Many of these films also featured thinly veiled Aleister Crowley analogs, the best of these being 1957's Night of the Demon (based on the M.R. James short story, "Casting the Runes"), which featured a brilliant performance by Niall MacGinnis as the malevolent manchild of a sorcerer, Julian Karswell.
The genre wasn't limited to Britain—one of my favorite films of all time is Quinn Martin's adaptation of Fred Mustard Stewart's The Mephisto Waltz, which is not only an absolutely brilliant piece of writing on its own but has the added bonus of a young and impossibly gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset in the lead role.
But more often than not, Hollywood lapses into strip-mall Satanism of the boneheaded Anton LaVey variety, rather than the more-nuanced and less-boring black magic of the Crowley stripe. I guess maybe Tinseltown execs are required to pay more explicit tribute to their Infernal Lord and Master, thus having a quota to fill.
Remember that time when Hollywood scarfed down the Hellblazer franchise only to pinch out Constantine? That's just one painful example of this dumbing-down tendency. After seeing an endless parade of legacy-shattering remakes and reboots, I shudder to think what Tinseltown would do with Crimson Cult, also known as Curse of the Crimson Altar.
This sparkler of a Swinging Sixties scarefest not only features Christopher Lee warming up for his Lord Summerisle role, but throws in Boris Karloff to sweeten the deal. Of course, there's also plenty of nubile British flesh dancing around to the kind of corny, movie soundtrack pseudo-rock that no Mod or hippie of the time would be ever caught dead in earshot of.
The Crimson Cult is allegedly supposed to be a loose adaptation of Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House, but it's so damn loose that someone had to tell me that's what it was. There are only the barest similarities between the two, and there's no Brown Jenkin skittering around in the film either.
The story is as muddled and confusing as any Hammer horror. Mark Eden (looking eerily like a refugee from an early period Guy Ritchie film) plays an antique dealer who goes looking for his brother, who was last heard from in some provincial backwater.
Eden then discovers all kinds of Dionysian debauchery and carrying on and makes the classic old horror movie mistake—he accepts the lodging invitation of the creepy lord of the manor (Lee). Things go predictably awry from there.
Which goes to show you that most of these old horror movies are essentially morality tales, warning against the kind of behaviors—lust, greed, ambition—that, when amplified by occult ritualism, inevitably lead to doom.
Something very Medieval about the genre, when you stop to consider it.
It's actually kind of refreshing in light of the depressing and demoralizing nihilism that dominates horror today.
