John Chard

Old Nick really gets around you know! Little known and under seen, this is an efficient "Devil's Spawn" movie that admittedly features stars working for food. Shelley Winters, Joseph Cotten and Diane Ladd head the cast list as a young woman comes to realise that her guardians are devil worshipping nutters! It's all a bit "Rosemary's Baby" lite, but there's a splendid array of off-kilter characters and bizarro abodes. Director Jeannot Szwarc (Jaws 2) is clever enough to use canted angles to enhance the trippy black arts undercurrents, while Winters is having a grand old time of it. The big telegraph pole pointing the way to the finale is hard to miss, but surprisingly the denouement still packs a worthwhile punch. You would be very angry if you based your Halloween night around this viewing, but as TV Satan Worship movies go, it's not half bad. 6/10