Another Horrific Detour For A Star On The Slide

Joan Fontaine Makes The Devil's Own (1966) Bargain with Hammer

There were degrees to degradation among movie queens brought down in the 60's to exploitation shockers. For all of high-profile Bette Davis achieved with Baby Jane and follow-ups, it was maybe Olivia DeHavilland that drew the nastiest of the lot, Lady In A Cage, which unlike ones that have dated into kitsch, is still unbearable to watch. So Olivia was again one up on sister rival Joan Fontaine, whose work for Seven Arts-Hammer in The Witches (called The Devil's Own over here) was a most restrained of horrors done by actresses of awkward aging. It was a first lead for Fontaine in a long while, she having surrendered to TV and support work in features unworthy of her. The Devil's Own was a miss, but not a humiliating one for the actress. In fact, it plays familiar for those who'd remember Fontaine in female gothics to which she excelled in the 40's. There was effort at somethingliterate, gore minimized, and good performances by English players well schooled in unspeakables beneath civilized surface (Martin Stephens, the creepy kid from The Innocents and Village Of The Damned, has here grown to teen age). The Devil's Own starts and middles better than it ends, results not so pleasing as Hammer's few-years-later (and similar) The Devil's Bride. Fontaine would surely have got vapors had she noted 20th Fox toss-off of The Devil's Own in the US: it played second to Prehistoric Women in a Hammer combo aimed square at kids and exploit market. The pic had been made for a price, $330K, that should have got twice that back, but domestic rentals of $224K left red ink on 20th books. Region Two has lately given us a Blu-Ray that looks fine, a boost for this show that needs what visual help it can get.