Oldie Occult Movies

[Xenophon]

Recently I saw a movie called "The Ninth Gate" and I loved it because it dealt with two subjects I like very much...books and the occult.
I won't spoil the movie but if you're into books, the left hand path, occult secrets, the human existence and the complexities associated with that, or just the search for the truth(which in the case of the movie is about the three books the main character is dealing with), this might interest you.

It may not be for everyone though, for some this can be boring or "pretentious" or "ridiculous".
I, myself, liked the movie.

I love that movie. It, plus The Libertine (admittedly non-occult), were enough to make me forgive Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Carribean.

 

[Xingtian]

Since someone mentioned Jacques Tourneur's excellent Night of the Demon (inspired by MR James' story "Casting the Runes" by the way) Tourneur also did two great occult films for Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People. (He also did my favorite noir, Out of the Past). Another Val Lewton production worth a watch is The Seventh Victim which involves a satanic club in Greenwich Village.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Since someone mentioned Jacques Tourneur's excellent Night of the Demon (inspired by MR James' story "Casting the Runes" by the way) Tourneur also did two great occult films for Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People. (He also did my favorite noir, Out of the Past). Another Val Lewton production worth a watch is The Seventh Victim which involves a satanic club in Greenwich Village.

ooh thank you for those recommendations! I've seen NotD and Cat People, but not the other two

 

[neilwilkes]

The ninth gate & Rosemary's baby is all I can think of at the moment.

I found the wicker man too boring but maybe I'll give it another watch.

The 9th Gate is lot of fun - and the French Girl's eyes are incredible too.
Rosemary's Baby was okay at the time, but on a recent rewatch I found it tedious and Mia Farrow overplays her role dreadfully.
The Wicker Man (I will assume we mean the Edward Woodward original version and not the abysmal remake with Nicholas Cage hamming it up) definitely depends on which of the 3 different cuts you see. The Theatrical release was brutally edited to cut the running time down, and the Director's Original cut is far superior. I don't think I have got around to watching what is called the 'Ultimate Cut' yet even though it's on the Blu-Ray edition I bought recently. You have to be in the right mood for this film, IMO.

Post automatically merged: Jun 26, 2024

Cmon i thought you guys were pros
The Devil Rides Out
Starring the once in a thousand years OG "thats not what a person being stabbed in the back sounds like" "You will not only lose your sanity but your soul as well" Sir madaphucking Christopher Lee
In short- a sherlockian dude with his Watson counterpart try to save a man from the grips of an evil cult, includes nifty shows of group ritual work but its real appeal is in the singular "spells" being used - the hero refuses to utter a spell, a single word, despite being in a do or die moment implying much greater fear of consequence than just death, i really appreciated that.

Second, its not an oldie but i highly suggest anyone with a taste for the occult to check out
A Dark Song (2016)
A mother seeks the help of an occultist to speak to her dead child
70% of this movie is perfect, the final one or two acts are then hijacked by the movie nerds and it becomes a let down, it is the only movie i have watched over five times (voluntarily), the larger half of the movie deals with the prep and ritual work but more importantly it touches on the operation from the human side, are you honest about what you truly want?i would add a few more questions to make it sounder cooler but less is more and differentiating what a magus wants from what he needs is a mountain of its own.

The Devil Rides Out I recently bought on a restored Blu-Ray, complete with extras about the restoration process (such as how if you count every edit made they come to something like 1,500,000 edits - admittedly these were mainly in the SFX, which were done on the cheap at the time) but what I found really irritating about it was the way so much was dropped from the original book and the result did not really hang together all that well. The screenplay also introduced a lot of plot holes - Matheson cropped so much out of the book it's not funny, and the worst one was the elimination of why Mocata went to such extremes to recover Simon Aaron - this is simply ignored in the film, yet in the book it is revealed he is vitalo for a certain ritual because of his natal chart that is required in order to rediscover something called The Talisman Of Set which will unloose the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse and bring about Armageddon. There are others, but I would need to re-read the book & rewatch the film to write them all down properly as my memory is not what is once was, sad to say, on things like Movie Trivia.

I seem to recall an interview claiming they had baptized a baby into some dark shenanigans during filming
I could see the main bad guy being a Crowley including his cult having some resemblance but that is just speculation on my part.

Nah - the character of Mocata was based on someone else - name escapes me, but Richard Matheson mentions it in one of the extras on the UK Blu-ray restored version. Crowley was one of the people who Wheatley talked to often in order to get an accurate/realistic background for his novels.

 

[Crows&Ravens]

The 9th Gate is lot of fun - and the French Girl's eyes are incredible too.
Rosemary's Baby was okay at the time, but on a recent rewatch I found it tedious and Mia Farrow overplays her role dreadfully.
The Wicker Man (I will assume we mean the Edward Woodward original version and not the abysmal remake with Nicholas Cage hamming it up) definitely depends on which of the 3 different cuts you see. The Theatrical release was brutally edited to cut the running time down, and the Director's Original cut is far superior. I don't think I have got around to watching what is called the 'Ultimate Cut' yet even though it's on the Blu-Ray edition I bought recently. You have to be in the right mood for this film, IMO.

Yep, I was referring to the original Wicker Man. I won't even bother watching the remake as remakes tend to ruin it.

Going to have to re-watch Rosemary's Baby, and The Wicker Man as I wasn't aware of different cuts. It was a long time ago since I watched it so opinion might change.

 

[neilwilkes]

I don't know if there is a different cut of 'Rosemary's Baby' but there are definitely 3 cuts of TWM.

 

[DaleCooper]

Surprised nobody mentioned Suspiria. Many Argento movies but particularly The Three Mothers trilogy explore various aspects of the occult.

 

[SkullTraill]

Surprised nobody mentioned Suspiria. Many Argento movies but particularly The Three Mothers trilogy explore various aspects of the occult.

Is this the dancing/ballet related one? I remember watching this and it being one of the only movies that I ever had to turn off due to how absolutely unsettling it was. Body horror is the least palatable genre for me.

That being said, was it obviously occult related?

 

[DaleCooper]

Is this the dancing/ballet related one? I remember watching this and it being one of the only movies that I ever had to turn off due to how absolutely unsettling it was. Body horror is the least palatable genre for me.

That being said, was it obviously occult related?

Yes, the original is from 1977 and there was a remake done in 2018. It’s without a doubt occult related — it’s about a coven of witches operating from within a prestigious German dance academy. Aspects of the film such as witchcraft and goddess imagery abound.

 

[frater_pan]

That version of The Dunwich Horror is fantastic.

The 1970 Dunwich Horror is fantastic. The 2008 version in which Dean Stockwell plays Dr. Armitage and Jeffrey Combs plays Wilbur Whateley wasn't bad, exactly (okay, lots of people thought it was) but the 1970's version is a masterpiece.

Post automatically merged: Apr 17, 2025

Another old one is "Simon: King of the Witches" with Andrew Prine as the magus Simon. You can find it on YouTube.

 

[jkeller293]

Well other people may not see this as an occult movie but i do. "He Who Gets Slapped" (1924) which was the first MGM movie. To me i feel like silent movies are superior to modern movies based on their artistic expression.

Post automatically merged: Apr 29, 2025

Well other people may not see this as an occult movie but i do. "He Who Gets Slapped" (1924) which was the first MGM movie. To me i feel like silent movies are superior to modern movies based on their artistic expression.

And if you have not seen this movie watch it. Its a masterpiece.