Robert Black – The Satanists (Futura, 1978,176 p.)
The serenity of the countryside is shattered by the dark and brutal rituals of the past …
THE SATANISTS
The undreamt-of horrors of the night herald, for them, the promise of eternal life, despite the memory of one man's shattered body nailed to a cross. But the Messiah has been dead two thousand years. Now is the time of the Anti-Christ …
THE SATANISTS
Explores the hideous secrets of the occult more disturbingly than ever before.The back-text is mainly rubbish. Still this is an interesting book. Written by Robert Holdstock as Robert Black, this is like
The Ghoul by Guy N. Smith a novelization of a British horror movie. But one which never got made.
The Satanists was to be a Tyburn movie, directed by Freddie Francis and starring Peter Cushing. Co-stars were meant to be Trevor Howard and Joan Collins. Supposedly it was based on Wheatley's
The Satanist, but this is quite hard to believe. The copyright of this is by Tyburn Publishing, an arm of Tyburn Film. Everything was on the go, but then financing collapsed and it was never made. But apparantly the novelization was already done. It was published a few years later.
As some writer researched when interviewing Guy N. Smith about his novelization of The Ghoul, Tyburn had exact ideas about their novelization. So it is to believe that Holdstock did embellish the plot much or at all.
The story without too many spoilers:
In the prologue a stranger runs out of gas in one of those nice hostile British villages in the country. He comes to a barn where there is a satanic mass and ends up crucified.
Later teacher and vicar Simon Barnes, a widower who lives with his beautiful daughter Felicity in Oxford, receives a telegram by his old friend Geoffrey who calls for help. Barnes is a man of religious conviction who KNOWS the devil is at large. He and Geoffrey met him in Africa in the rites of primitive tribes.
Barnes and daughter drive to the little village, but Geoffrey is dying. He was the vicar. Protected by a pentagram he is wasting away in his bed, done in by Black Magic. Barnes can't save him but knows Satan is at work. The church is haunted, the villagers hostile and the enigmatic Marchese and Marchesa de Salenco are satanists. The Marchesa wants to introduce virginal Felicity to her shy son Xavier at once. Or does she want to sacrifice her? Barnes just apooints himself as the new vicar and goes into battle against the forces of darkness.
I only watched Tyburn's Legend of the Werewolf which I thought so-so. Holdstock's novelization didn't change my mind about Tyburn. The screenplay attributed to Anthony Hinds is a strange mixture of the old and tired in terms of characters and setting, and some strong and effective horror scenes, which seem to cater to the new times and tastes of the audience.
"And she saw the awful thing that watched her, an inch away, a skull covered by thin, yellowing skin, and already a squirming maggot crawling across the rotten nose; the mouth was open and something writhed and twisted in that dark cavity, behind the teeth, where the dark, putrefying flesh was hanging off the bone". [Felicity is kind of attacked by the corpse of Geoffrey in the night, which may be a dream or not.]
The time of the story is held a bit vague in the novel, it could be the 50s or the 60s. But no rebels or swinging here, everybody is characterized as a bit stuffy, and the characters are too much by the numbers. Felicity is the typical dutiful daughter of all Hammer Movies, while the vicar just needs his faith and a prayer to win, which frankly is boring. (And I have a hard time seeing Cushing in this role, he just seems too old, like he did in Dracula A.D.72].) It is all a bit dull and seen to often on the screen.
Still for all its cosy interludes and old-fashionedness the novel has a good tempo and is quite entertaining. Holdstock did good work here, no doubt about it. Even if this must be the most boring cover in the history of British horror novels. It is even a bit racy at times, from the orgy at the begining - "In the middle of the smoky confusion the naked figures of men and woman could be seen, writhing in each other's grasps, across the cushions and the floor, laughing and shrieking their pleasure ... and above these sounds, the mysterious chanting of prayer, coming from the twleve grouped figures in flowing robes and tall, pointed hoods who stood around the altar and watched the fleshy games before them" - to the last scene. But I can't imagine this or the climatic battle at the end with the Goat of Mendes being brought to the screen, as a naked Felicity is being offered to the goat.
Maybe Holdstock did a bit embellishing of his own. Who can say? And if, he did it well.
