[Stardust] acted as a purgative for the Sixties: out came all the hard home-truths in dialogue as briskly paced as it was deeply scathing. There was not a jot of sympathy for any particular devil. For this reason, and against these times, it was a much more important picture than That’ll Be the Day. The earlier film had been about innocence and temptation: this one was about manipulation and exorcism.
Alexander Walker, National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties (London, Harrap, 1985), p. 76
