Recent Reviews
DVD Review: THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER
By

Jonathan Stryker

My favorite decade for film and television is the 1970’s.  Like me, many other genre fans share my love of this period of 10 years wherein Hollywood churned out some of the most entertaining films ever made.  This also goes for TV-movies, or made-for-TV movies, or movies-of-the-week as some call them.  It’s interesting to note that movies made for television sort of began in the late 1950’s as the tug of war between television and movie theaters battled it out for audience viewing.   First movies came around, then television followed and resulted in lower theater attendance.  Movies fired back with drive-ins and wide-screen processes such as Cinemascope and Cinerama to woo movie lovers back.  Likewise, television fired back with movies of the week and later on with the mini-series. 

The success of theatrical releases such as ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE EXORCIST (and later on THE OMEN) made religion and the devil popular at the box office.  Consequently, television rose to the occasion with movies that followed Satanic themes.  Not to be confused with the American title of the Michele Soavi film of the same name, one of them is a nifty TV-movie called THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, originally aired on ABC on January 9, 1973, and it was most definitely “inspired” by Roman Polanski’s aforementioned hit film about a young woman living among a coven of witches.  Shelley Winters, who had just been in WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO? and WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?, stars as Lilith Malone, a woman who tries to befriend the daughter of her murdered friend Alice Shaw (Diane Ladd).  Diane Shaw (Belinda Montgomery) is an independent woman who is persuaded to stay with Lilith and her mute servant Mr. Howard (Jonathan Frid) in her Pacific Grove, CA mansion.  During her stay, she is introduced to other friends of Lilith’s who all behave in a rather peculiar manner – they appear to be too overly cheerful as to border on phoniness.  When Diane decides to move in with a friend and pay her own rent, Lilith practically throws a tantrum demanding to know why Diane would leave Lilith’s gift-given hospitality.  Diane is taken aback, and Lilith apologizes.  Without giving away too much, you can pretty much figure out how the story is going to end.  But, that’s not to say that the film is not worth seeing. The film represents this sort of genre tale from its heyday and I truly miss these movies.