Demons of the Mind
Baron Friedrich Zorn’s love for his children is stern, the circumstances of his family having forced him to keep them almost as prisoners, isolated from the world and any contact with outsiders, believing that a madness runs in his bloodline which he had hoped to diminish by marrying a local woman from the village who he had believed would be “pure,” but seeing in them indications that they too are succumbing.
Elizabeth having escaped and found brief happiness with Carl in his cabin in the woods by the lake, she has been taken back to the mansion, her room locked and medication forced upon her by her aunt Hilda, Emil in his own room next door, whispering to each other through the locked connecting door, Doctor Falkenberg brought in from Vienna to attempt to cure them while in the forest the bodies of local girls are found, strangled and strewn with rose petals…
Originally conceived as an exploration of lycanthropy under the title Blood Will Have Blood, by the time of release in November 1972 it had metamorphosed to a more general malaise of familial inheritance, the Demons of the Mind passed down from Robert Hardy’s patriarch to Captain Kronos’ Shane Briant and The Owl Service’s Gillian Hills as Emil and Elizabeth, while Crucible of Horror’s Yvonne Mitchell is matronly in black and The Final Programme‘s Patrick Magee is the disgraced physician Falkenberg, his determination to prove his theories trumping the wellbeing of his patients.
Directed by To the Devil a Daughter‘s Peter Sykes, the opening titles of sepia toned photographic family portraits give the false impression that Hammer have moved to, if not contemporary, at least a more recent historical setting, yet the galloping horse-drawn carriages and naming conventions swiftly confirm it is yet another ambiguous European place and time, though filmed on location in and around Wykehurst Park House the production values are high, allowing shots from within the mansion into the grounds and across the landscape and unrestricted camera angles in the grand entrance hall.
The interior lighting natural and the colours outdoors bright and vivid, unfortunately the script by Cry of the Banshee‘s Christopher Wicking does not warrant the effort, Hardy, Magee and Mitchell uniformly excellent in their convictions yet struggling to find a throughline in the unclear narrative, Michael Hordern popping up as a wandering priest for no apparent reason and the murders apparently committed by Zorn’s enforcer Klaus with no motive other than distraction, a red herring for the sake of it as much as the strange rituals of the villagers.
The implied relationship of Emil and Elizabeth tiptoeing into areas the film is then too afraid to embrace, given a 4K restoration by StudioCanal their new edition of Demons of the Mind is supported by two audio commentaries, by Sykes, Wicking and Virginia Wetherell who plays villager Inge and by film historian Steve Haberman, interviews with Wetherell and camera operator Neil Binney, an overview of the production, a gallery and trailer and a booklet of essays and publicity material.
Demons of the Mind will be available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from StudioCanal from Monday 6th April
