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Hammer House of Horror: The Mark of Satan tells the story of morgue attendant Edwyn Rord (Peter EcEnery) who is new to the job, three days in & a body turns up of someone who died in theatre named Samuel Holt. Samuel died because he tried to drill a hole in his own head to 'let the demons out', while stitching the body back together after the autopsy Edwyn picks his finger with the needle he is using & quickly becomes convinced that he is now infected with demons himself. Edwyn sees conspiracies in everything & everyone which leads to gruesome consequences...

The Mark of Satan was episode 13 of this unfairly short lived British horror anthology TV series produced by Hammer studios & it turned out to be the final episode in a quality series, this originally aired here in the UK during December 1980 & was the second of two Hammer House of Horror episodes to be directed by Don Leaver (the show's opener Witching Time was the other) & as with the other episodes I've seen I really rather liked this. The scripts for this series usually focused on a traditional horror themes such as voodoo, Werewolves, ghosts, witches & haunted houses but The Mark of Satan is a departure from that & isn't so much a straight forward horror film as a psychological thriller with horror overtones that I could describe as Jacob's Ladder (1990) as if was made by Hammer, on a low budget. The script by Don Shaw is a clever little tale of paranoia that's quite effective at what it sets out to do, you can sort of see Edwyn's point of view & what's going on even though he's totally bonkers, or then again considering the twist ending is he? At only 50 odd minutes in length this moves along at a nice pace, it never bores & the central premise is pretty interesting & draws you in to Edwyn's paranoia filled world...

The low TV budgets didn't help on this series but Hammer experience at making feature films obviously helped & this looks very good, quite cinematic having been shot on 35mm film rather than cheap videotape & a lot better than a lot of British TV from this era. There's no scares in this one although there's some suspense & a decent atmosphere. There's some gore here, there are various blood stained autopsy equipment, a brain in a tray & a bloody stabbing.

The Mark of Satan is a different sort of Hammer House of Horror episode that maybe isn't for everyone but I liked it all the same. A great way to round off a generally excellent series, it's a crime they don't make stuff like this anymore. Followed by Hammer House of Mystery of Suspense (1984) which toned down the horror & exploitative elements for it's intended US TV audience which was missing the point really, wasn't it?

Operating theatre assistant Edwyn Rord, is less than happy at being moved to a new job in the mortuary, he's a little queasy at the sights there, the demeanour of the morticians not helping him settle in. On his third day there he assists on the autopsy of a man named Holt who he learns from the cheerful surgeon, died on the operating theatre after drilling his own head, in the hope of letting out the demon inside, before he died he screamed out to "leave my soul alone". Who was he talking to though? Asks the surgeon, The Surgeon, God or Satan? This seems to unsettle Edwyn even more, he becomes increasingly paranoid, the number 9 seems to turn up a little to often for him, he believes there is a conspiracy of Satanic proportions, that includes his fellow workers, the police and his mother. His investigations, convince him its all true, he allots numbers to the letters of the names of the dead in the mortuary, when added together the number nine or multiples of, turns up every single time, what scares him even more is that his name does also. He finds he has to vent his anger at everyone's ignorance of the situation and shares his fear with Shelly, an unmarried mother who rents a room in his mothers house. She's always been nice to him and her calm denouement makes her the prime candidate to listen to his woes. He relates how all these people have secret ways of communicating, they all wear sunglasses, because he says evil doesn't like sunshine. She seems to encourage him in his thinking, but she also seems to have ulterior motives for doing so. Edwyn investigates Holt's past and finds that he was going to kill and eat a baby at the behest of voices in his head before the police intervened, Edwyn feels all the facts are being deliberately being left for him to discover and he feels he is next in line for the treatment by the Satanists, he already feels he is being drawn to Shelly's baby. The Mark of Satan has an unsettling premise, but Edwyn seems to be at best an unbalanced character, so the viewer is never quite sure if its paranoia, a case of coincidence or simply seeing what one wants to in whatever details one examines. Increasingly it seems that Edwyn is on the verge of a breakdown of psychotic proportions, but somehow the facts do begin to take a pattern and the viewers doubts are soon replaced with the possibility that what he is experiencing is quite real. The problem for Edwyn is that he now believes everyone is involved, even the local priest to whom he calls to for help, arises suspicions, as the hymn numbers there are also multiples of 9. Edwyn feels himself losing control which results in a terrible tragedy. Because of the psychological nature of the topic, we never see what exactly the fear is, its all in the mind, but an air of foreboding does hang over this film, with some elements of Rosemary's Baby rearing their head, especially in the overnice characters suspected of the satanic conspiracy. There is one "Dream" sequence that involves sacrifice and cannibalism that perhaps reveals what was going on, but it brings up more questions, than it answers. It also explores quite well, (for this layman at least) madness and how it can creep up on you and mess with the sanest of minds. Leaver builds the suspense quite well, this isn't as predictable as other films in the series and we are never quite sure how its all going to end. Even in its resolution we are still left thinking we don't really know what was going on, we just don't know all the facts, there are many questions left unanswered but strangely, this doesn't leave one feeling cheated. As episodes go this still holds up very well, i dare say even a modern audience might find some parts of it entertaining.

