End of the movie seems very poor; can anyone make sense of the ending?
Matthew Hopkins: Men sometimes have strange motives for the things they do.
- Witchfinder General
I'm surprised anyone would ask this question.
Admittedly, the events of the ending are very confusing, but the script gives Christopher Lee a whole speech wherein he explains everything: that these terrifying things did happen, that time was changed and events undone and now everything is all right with the world.
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because the horse man had turned on the man that summoned it,time was reversed so that the kidnapping of the child and the chase to save her never happened.
shareChristopher Lee's Richleau even explains that the sacred incantations he speaks have the potential to alter space and time. The possessed woman at the end repeats the chant from beyond and everything goes back to normal for our heroes. The straight laced good guys win, liberal evil is punished. It's kind of a deus ex machina, but still a killer ride and one of the most fluid Hammer films and most satisfying Hammer climaxes.
shareIf you read the book the ending makes more sense. When Duc de Richleau says the lines from the Susama Ritual to protect them from the Angel of Death, their Astral Bodies are ejected from the physical bodies in the Pentagram & travel to the Astral Plane where the battle against Mocata continues (although the characters are not aware of being in this alternate dimension). When the ritual lines are repeated at the end their Astral Bodies return to the physical bodies inside the Pentagram (in the book this is done with the help of an Ascended Master).
The film doesn't go into that explanation, (instead using a time reversal to solve matters). Some further explanations as well as a subplot of Mocata finding an ancient occult talisman fleshes out the story.
Only decent thing was Charles Gray....and that was about it :/
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