that the most memorable horrors come from the mind. Though it draws on the idea that evil is inherited and passed down from one generation to the next (as seen in many a period horror, such as Amicus' AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS, also made around 1972), this film strips away conventional superstition and really gets under the skin of its perverse characters to reveal a shattering kernel of truth. Given a wonderful country setting, DEMONS OF THE MIND is richly textured with its fresh, clear cinematography and benefits from a palpable aura of mystery. The sensual imagery and sense of the unknown are combined beautifully in one early scene. After an attractive, busty young woman is murdered and covered in rose petals, the camera is positioned behind an out of focus flower. The killing is thus obscured behind an exotic crimson smear that adds to the hallucinatory feel as well as hiding the killer's identity from us.

Featuring plenty of camera movement and some disorientating POV shots, DEMONS OF THE MIND is filmed in an involving and energetic manner, and is never constrained by the 'old fashioned' settings. Admittedly, the narrative is a tad choppy at times, alternating as it does between the psychosexual melodramatics of the Zorn family with the perverse killing of sexy slappers - in the woods near to their house. It isn't too difficult to figure who the killer is, and where he comes from. If the film could definitely have been paced better, it does benefit from the more experimental, fragmented approach - for the most. Indeed, there is a definite need to refrain from showing too much until the film's denouement, although it will feel a tad too vague and fragmented for some. As the drugged Elizabeth and Emil, Gillian Hills and Shane Briant are appropriately languid. Their 'out of it' state brings out their repressed feelings, or perhaps the feelings that have been stored away by their crazed patriarch. Playing Zorn, Robert Hardy is way over the top; his contorted facial expressions and tendency to shout loud undermine the tension that is carefully built up to.

The inclusion of the always shifty, beady eyed Patrick Magee as the psychoanalyst, Falkenberg, is crucial to the film's success. Taking us well away from the usual Gothic scenarios - i.e. those involving ghosts and curses - Falkenberg exposes Zorn's repressed feelings for his daughter, which have been allowed to fester through his son, Emil, due to the latter's proximity to Elizabeth (i.e. locked away, the young man has no one else). As such, DEMONS OF THE MIND proves to be a perverse melodrama - as opposed to a bogstandard chiller - and benefits from the outrageous scene in which Falkenberg has a crack at 'curing' Emil of his incestuous feelings. By dressing a local wench up to look like Elizabeth, the disgraced doctor compounds Emil's problems, adding murder to his muddled mental state. The walls come tumbling down for this disastrous family, and it is a stroke of bitter irony that Zorn meets his comeuppance from the mob of superstitious villagers baying for his blood, led by an alcy priest.

The only extra is a commentary track, in which director Sykes, writer Wicking and actress Wetherell (who plays the prostitute) discuss the making of a film that was made to go deliberately against the grain of Hammer. Shot on a separate unit than the usual Hammer fare, the filmmakers had free reign on this production, we are told. Sykes and Wicking don't overlook anything - and are rightly critical of Hardy's OTT showing (euphemistically described by Sykes as "detrimental to the film"). Wetherell talks about her experiences and addresses the issue of nudity that she felt uncomfortable with, as well as talking about working with Patrick Magee, whom she knew from the set of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, which the pair featured in the previous year.

Review by Matthew Sanderson


 
Released by Optimum
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
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