Demons of the Mind

Classic psychology in its infancy before Freud, a massive etiology offered for a simple case on the face of it recalling The Barretts of Wimpole Street or The Innocents (The Turn of the Screw) or M in its various aspects.

Pure Hammer analysis of the finest, a certain Baron Zorn (Robert Hardy), to him a rudimentary alienist (Patrick Magee) for the tormented children (Shane Briant, Gillian Hills), their overseer (Yvonne Mitchell), a wandering prophet (Michael Hordern), villagers, the alienist’s skeptical assistant, etc.

To Time Out Film Guide, “an exotic Wildean horror story,” undermined by “cod Shakespeare.”

TV Guide, “not an insight in sight.”

The House in Nightmare Park

The story of the heir to the Henderson fortune and the Dacca diamonds, a self-styled “Master of the Spoken Word” who gives dramatic readings of Dickens, for example (murder of Nancy, death of Little Nell), attended by no-one but yawning townspeople and raspberrying boys, his nom de guerre is Foster Twelvetrees.

The strange house where he’s asked to perform is filled with lunatics and “living marionettes”, most of them die in the course of the evening, they all want the diamonds, only he knows where they are, if he only knew.

The conclusion means that wealth comes from tilling one’s own garden, the persistent theme is India. A correspondence to The Cat and the Canary has been noted by critics, if nothing else.

To the Devil a Daughter

An arcanum of the occult, involving an avatar of Ashtaroth and a girl raised in a convent devoted to his worship.

The complicated planes of thought diffusing this from Germany to Britain are designed to do just that and communicate just this idea. Hitler wanted to be an avatar of the old Teutons who sacked Rome and revitalized Western Civilization, as he thought.