Seven Footprints to Satan (1929)

I was hoping for more from this picture, but that may be due to my age and background. Back in the early 1960’s I luxuriated in the pulp fiction revival brought about by the rediscovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (I still remember fondly the paintings by Roy Krenkel, Jr. and Frank Frazetta that adorned the covers of the Ace paperbacks I collected fervently. In fact, I’m looking at four of them now. But I digress.) After ERB made the scene, Robert E. Howard, Kenneth Robeson, Maxwell Grant, and other pulp magazine scribes returned, among them A. Merritt, and my favorite among the Merritt titles was the 1927 Seven Footprints to Satan. As much as I enjoyed it 50-odd years ago, I’ve haven’t reread it so I don’t know how the plot compares to that of the film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen, but the movie seems sillier than anything I would have liked as a 14 year old.

In the film, Jim (Creighton Hale) has inherited a fortune and wants to spend a good chunk of it exploring Africa. His girlfriend Eve (Thelma Todd) and his Uncle Joe (DeWitt Jennings) want him to stay home and do what sensible millionaires do—seek the Republican nomination for the presidency (joke), but he is determined to do the doctor-Livingston-I-presume thing.

The night before his departure, Jim and Eve are stolen away from a dinner party and taken to a mysterious mansion, the inhabitants of which are devil worshippers looking for a human offering to their deity, and Eve looks like she’ll fit the part perfectly. 

The couple is subjected to the usual run of old dark house gimmickry, including hidden rooms, sliding panels, disguised doors, threatening situations, and an assortment of Satanists so odd looking you’d think that Fellini was the casting director. (Character names include The Spider, The Old Witch, and The Dwarf.) It all wraps up in the kind of conclusion that makes genre film lovers want to put a boot through the screen.

 Hale is fine as the rich nerd who finds surprising heroism when he has to dig for it. The character is essentially the one he played in 1927’s The Cat and the Canary, a similar film. Thelma Todd is the delight of the cast, especially if you know her primarily from her talkies. She’s quite convincing as both bright girlfriend and terrified heroine. She’s slimmer than you’re used to her being and much prettier.

The rest of the cast includes Sheldon Lewis, William V. Mong, Nora Cecil, Kalla Pasha, Harry Tenbrook, Cissy Fitzgerald, Angelo Rossitto, and an uncredited Loretta Young as one of Satan’s victims.

The picture was shot by Sol Polito and edited by Frank Ware.

Seven Footprints to Satan is a moderately entertaining old dark house comedy/mystery, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s far better than The Bat but nowhere as good as The Cat and the Canary. Perhaps the source novel isn’t as suspenseful as I remember. Perhaps Christensen’s witchcraft wasn’t as strong when he worked in America.