THE CONJURERS

In spite of the quite some scenes of blood-and-other-lust, this doesn't succeed in turning another evening of evil into a real fright night. Something's missing, that ineffable something, although the idea is clever and one can never be sure just who is behind the dreadful things taking place in Domeshaven, a little village on the Downs near Stonehenge. There Easter Mulraven, a gentle, maternal, middle-aged woman who has lost her parents and her husband, takes in a group of assorted youngsters -- mostly Americans -- who are resented by the locals and branded as ""Satan's scum."" As well they might be, particularly because of their leader Tom Brude and his affinity with Madame Blavatsky and his ""mind-control"" games. On the other hand the natives, as granite-faced as the sacred stones, have among them a butcher who had carved up his mother as skillfully as chuck, who lurks in the freezer and the graveyard where he's always digging a spare, and. . . and. . .the almost daily deaths and disappearances to fill the plot and plots. Those inured by The Exorcist may not even notice that the old Stonehenge setting seems to have been taken over by the California beach scene of Charles Manson.