Night of the Demon

Jacques Tourneur – 1957 – England

Fondly remembered as quite a rarity in 1950s cinema – a thought-provoking and actually spooky horror film – Night of the Demon does not monkey around as it deals with the occult and Satanism head on, in a way that seems quite bold in the context of contemporary films and would not become familiar until a full decade later in films like Rosemary’s Baby and Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out (both 1968).  Dana Andrews plays an American psychologist and lifelong skeptic in the same deadpan manner in which he spent his whole career playing deadpan detectives, soldiers and executives.  He arrives in London to debunk a famous demonologist (Niall MacGinnis) who in turn puts a hex on Andrews condemning him to die at the Devil’s hands at a specific date and time.  Allowing some suspense over whether or not the supernatural exists might have been fun too, but the film doesn’t do that, diving right in, in its opening scene, to unambiguous depictions of the gigantic devil-demon that MacGinnis is able to conjure.  Director Tourneur – a veteran of classic Val Lewton chillers like Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) – infuses the film with eerie atmospherics, whether in a séance, a chase through the woods at night, or in a memorably effective scene in which a sudden windstorm disrupts a children’s Halloween party at a serene countryside estate.  Perhaps most of all, the film owes its charm to the imperious performance of MacGinnis as the villainous occultist.  As contrasted with the monotonous, expressionless Andrews, he is so blasé and unabashed in his commitment to Satan that it’s downright hilarious at times.  He marks enemies for death in the same satisfaction-in-a-job-well-done as you might see in a family doctor handing a lollypop to a young patient.  (Released in edited form in the U.S. as Curse of the Demon.)