To the Devil a Daughter

1976 "...and suddenly the screams of a baby born in Hell!"
5.8| 1h35m| R| en| More Info
Released: 01 July 1976 Released
Producted By: Terra-Filmkunst
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

An American occult novelist battles to save the soul of a young girl from a group of Satanists, led by an excommunicated priest, who plan on using her as the representative of the Devil on Earth.

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Reviews

Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
utgard14 Hammer's last horror film is another adaptation of a Dennis Wheatley novel. They had previously done The Lost Continent, which sucked, and The Devil Rides Out, which also starred Christopher Lee and had a slightly similar plot to this. In that film, Lee rescues the son of a friend from a Satanic cult. In this film, Richard Widmark rescues the daughter of a friend from a Satanic cult. This time Lee's the villain. Playing the young nun pursued by Satanists is a teenage Nastassja Kinski. Also in the cast are the great Denholm Elliott and former Bond girl (here a sexy MILF) Honor Blackman.The Devil Rides Out was a superior movie in every way, not least of which was the script by Richard Matheson. This script is a mess and suffered through several rewrites. Dennis Wheatley was so disgusted by this movie that he told Hammer he no longer wanted them to adapt his work. Not that it mattered much as Hammer went out of business a few years later. Since this was released post-Exorcist, Hammer tried to get on that bandwagon and be as outrageous as possible. Most of this will seem pretty tame to modern audiences but was pretty shocking at the time. Hammer always had sex and violence as part of its horror formula but here with full-frontal nudity, some nasty sex scenes, and quite a bit of bloodiness, it makes most previous Hammer films seem like they should be rated G. Taking all of this into account, it's a watchable second-rate 'devil movie.' A good cast helps a lot. It's not the worst Hammer horror movie but it's far from their best. Look out for the stupid abrupt ending. Favorite quote: "98% of so-called Satanists are nothing but pathetic freaks who get their kicks out of dancing naked in freezing churchyards and use the Devil as an excuse for getting some sex." Sounds about right.
GusF The last of the original Hammer horror films, what began with a bang in the form of "The Curse of Frankenstein" 19 years earlier ends with a whimper here. I suppose that it's appropriate that Christopher Lee was there at the beginning and the end. On the bright side, Lee is characteristically excellent as the intense and suitably creepy Father Michael Rayner, an excommunicated Catholic priest and the leader of a group of Satanists called the Children of Our Lord. This was his last Hammer film until "The Resident" 35 years later. Honor Blackman and Denholm Elliott, who makes his only Hammer appearance here, were also very good but their roles were less well developed. The same is true of Michael Goodliffe in his final film appearance. Unfortunately, he committed suicide only two weeks after it was released. Richard Widmark is quite a good leading man but the more likable and charismatic Cliff Robertson was considered for John Verney and I wish that he had been cast instead. It's interesting that, towards the end of its original incarnation, Hammer returned to its early to mid 1950s practice of hiring well known American actors in the hope that they would appeal to American audiences, something which they only really did with Bette Davis and Joan Fontaine in the 1960s. I have never seen Nastassja Kinski in anything else but I can't say that I was terribly impressed by her acting in the film, though in fairness I am sure that it is difficult to act in a language that isn't your first one, particularly for child actors.Due to the storyline, the fact that it is based on a Dennis Wheatley novel and Lee's presence, it's impossible not to compare the film to the superlative "The Devil Rides Out" but it falls far short of that film in every respect, I'm afraid. It's badly structured and often boring. As part of the final scene was cut, it ends very abruptly. It seems to owe more to films like "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist" than it does to any of Hammer's very best films. It also has some superficial similarities to "The Omen", though that is only a coincidence since that film was released three months later. What really bothered me about though was the fact that it was needlessly gory in the way that earlier Hammer films never were. The weird sex scenes were disturbing and I don't mean that in a good, horror film way. They were particularly so since they involved Nastassja Kinski who was only 14 years old at the time in spite of the fact that she played an 18-year-old. She also had a full frontal nude scene towards the end of the film. It wasn't illegal at the time in the UK but was certainly in very poor taste. I never thought that I'd come across a scene in a Hammer film more tasteless than the incongruous rape scene in "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" which was designed to add sex appeal to that film but I was proved wrong, unfortunately. Could they not have hired an older actress? Even if they had, the nude scene still wouldn't have added anything to the film but it would have at least been less shameless and exploitative.Overall, this isn't the worst Hammer horror film - I still think that that dubious distinction goes to "The Horror of Frankenstein" - but it's very close. It was released in 1976, two years after the last Hammer "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" films. 1975 was the first year since 1946 that Hammer did not release at least one film. This film was a co-production with West Germany while "The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires" and "Shatter" were co-productions with Hong Kong so the studio was clearly running out of money faster than it was making it. The last original Hammer film was "The Lady Vanishes" in 1979, which managed to be even worse than this one (which, for all its flaws, has some nice performances). It was also a big flop that nearly bankrupted Hammer. While it made two short-lived TV series in the 1980s, "The Lady Vanishes" was the last film produced by Hammer until the studio, like Dracula in so many of its films, was resurrected in 2008.
Claudio Carvalho In London, the occult novelist John Verney (Richard Widmark) is contacted by a stranger named Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliott) during a lecture in a private gallery of his friends David Kennedy (Anthony Valentine) and Anna Fontaine (Honor Blackman). Henry asks John to meet his daughter, the nun Catherine Beddows (Nastassja Kinski), in the airport since she is coming from Munich and lodge her in his apartment since Henry has had a problem with Satanists and he would like to protect his daughter. In return, John could write a book with his experience with the Satanists. John brings Catherine to his apartment and sooner he learns that she belongs to the church "The Children of Our Lord" from Germany, and she will be eighteen years old on the All Hallows Eve. While she is sleeping during the night, John realizes that Catherine, and not her father Henry, is actually in danger. Sooner he finds that the excommunicated Catholic priest Father Michael Raynem (Christopher Lee), who is Catherine's godfather, and a group of Satanists that worship the Devil plan to use Catherine to become Astaroth through a ritual. John visits the bishop, who is his friend, and asks permission to read the same pages of The Book of Abramelin that Father Michael had read in the 50's. Now John battles against the powerful Father Michael to save the life and soul of Catherine. "To the Devil a Daughter" is the last film from Hammer with a promising story and a great cast with Richard Widmark, Christopher Lee, Nastassja Kinski and Denholm Elliott. Unfortunately they are wasted in a lame screenplay with many flaws and a disappointing conclusion. The gorgeous Nastassja Kinski (officially born on 24 Jan 1961, but sources tell that she was born in 1959) naked does not seem to be only fifteen years old; seventeen would be more acceptable. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Uma Filha para o Diabo" ("A Daughter to the Devil")
JasparLamarCrabb There's not a single scary moment in this boring albeit well made Hammer entry. Christopher Lee is an excommunicated priest who somehow manages to promise to give the Devil a daughter. Richard Widmark is the hack horror novelist trying to stop him. The idea of teaming these two famous screen baddies is promising, but they share scant screen time together. A dubbed Nastassja Kinski plays a young nun and Denholm Elliott is her father, who tries to renege on his deal with Lee. It's a lousy movie all around and even manages to wastes Honor Blackman (as Widmark's sharp tongued literary agent). Based on the (presumably better) novel by Dennis Wheatley, this film surely exists solely to cash in on the EXORCIST craze of the early 70s.