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Introduction
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MARK OF THE DEVIL
"Adrian didn’t want me around, obviously, and I didn’t want to be around either, by that time. I’d really had enough of just about everything. Also, I wasn’t too concerned about the editing," he points out, "because I always cut in camera - an old director’s trick which producers hate because it means you can only edit the film one way and leaves the editor with virtually no room to manoeuvre." Armstrong remained in the UK throughout the rest of post-production, including the sound dub.
Of the famous missing end scene where the dead rise from their graves to claim Christian from Vanessa, he says: "I gather they had no idea of its meaning in the film or what to do with it. Even my PA who had been overseeing the cut had no idea how I’d planned to incorporate the footage, so they simply didn’t use it. It’s a pity." Distribution: The film premiered in Germany and became one of the year’s biggest box-office successes. When screened at the Cannes Film Festival, it achieved such notoriety that it became the talk of the marketplace for years afterwards. At the time, no film had ever shown violence so relentlessly and with such uncompromising brutality on a screen. Many countries, including the UK, banned the film outright or enforced cuts as savage as the reviews. Despite this, wherever it played, it broke box office records and provoked outcry and controversy. In particular, it proved to be one of the year’s major box-office sensations when it opened in America, where the film’s distributors, Hallmark, notoriously came up with the gimmick of issuing vomit bags in the theatres. Plans to open it in the UK however, collapsed when the film was banned outright. The complete uncut version of the film is still banned in the UK theatrically, on video and on DVD. Even today, the film, now widely considered to be one of the top all-time cult classics of the horror genre, still courts controversy and engenders as much vehement criticism as it does fanatical adulation. "Looking back," Armstrong concludes, "It was yet another learning ground. Why Adrian behaved the way he did, I’ve really no idea. I think, possibly, like Kalinke [Director of Photography], he may have resented my age. I encountered that quite a lot in those days, in the same way I encountered quite a lot of jealousy from certain people who should have known better. Today, it’s easy to forget how different things were then and how - well - unique, really, the idea of my being a director at such a young age and with no background was, at that time. I mean, people like Adrian had been in the business for years and built a career for themselves in a tough industry where you’re expected to pay your dues. I must have appeared not only very presumptious but a threat - because, in effect, my insisting on doing what I wanted to It was as a direct response to The Haunted House Of Horror and Mark Of The Devil that Armstrong swore he would never direct a film again unless he had creative and producing control. "Other film makers had managed it. I had to learn how they achieved that," he explains. "I had to learn how to play 'front office' in order to protect my creative work" - and so I completely changed my career path from that point onwards. Mark Of The Devil 2 (German title: Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequält) et al: Despite certain listings where the pseudonym Sergio Casstner appears as one of the screenwriters, Armstrong had nothing to do with Mark Of The Devil 2 at any stage. When approached, Armstrong refused even to discuss it. As a consequence, Hoven, now making creative and directorial claims for the original film’s success, was able to The resultant film, however, failed to achieve any kind of interest, following or box office success. Mark Of The Devil 3, Mark Of The Devil 4, Mark Of The Devil 5 and Mark Of The Devil 6 were simply USA distributors’ title changes to acquired product, hoping to cash in on the original. 
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Post Production: This was done in Munich by Hoven. Armstrong remained in the UK.
He continues, "When I did eventually see the finished result just about every shot was pretty much in the right order, albeit somewhat crudely put together. My only complaints were the ghastly voice over of Christ’s words on the cross, the abrupt muzak outbursts every time Christian and Vanessa look at each other in the early scenes and the inappropriate use of Chopin during the sex scene - which is the only confused piece of editing as I’d shot it for a montage of dissolves."
do meant he’d lost control of his own movie - and, of course, originally this was a project he’d personally written and wanted to direct, so for me to come and, in effect, sweep him under the carpet and come up with a completely different movie - ? I mean, he never really got Dr Dracula out of his head. That was the movie he’d wanted to make and that was the movie he expected me to make - not Mark Of The Devil. So, really there we were: a producer still trying to make one film while his director was making another. He was also very much of the older German school of "Storm und drang" whereas I, of course, came from the English/American film background of a post war generation. I’m sure he was, in private, a charming and delightful man. I certainly didn’t have any problems with him except in connection with the film, itself, but by the end, the rift was so great between us there was no way we could even have been left in the same room together. I especially felt sorry for his wife, Joyce, who was a lovely lady and, I believe, was genuinely distressed to see us fighting so much. I remember, during the early days in Munich, she did so much to try and calm things down and get everything back onto a friendly and harmonious way of working but, ultimately, it proved impossible."
achieve, with the sequel, what he’d wanted to do with the original film. He wrote, directed and produced Mark Of The Devil 2, himself. Alongside Anton Diffring and Reginald Nalder, he again, cast himself and his son, Percy in lead roles. |
Copyright © 2005 Michael Armstrong |