Enter the Devil
People are disappearing in the outskirts of a Texan town, which leads to loss of business from a lodge. The sheriff dismisses the incident as mere accidents, only worrying about his re-election campaign, but an occult researcher investigates and alleges that a devil worshiping cult might be responsible. I’m a huge fan of Satanic cult films. RACE WITH THE DEVIL and THE DEVIL’S RAIN were great creepy films about the topic and the 1972 entry “ENTER THE DEVIL” is along the same lines. We begin with a guy breaking down on the side of the road and hitching a ride with a pickup truck. The next thing that he knows is that he is being carried by a group of cult members, all in hooded robes, all carrying torches with the exception of the leader that is carrying a black cross. It looked really neat. The movie moves along at a snail’s pace and the characters aren’t all that interesting, but the visuals are so good and there is a natural curiosity factor because the cult is unknown. Much like RACE WITH THE DEVIL, you want to see who’s running the show and who are hiding behind the hoods. Dr. Leslie Culver (Irene Kelly) is beginning to put the pieces together and investigates the cult with her love interest, Glenn (Joshua Bryant), but she gets more then she bargained for. There are some surprises and one pretty good shock at the end that I did not expect. So the payoff is rather good in this one, especially if you like cult films, but the movie moves so slowly that you have to be patient. ENTER THE DEVIL is not nearly as good as the other cult films I’ve mentioned but it’s not a bad watch overall. This film did have something new that I hadn’t seen before (spoiler) where the police use machine guns to blow away the cult. They wiped those bastards out, and there were a pretty good couple of surprises at the end. It doesn’t knock it out of the park, but it is an acceptable entry for the fans of cult movies. I recommend it.
