Night of the Demon

Year of Release:  1957
Director:  Jacques Tourneur
Screenplay:  Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester, based on the short story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James
Starring:  Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis
Running Time:  82 minutes (96 minutes original cut)
Genre:  Horror

American psychologist John Holden (Andrews) arrives for a conference in England, and learns that Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham), one of the professors he was supposed to meet has died, in what appears to be a strange accident.  Holden discovers that Harrington was intending to discredit occultist Dr. Julian Karswell (MacGinnis) as a fraud.  Firmly skeptical on all things supernatural, Holden continues the professor's work, with the aid of the Harrington's niece, Joanna (Cummins).  However, soon Holden's rationality is put to the test when Karswell places a curse on him, and Holden begins to suspect that he is pursued by a powerful force.

This is an adaptation of the story "Casting the Runes" by acclaimed British academic and ghost story writer M. R. James.  James and director Jacques Tourneur would seem to be a good fit.  Tourneur built a reputation with films like Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), in which the supernatural was hinted at rather than shown, with deep shadows and skewed camera angles, and James would build his ghost stories carefully and deliberately with daily life gradually being dominated by a supernatural force.  However, in this film, the monster, a "Fire Demon", is shown in all it's rubbery glory right at the beginning and right at the end, apparently against Tourneur's wishes.  The demon's appearances do feel shoehorned into the film, and it would certainly be more effective without it's appearance at the beginning, which takes away a lot of the film's suspense as to whether any of the apparently supernatural occurances were genuine or not, although the demon has become something of an iconic image.  However, even with that it is a strong and suspenseful film, with some striking visual style.  The performances are solid for the most part, despite the unfortunate decision to use white actor Peter Elliott to play Professor Kumar.  Niall MacGinnis adds an element of camp humour to the sinister Professor Karswell.  The film was shortened and retitled Curse of the Demon for it's US release, and some of the dialogue is sampled for the Kate Bush song "Hounds of Love", and it is also referenced in the opening song for Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

       Night of the Demon

Night of the Demon

Year: 1957
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Screenplay: Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester, based on the short story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James
Starring: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Athene Seyler
Running Time: 95 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural

Summary: American scientist Dr. John Holden (Andrews) arrives in England to work with Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham), who was planning to expose a notorious Satanic cult led by Dr. Julian Karswell (MacGinnis) at a convention. However, when Holden arrives he is told that Harrington died the previous night in strange circumstances. Harrington's neice, Joanna (Cummins), believes that Karswell summoned a demon to kill Harrington, but the sceptical Holden laughs this off. As Holden continues the investigation into Karswell, he discovers that he has been slipped a paper covered with runic symbols, and is informed that he is in for three days of increasing supernatural terror before the demon comes for him.

Opinions: This British film (which was released under the title Curse of the Demon in the USA) is often acclaimed as one of the great horror films. In his previous films, such as Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943), Tourneur developed a reputation for hinting at the horror without explicitly showing it, the idea being that often what you don't see is scarier than what you do see. This film uses a lot of his trademark style, such as deep shadows surrounding the characters, odd camera angles and the use of sound more than visuals to hint at the horror. However, the film's producers decided to show the demon itself right at the beginning of the movie, against the director's wishes (Tourneur later stated that "the audience should never have been completely certain of seeing the demon"), although, despite the common belief that the demon shots were inserted after the principal shooting was finished, some have said that showing the demon was planned early on in the production. The addition of the demon has long been divisive among fans of the movie. I think the film would have been stronger if the creature was implied rather than explicitly shown, and, certainly when seen today, the rubbery looking monster is almost more comical than scary.
The film's producer Hal E. Chester did not endear himself either to the film's star, Dana Andrews (who said that he would walk off the set if Chester did not stop interfering with Tourneur's work) or to screenwriter Charles Bennett (who, unhappy at changes to the script made by Chester, said that if Chester "walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead").
However, despite the production problems, the film remains a powerful and genuinely chilling film, with some great performances, in particular from Niall MacGinnis, as the avuncular but evil Karswell, complete with the most diabolic beard in cinema history.
Incidentally M. R. James, who wrote the original story, "Casting the Runes", is one of the greatest horror writers Britain ever produced. His stories, while not particularly gruesome, are genuinely creepy and very well worth checking out.
Similar territory to "Casting the Runes" and Night of the Demon was explored more recently in the Sam Raimi film Drag Me to Hell (2009), the basic storyline of which is quite similar to this one.


The controversial monster from Night of the Demon