A hospital morgue attendant (Peter McEnery) becomes increasingly paranoid over the number nine, coming across it multiple times during his daily work and home routine. He's so convinced that it has demonic implications and is central to a conspiracy to harm him that he even seeks out a family priest (Antony Brown) for help. But no explanation will assuage his suspicions, and in a fit of pique winds up stabbing his own mother to death. Oddly, the family's upstairs tenant (Georgina Hale) is strangely nonplussed about all this, and helps dispose of the body in what looked to be a downstairs freezer. As his paranoia grows and overtakes him, Edwyn winds up in a psychiatric hospital for three months, seemingly cured of his persecution mania. But the thoughts soon consume him once more, until the program ends the way it began with a different mental patient, with Edwyn attempting to drill a hole into his head to allow his paranoia to escape.

I thought this was a perfectly creepy episode of 'Hammer House of Horror', although I thought one thing could have made it even better. Remember the Beatles song 'Revolution 9', in which John Lennon repeatedly states the phrase 'Number 9' in staccato fashion? If you listen to it in it's entirety, it does seem like it could drive you crazy. But the kicker is, when played backwards, it's reputed to say 'Turn me on dead man', which contributed largely to a Death of Paul (McCartney) urban legend in the late Sixties.

Middle-aged mortuary assistant Edwyn (an excellent and energetic performance by Patrick McEnery) begins to believe that the forces of evil are at work against him after he starts seeing the number nine everywhere.

Director Don Weaver keeps the gripping story moving along at a fast pace, generates a good deal of tension, delivers a generous amount of graphic gore, and adroitly crafts a fascinating morbid and paranoid atmosphere. Moreover, the fine acting by the tip-top cast keeps this show humming, with especially stand-out contributions from Georgina Hale as the sweet Stella, Emrys Jones as sarcastic coroner Dr. Harris, Antony Brown as a helpful priest, Peter Birrel as the chipper Markham, and Anne Dyson as Edwyn's shrewish mother Mrs. Rord. Norman Warwick's sharp cinematography and Paul Patterson's shuddery score are both up to par. A worthy final episode.

Don Leaver directs and Don Shaw provided the screenplay for this 1980 Hammer produced short for their short lived TV series - in fact this presentation is the last in the series of what was released, pity.

Morgue attendant Edwyn Rord (Peter McEnery) is paranoid that everyone is plotting against him, his proof is discovering the number 9 in every day situations, either mentioned by his plotting colleagues, his doting mother, or even written down in paperwork or articles he reads. Everything points to the number nine from here on in, betting results, morgue drawers, the number of pencils on his desk - everything. Edwyn lives at home with his mum (Annie Dyson) and their lodger Stella (Georgina Hale) and her baby. A fresh cadaver turns up at the morgue for Edwyn to work on, the body of Samuel Holt who died while drilling a hole into his own frontal lobe via his skull in an attempt to release evil demons from within his mind. While working on the cadaver Edwyn pricks his finger and becomes convinced that any demons inside Holt have spread to him like a blood based virus. Despite treating the cut Edwyn believes his life will topple down even faster now than before - well of course, now that he's got demons inside of him too. What starts off as a paranoia based horror has the occasional black humour twist as Edywn gets more and more carried away by the number nine and subsequently tries to convince people. Eventually Edwyn comes to the conclusion that his mother is more involved in the Devils work than she admits so he kills her and with Stella's help they hide the body in a chest freezer (there goes the ice cream!). Shortly after this Edwyn's condition gets worse culminating in him collapsing. Before regaining full consciousness he has some short lived dreams which add to the random insanity on- screen. Fast forward and Edwyn recovers, of sorts anyway - he stops telling people about his paranoia and that's good enough to fool the world. Upon returning to work Edywn waits for his opportunity and then locks himself in his morgue alone with only a surgical drill.

Peter McEnery is a great central character, believable and heartfelt. As a star vehicle in this short production he carries the story across the finish line. It's just a pity that this was the last in the line for the TV produced Hammer shorts as I am sure he could have gone on to appear in a lot more. I'm awarding this 6 out of 10, it's like a short cheap version of some films from recent times which look at numbers or patterns within dark culture, "The number 23" for example or "The Ninth gate". Enjoy!!

I'm a bit of a Hammer fan, well anything macabre. I watched this series over a number of weeks and as much as some of them weren't great, most of them imho made the grade. This final episode was about a man who has started to have mental problems whilst working in a hospital. He's seeing the number nine or numbers that add up to nine which apparently relate to the devil. I empathised with how he was affected and the way he was losing his mind. It does get a bit weird and he's finally broken when he thinks that he recalls/realises what he has done, just when he thought that he was on the mend. Is it too late?