IslandGuru Who payed the critics

TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Red-Barracuda The 70's is a period where it is often said that Hammer Films were in a bit of a quandary and putting out inferior product. While I agree that the famous old studio was struggling to keep up with the new horror trends that were coming in fast and furious at the dawn of the 70's in a new age of permissiveness but I can't really go along with the idea that their films of that decade were markedly worse. In fact, I think they put out some of their best movies at this time such as their erotic vampire movies, the incredibly fun Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974), the impressive Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter (1974), the decidedly odd Straight on Till Morning (1972) and I even liked Count Dracula and His Vampire Brides (1973). So, yeah, I like 70's Hammer and so we come to Demons of the Mind. A 19th century baron keeps his two adult children imprisoned in the family home fearing that they both suffer from a form of madness inherited from their mother, meanwhile, a series of women are murdered in the local vicinity.It's actually quite an odd story for Hammer really, as while on a superficial level it is a typical Gothic costume horror that they knocked out ten-a-penny, on the other hand it is very heavy on the psychological side of things. The upshot is that we have a film which avoids one of the criticisms you could reasonably level at Hammer, that of cosy predictableness. This film has so many disparate ideas kicking around that the end result is decidedly unusual. We have paganism, a fire-and-brimstone travelling preacher, a sinister bald henchman, a spate of serial killings, an ominous doctor, a hint of incest, historical suicide, some exploitation content in the form of a little nudity and gore, Freudian elements and a nihilistic ending. It's a pretty varied mix. It also would have to be admitted that the various parts out-weight the whole, as the story doesn't really connect together entirely cohesively. So, I would have to put this down as an uneven, yet commendably less derivative effort from Hammer.

begob A father subjects his daughter and son to a quack's experiments in order to cure them of their bad blood ...Gothic clash between primitive science and primitive religion, as an inherited malevolence racks up the body count of the local village girls. The story provides suspense over the identity of the villain, but oddly the hero plays a minor role so there's a real nihilism that doesn't fit with the Hammer formula.The story telling isn't great. We're given the usual lavish costumes and sets and earthy locations, but the set up isn't tense, since the locals seem content with the aristos up the hill despite what must be dodgy past relations. There's one interesting scene with the villagers in a ritual to kill death, but it didn't tie in with any theme in the main story.Editing sometimes odd: one glimpse introducing a victim as she waves bye bye to dad, then a pursuit through the woods. The only impressive photography is when the aunt steps into frame in front of the Count and the quack.Biggest drawback is the acting, which has to deal with a very wordy script. The old fellas ham it up, with wobbling jowels and arms flung wide, while the daughter drifts about in a state of feeble anxiety. The nude scenes are nice, and the killings are more or less gory.Music nothing special.Overall: Interesting, yet confused and uneven.

Theo Robertson One wonders what the thinking behind this Hammer production was ? Something about dark family secrets involving insanity and incest and murder and the occasional religious maniac thrown in for bad measure . The narrative as it appears on screen is very confused and confusing and the production team don't seem to have put much thought in to developing things to any large degree . As it stands there seems to be a bizarre contest going on between Robert Hardy , Patrick Magee and Michael Hordern as to who can give most ludicrous and hammy performance in thespian history - all in one 90 minute film . It's kind of like one of those competitions you'd get between Hitler , Stalin and Mao as to who could kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time . Make no mistake that Hardy , Magee and Hordern capture , mutilate and execute every single syllable in every single line to its fullest potential possible while pulling an emotive face . When you've got three well respected actors showing off in their distinctive velvety tones what hope for the rest of the performances ? Slim hope and no hope and slim died long before filming started . The rest of the cast are very wooden in comparison especially Gillian Hills as Elizabeth who looks as thought she's wandered on to set after smoking a spliff the size of a telegraph pole . This isn't a highly regarded Hammer Horror and it's not difficult to see why

Coventry Was Hammer Studios ever capable of making anything else than traditional horror movies with monsters and madmen? The answer to that is clearly YES, and this "Demons of the Mind" is the irrefutable evidence to back up that statement. Were they any good at it? Well, that's a different question, of course. "Demons of the Mind" is a long way from Hammer's best accomplishment, but it surely is an ambitious, visually innovative and intriguing. What this movie lacks, unfortunately, is a minimum of respect towards the viewers. The script, co-written by Christopher Wicking of "The Oblong Box" and "To the Devil a Daughter", is unnecessary complex and even on the verge of pretentious. Director Peter Sykes is so busy with building up an atmosphere of mystery and pseudo- psychology that he completely forgets to properly introduce the main characters and their backgrounds. The plot introduces the highly unusual family situation of the Van Zorn's; a British noble family in the late 19th Century. The baron is somehow convinced that his children, a son and a daughter, will eventually fall victim to a hereditary illness and thus keeps them locked away in their rooms. Personally I would keep them apart because of their incestuous cravings, but still… Anyway, the baron seeks the help of a notorious psychologist who talks a whole of gibberish that I totally didn't understand. Meanwhile, the docile and superstitious villagers living nearby the castle are growing petrified as they discover the bodies of some brutally murdered local town girls. In spite of the numerous fascinating and controversial themes (incest, hereditary madness, unorthodox psychology methods…) and some beautifully artsy elements of symbolism (rose petals covering naked corpses, flowers through keyholes…), "Demons of the Mind" remains an overall nebulous film that could – and should – have been much better. The film eventually even reverts to old-fashioned and heavily clichéd solutions, like the angry mob with torches, for example. The most notable performance is delivered by Patrick Magee as the charlatan psychiatrist. Magee nearly always has this decadent and sinister aura surrounding him, but it really works well in this film. There's also gratuitous nudity and quite a bit of explicit bloodshed to find in "Demons of the Mind". The strangulation sequences are reasonably perverse and the suicide scene (featuring inside a flashback) even qualifies as nauseating considering the time of release. I prefer Hammer's entries in the Dracula and Frankenstein cycles at any time, but nonetheless this is an interesting film to watch and get confused over.