(1971)
Dir - Peter Sasdy
Overall: MEH
Major pacing issues plague Hammer's Hands of the Ripper, one of the many period pieces from the studio and also one of a multitude of horror films that utilize vague attributes from the Jack the Ripper case. The standard fare is present; doctors talking about doctor stuff, a seance, blood, and brutal death scenes, but in addition to bringing nothing additionally exciting to the table, the script is quite lousy. Eric Porter's Dr. Pritchard's entire motivation to house and repeatedly leave alone a known murder who tediously keeps killing people all becomes a laborious waiting game with some "For the good of mankind", Freudian nonsense thrown in for no good measure. It is a further issue that the film's main baddy, (played by Angharad Rees), delivers a pretty undercooked performance, doing virtually nothing but stare off into space the entire movie. Everyone else is mostly unrecognizable to horror buffs and Hammer mainstay Peter Sasdy works very little magic behind the lens. There is also a completely out of context kiss that is unintentionally ridiculous. The gore is substantial and the basic premise would otherwise be somewhat interesting, but that is about it.
(1972)
Dir - Jimmy Sangster
Overall: MEH
Jimmy Sangster was a frequent screenwriter for Hammer as well as other studios and also directed the mediocre sequels The Horror of Frankenstein and Lust for a Vampire. 1972's Fear In the Night is likewise subpar. It is remarkably similar to any number of female hysteria thrillers yet duller than most. The uninspired twist happens so casually that you would think the filmmakers made an error in the editing room and forgot an entire other scene previously. As is almost always the case with these sort of things, the film works so much better before we get our answers and when the mystery is still hanging over us. The enigmatic, prosthetic hand killer/bully is a creepy enough bad guy yes, but when Peter Cushing's mild mannered headmaster Michael Carmichael seems to be the guy, it tips us off straight away that there has to be more to it to that. There is, but barely so. A few memorable moments are sprinkled in such as Joan Collins shooting a rabbit and Ralph Bates calling her a "bitch" early on, but all the "this woman had a breakdown in the past so everything she says must be imagined now" nonsense grows grating rather quickly.
(1976)
Dir - Peter Sykes
Overall: GOOD
One of the very last entries in Hammer's initial run was the adaptation of Denis Wheatley’s 1953 book To the Devil...A Daughter, the second of the author's novels to provide source material for the studio, (1968's outstanding The Devil Rides Out being the other). Suffering from a condemning review from Wheatley himself as well as much controversy centered around Natasha Kinski’s underage nude scene, the film still manages to pull of a lot of over-the-top, occult-fueled fun. Christopher Lee's villainous Father Michael Rayner is one of the many such characters the actor could effectively deliver in his sleep and the Satanic birth and orgy scenes are plenty sinister, in a grandiose way. These are balanced by a few silly moments like Richard Widmark’s burst of rage in a church, plus the ending does not land, but the film is anything but boring. Director Peter Sykes, (who also helmed Hammer's Demons of the Mind four years prior), balances the film's chaotic attributes with enough enthusiasm to elevate it above mere "guilty pleasure" status. Out of the boatloads of pre-Satanic panic movies from the decade that relished in such macabre subject matter, there are a handful better yet also many handfuls worse than this.
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