CURSE OF THE DEMON Movie Review

Night of the Demon
The Haunted

Montague James's story “Casting the Runes” was the basis for this satisfyingly creepy horror film, made in 1958 by the legendary director Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, Cat People). While visiting London, psychologist and believer in all things rational John Holden (Dana Andrews) has an unpleasant encounter with one Dr. Karswell (Niall MacGinnis in an exhilaratingly villainous performance). Karswell, it seems, has been toying with the occult and rather successfully conjuring demons. His method: a slip of paper on which Karswell has transcribed ancient runes must be passed to another person—when that person accepts the paper, even unwittingly, a demon will, at the appointed hour, materialize and carry the hapless victim to hell. By the time Holden becomes a believer and realizes what the paper he's carrying in his pocket means, only minutes remain for him to alter his horrible fate. Curse of the Demon builds from a carefully shaded series of scenes that suggest the evil at work here without rubbing our faces in it. Against Toumeur's wishes, the picture's American distributor insisted that a real monster be shown at least once, so a demon was built for the film's final sequence (it even made the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland). All purists are supposed to hate this big rubber demon, but I've always liked him. Blame it on my less refined side. With or without him though, this is a genuinely unnerving and richly atmospheric horror film—one of the very best of the 1950s. Recently restored to its original British running time, but not to its British title, which is Night of the Demon.

NEXT STOP … Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie, Carnival of Souls

1957 81 m/B GB Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham, Athene Seyler, Liam Redmond, Reginald Beckwith, Ewan Roberts, Peter Elliott, Brian Wilde; D: Jacques Tourneur; W: Charles Bennett, Hal E. Chester; C: Edward Scaife. VHS, LV GKK, MLB