That was an excellent one.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Hammer's psychological horror opus bypasses the usual monster elements and instead gives us a horror film with purely human villains. That's right, there are no rubbery limbs or bats in this film, instead all of the chills and spills are in the mind. The murders that take place aren't even that gruesome, just bloody, which makes them all the more disturbing through the power of suggestion.There are dozens of adjectives I could use to describe this film. Distorting, disturbing, strange, unusual, unnatural, weird. Abnormal fear. The psychology used in the film is strictly Freudian, with a twisted form of the Oedipus complex coming into play. The actors and actresses are exceptional in the film and make it all the more effective, from Robert Hardy as the obsessed father to Shane Briant making his impressive debut as the mentally unstable son.Gillian Hills is also great in another mentally ambiguous role, while Virginia Wetherell is a female victim who screams loudly and is more than willing to strip for her role (indeed, she spends a five minute sequence wandering around completely naked while choosing a dress). Lower down in the cast list are Michael Hordern as a psychotic religious lunatic and the maniac from the same year's monster movie THE CREEPING FLESH as the sinister and bald coachman. Finally, Patrick Magee is on hand as an unlikable but noble doctor, in a role which Peter Cushing usually would play.DEMONS OF THE MIND has a Gothic fairy-tale like ambiance, helped by the use of forest locations to add to the atmosphere, with a spooky music-box like score to add to the feelings of sadness and madness echoing throughout the film. Pretty powerful stuff and an interesting one-off.

With this film, Hammer attempt to break out of the Monster theme which had been so successful for them, the results are mixed. It all starts well enough with some kind of romance flashback but basically it's all downhill from there. The premise seems to be that a taste for strangling the locals runs in the family, in an effort to put a stop to this, the father figure has imprisoned his son and daughter and hired a psychologist to come and sort them all out. What happens from there on in is a little hard to say, characters randomly appear and disappear, the plot goes nowhere. In the end this meandering is put to bed by that old Hammer standard of the torch bearing band of angry locals. The movie has all the trappings of a good Hammer film, a little gore, some nudity, odd facial hair, but it just never comes together. In the end it commits the ultimate sin for a horror movie, it's just a little bit boring.

Well I went into this with high expectations, but unfortunately Demons of the Mind failed to deliver. I'm a big fan of Hammer Horror, and since I've seen most of the big ones; this one has been at the top of my 'must see' for quite some time. It has to be said that Demons of the Mind represents one of Hammer's most ambitious projects, but that can't be seen as a compliment to the film as it just doesn't work. Demons of the mind does benefit from some good production values, and actually reminded me a lot of Ken Russell's The Devil's because of the way that it fuses good acting and cinematography with a purely B-movie plot. The plot is overly complicated, and focuses on a pair of children who are kept locked up by their father, a man who fears that the children may have been 'infected' by their insane mother. The boy keeps escaping, and coincidentally a lot of dead girls are turning up in the woods. The father keeps them separate as the boy is attracted to the girl, and the plot thickens when a doctor who stands to make a fortune if he can 'cure' the children turns up...Demons of the Mind was directed by Peter Sykes, who also directed one of the studio's worst efforts in the form of To the Devil a Daughter two years later. Clearly, he is not Hammer's most adept director. The film features a handful of British horror stars - most notably Patrick Magee and Shane Briant, both for different reasons. Magee is one of the most underrated and unique British horror actors, and he always manages to increase the credibility of anything he stars in - even if it is something like this. Briant, on the other hand, starred in a handful of Hammer Horror flicks during the early seventies and failed to make much of an impression after the first one. Briant was noticeable in Straight on till Morning for his ridiculous haircut, but since then failed to make an impression. The film really lacks what Hammer's big guns bring to the table - Cushing and Lee are sorely missed. The plot mumbles along for most of the duration, and by the end I wasn't too bothered what happened. I can give this film plaudits for the production values and for some notable sequences - but overall, Demons of the Mind isn't one of Hammer's finest hours.

This 1972 horror/suspense thriller is a truly odd film. I really like this movie, but those who don't like weird Hammer Studios horror films ought to tread warily. The atmosphere is eerie and just plain creepy sometimes. The plot is better left seen than described, but this film is for patient viewers who don't mind not having the plot spelled out for them -- but who like to try and figure things out themselves. And there are lots of things to figure out! When I watched this movie the first time I really had no idea how it would end. This film also made me wonder how the people who concocted the story came up with such a diffuse plot with so many different things going on at the same time. Truly boggles the mind. No pun intended! It's a mad movie with a fiery finale.