The credits tell us this ia "a film by Peter Sasdy".In most cases this can be taken as giving credit where credit is due, but in this case it can only be construed as the producers passing the buck.This was fashined, I think, as a sequel to 'Rosemary's Baby' and a prequel to 'The Exorcist' but lacks entirely the tension underlying the former or the nastiness of the latter. What it does have is the quality of the acting - which is absymal -and Donald Pleasance who provides the only tension by playing a nice quietly-spoken man who you wait to turn into a snarling Mr. Pleasance. Regrettably it does not happen. Joan Collins plays a showgirl cursed by a dwarf at the club where she works. Ralph Bates plays an Italian businessman with a variable accent.Eileen Atkins plays a nun who makes satan sound like a French coastal resort. She keeps referring to the Dayville. Caroline Monroe ,who plays Miss Collins freind, does so with all the conviction and talent that propelled her to the very bottom of the acting tree. It is a film full of scenes that terrify the cast, followed by scenes in which they act as if nothing had happened, and an obligatory soft-focus love-scene,and an opening scene of La Collins writhing,sweating and screaming as her character gives birth -- not a pretty sight.