Sorry, Denis, That Was Uncalled For...

[poliphilo]

I shouldn't have called Wheatley a lousy writer because he's keeping me entertained and if he was really lousy I'd have given up by now. There are things he's not very good at, notably characterisation and dialogue, but set-piece action sequences are very much his thing- and the scene in which the Duke gate-crashes an open-air Satanic orgy in his Hispano-Suiza while his musclebound young American friend, standing on the car's running board, dematerializes the Goat of Mendes by chucking a crucifix at it is pretty damn exciting. I'm at the half-way mark and the Duke and the young American have been called away and the chief Satanist has just turned up at the rambling mansion (in Wheatley's world all the houses "ramble") where no-one stands between him and his intended victim but the tiny Russian princess and her goofy husband- and I'm really quite keen to find out what happens next.

I haven't seen the film of the book (only clips) but it has a high reputation. Wheatley seems made for the movies- and I wonder why he hasn't been adapted more often.

Comments

[strange_complex]

Ah, that makes sense as in the film Rex obviously knows her and her husband of old (I think he's related to them, actually), but get very little explanation of how. Indeed, to be fair the wife could be of Russian ancestry but have been brought up in England since childhood so that it's no longer detectable.

If I remember rightly there is also an actual Russian princess in the film, but she is not tiny or the mistress of the house to which Mocata comes in search of Tanith. Rather, she's simply a member of Mocata's Satanic circle.