10 Hammer Horror Movies You NEED To See

Since Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen, horrors were beginning to take on a considerably darker tone and the camp melodrama of the Hammer tentpoles was becoming distinctly unfashionable - change was imperative.

With Dennis Wheatley's other classic, The Devil Rides Out (more on that masterpiece to come... ) now a smash hit for Hammer, To The Devil... A Daughter, another outstanding Wheatley (who was outselling Ian Fleming) occult page-turner, would hopefully launch Hammer horror into the new age. Featuring an impressive ensemble cast of Christopher Lee, Honor Blackman, Nastassja Kinski (daughter of the certifiable genius Klaus Kinski), Denholm Elliott and the formidable Richard Widmark, To The Devil... A Daughter certainly had the chops.

John Verney (Widmark) is tasked with protecting Catherine (Kinski), a novice nun on the run from The Children Of The Lord, a heretical religious sect of secret Satan worshippers, as Father Michael Rayner (Lee) and his group of minions attempt to use her as a vessel for the demon Astaroth, the 'Great Duke Of Hell.' It's an unsettling story with scenes of body horror that would make the hardest of cinema audiences wince, ultimately let down by the unfortunate anticlimax, the last for Hammer until its resurgence in 2008.

Fans of the seminal nineties rock outfit White Zombie will immediately recognise multiple samples from this movie - "It is not heresy and I will NOT recant!" A shamefully underrated horror diamond - just ignore the last five minutes...