You know how the villain loses his menace when you see him too often or he won’t stop talking?

113. Devilday – Angus Hall

This 1969 “unique novel of Black Magic and Gothic suspense” has a pretty iconic paperback cover – a taxidermied goat’s head with a black candle between its horns, a frog below sitting on its beard, and a cord draped over it, plus some leaves and moss for garnish. It sort of makes you think there might be more to this “high-tension thriller” than a libertine American actor coming to the UK to restart his career, drinking and injecting and sexing his way through society and becoming really popular and then busted and the engaged journalist assigned to be his personal assistant who is both trying to be rid of him and just sort of accepting all of his terrible behavior with a wry smile and staring at his tremendous amount of body hair. Apparently the body hair is a “foetal coat”…which sounds terrible when describing a grown man. He also has some “sex ointment” that he puts all over himself all the time which totally smells weird, even the journalist guy’s fiancée, who is a totally liberated lady says it smells weird in a bad way.

Anyhow, there is a pretty extensive scene of occult worship which involves not-metaphorical ass kissing of said ointment smeared American actor and it seems like it will end in sacrifice…but then it doesn’t…but then the woman who was to be the sacrifice is found decapitated and it seems like there should be some tension ratcheting, but I just didn’t feel it. Perhaps it was all the British reserve on display. I kept wondering when the scary was going to kick in or the suspense because it didn’t have any change of pace and it wasn’t a relentless pace to begin with. Personal assistant stress was the main level of tension reached. That’s not really hyphenate worthy “high-tension.” I mean, they didn’t even try to sacrifice the journalist guy or his fiancée even when they were kind of obviously a threat to future occult activities. I don’t get it.

 

Like all guinea pigs, Belvedere was born with all his hair and his eyes open; he did not use these advantages for occult worship or an acting career despite his butt being covered with obviously natural little white pants.