Demons of the Mind Review

Review of Demons of the Mind (1972) by screenqueeen: 👍 3/5

HOOPTOBER 8.0 DAY 6 25 DAYS REMAIN

The mixed response to this Hammer entry is justified, I'll give it that. But it does something fairly shocking and borderline traumatizing to my imagined horror theater audience when Hammer films dominated the marquees in 1972.

The father recounts a horrific event from his childhood that he keeps shielded from his offspring. We go to a closeup on his eye and as he narrates, we see a half-opaque image of the event in question: his mother in the woods, kneeling, children watching, as she takes a dagger and unceremoniously slashes her throat open. Blood gushing out onto the leaves, fade out and pull out to her son sitting there after seeing it in his head for another countless time, silent.

What gets muddled by the film's overacting ambition is the real horror of parents working desperately to shield their children from the same emotionally devastating events they had to endure but in doing so enact equal if not worse emotional damage to them. The framing confused me as during the opening I was sure the film was getting me primed to experience everything through the eyes of Elizabeth, in a permanently sedated haze with periodic detachments of reality; the certainty of her belief of what is real versus what is truly happening. It doesn't do that but it does slant in an interesting direction but still doesn't quite get there, maybe because of all the ground it tries to cover.

It's still worth a visit for the Hammer heads out there who are used to seeing uneven projects from them as they do deliver on their general entertainment value through to the end, as this one's finale does come together quite nicely.