Satan's Slave (1976)

 "Don't forget- tomorrow is your special day!"

This film has such a lurid title, and an equally lurd opening scene and sequence. There's a fair bit of female nudity in it. Indeed, there's even a flashback to the witch hunting days of the 17th Century as a naked woman is branded, whipped and then immolated. Er, lovely.

Shame the film is so slow, dull and talky, then. Even with a scene of Mochael Craze being nebulously enchanted in a lift, causing him to die by suicide. Even with Michael Gough starring- he's phoning it in here, but he's incpable of not dazzling the audience with his charisma.

Candace Glendenning and Martin Potter are ok, but they can't phone it in as well as Michael Gough can. And, let's face it, they are playing cousins who have incestuous sex with each other. That's disgusting, and one wonders what they thoiught they were playing at.

The film drags terribly, consisting of mediocre actors and Michael Gough chatting nonchalantly in a country house while the direction fails to establish any kind of horror atmosphere. Even the twist at the end, with a little light gaslighting of Catherine and James Bree delivering a much less mannered performance than usual, underwhelms. The whole film reeks with the air of "that'll do". If you want a good horror film about Devil worshipping cultists, watch The Devil Rides Out. If you watch this, the only possible reason could be because of an actotr within it (for me, Michael Craze, seen sleeping in the most awful bedding in history) and no other reason. This film is pants.

Hammer House of Horror: Growing Pains

 "For all the unloved children..."

Well, they can't all be good. Four episodes in, an attempt to do an episode with a creepy kid, and frankly it's a bit of a dud.

There are some good things here, in this tale of a workaholic couple whose neglected son dies, resulting in their adopting a creepy replacement. I like the clever bit of misdirection as we're constantly made to see James as creepy but he's just a red herring, his emotionless behaviour just thowing him to have experienced trauma. The subtext is nice, too: William felt neglected by his parents and seeks revenge from beyond the grave.

Yet it doesn't quite work. The story beats are awkward, there's the foregrounding of a character, in James, who sort of has to be played in a way that is robotic and charisma-free. And the direction shows a strange reluctance to employ any of the visual tropes of horror.

Still, one bad episode of four so far is not bad at all.