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| John Hobart (Dana Andrews) at Stonehenge investigates the clue of the parchment runes. Or as The Rocky Horror Show irreverently put it in 1975: "Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes and passing them used lots of skills." |
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| What did Rand Hobart see on the night of the murder, the night of the demon? |
Sure, this supernatural creature may have been spawned by the Prince of Darkness rather than Oppenheimer and his science boys, but wouldn't a monster from the literal Hell be damn scary too? And indeed it was, when the film first showed up back in 1957, under British auspices, under the title Night of the Demon. (In the US in 1958, where it had some minutes shorn, it was known, rather more pulpishly, as Curse of the Demon).
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For inspiration, the filmmakers drew not upon some sci-fi author but rather a proper Edwardian don and amateur ghost story writer, one Montague Rhodes James, aka M. R. James, to my mind the greatest ghostly yarn spinner of them all. His original book of horror tales, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) is, I think, the greatest such collection extant.
Night of the Demon actually is based on a later James short story, "Casting the Runes," which is drawn from a follow-up volume, predictably titled More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. (1911) Give the people what they want, what? I have reviewed that volume here.
On rereading it a few years ago, I realized that, as with the case of Robert Bloch's Psycho, I liked the film better than the short story, where the action seems to me a bit attenuated, though there are some brilliant bits and the overall conception too is brilliant--demonically brilliant.
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| MR James |
I have a great yen for classic horror films and my favorites in this field--Night of the Demon, Night of the Living Dead, Psycho, The Birds, The Spiral Staircase, The Innocents, The Haunting, The Old Dark House, Frankenstein, to site a few--are some of my all-time favorite films in general. I think Night of the Demon generally does not get quite the credit it deserves, though I believe it is more appreciated as a notable film today than it was at the time of its release.
In your typical Fifties monster film, the slay's the thing, as it were. It's all about the monster sowing cast quantities of creative destruction and you just hope that the acting and dialogue will be barely adequate along the way.
However, Night of the Demon, in essence is, really, a Hitchcockian thriller, its "MacGuffin"--Hitchcock's invented word for the object that propels the plot--a piece of parchment inscribed with cryptic ancient runes. It's a mashup of a monster movie with a suspense thriller, with quite a bit of noir thrown into the picture as well. And the acting quite lives up to the story. Director Martin Scorsese has placed Demon on his list of the Eleven Scariest Films of all time. Good for him! See also this appreciation by British Film Institute curator Vic Pratt.
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| a rather noirish shot from Night of the Demon, when a weary and deflated Professor Holden (Dana Andrews) and his loyal semi-love interest Joanna Harrington futilely try to persuade local police that Holden's life is being menaced by a satanic warlock who employs sorcery to kill. |
One of the major driving forces behind the film, appropriately enough, was friend of Hitch Charles Bennett, who between 1929 and 1942 worked on the scripts of six of the director's films: Blackmail, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Young and Innocent and Foreign Correspondent, receiving his sole Oscar nomination for the script of the last of these films.
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| not an obscene phone call but certainly a frightening one Gladys Cooper in "Night Call" wherein a bedridden old woman is terrorized by a late night caller from beyond the grave |
Demon was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who is best known, I suppose, for the trifecta of "literate" horror films he did with famed Forties horror film producer Val Lewton--Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man--though Tourneur also directed the very well-regarded noir flick Out of the Past and one of the classic Twilight Zone television episodes, the eerie and sad "Night Call," which starred elderly English actress Gladys Cooper, a three-time Oscar nominee whose first American film was Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, where she played the sister of Laurence Olivier's handsome Gothic brooder Maxim de Winter, who may or may not have slain the first Mrs. de Winter.
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| Is this a demonic manifestation or a carnival trick? |
Though Tourneur like Bennett himself had qualms about the film as it transpired, Demon actually is my favorite among the films of the director's that I have seen, including Out of the Past. Known for his economy with explicit fright effects (he was a master of low-budget ambiguous scares), Tourneur apparently didn't want actually to show the demon explicitly in the film, where it appears not once but twice, at the beginning and at the end. Both Tourneur and Bennett were highly critical of the producer Hal E. Chester's monkeying around with the film. Chester brought in a blacklisted American screenwriter, Cy Endfield, to pepper up the script, which he deemed too tame and British. Bennett later said that if Chester "walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead." But there's obviously a great deal of Bennett's handwork left in the script.
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| modern film poster which refrains from showing the demon |
Among fans of Demon, the matter of the monster's visibility has become a matter of debate: should the demon have actually appeared directly in the film; and, if so, was two times one time too many? A contingent condemns the first of the demon's appearances as gratuitous, and I can understand the criticism, though ultimately I don't share it.
First, a little about the plot of the film. It opens with a very frightened man, an English academic named Harrington (Maurice Denham), driving alone at night down a country road to the stately Georgian mansion of satanically goateed "cult leader" Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). Upon meeting Karswell, Harrington, clearly in a state of mounting hysterical fear, begs the cultist to "call it off" and promises that he in turn will halt the impending investigation of Karswell's cultish activities which he has organized. Karswell tells the frightened man that he will do what he can for him, but he clearly is far more interested in getting Harrington the hell out of his house before ten o'clock chimes on his antique mantel clock. Karswell is fearful too, but of what?
A reassured Harrington departs Karswell's mansion but upon returning to his own house sees to his horror a ghastly flaming demon materialize out of the darkness and pursue him. In his panicked flight he electrocutes himself on a fallen telephone wire; and then the spectral beast falls viciously upon him, rending his dead body in its claws. The police, we learn, declare that Harrington's death was an unfortunate accident and that his body was sadly mangled by "some kind of animal."
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| Harrington entreats Karswell to "call it off" |
Next Professor John Holden, an American psychiatrist, shows up in England to attend the conference Harrington had organized. He is a confirmed skeptic of the supernatural who vows to carry on Harrington's investigation of Karswell. Well, the satanist isn't going to take that lying down! He has prepared another runic parchment, which he surreptitiously passes on to Holden at the British Museum. Now the demon is scheduled to make a repeat performance, this time for Holden's benefit (?). Can Holden, unlike Harrington, somehow evade his diabolic fate?
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| A very meek and mild Karswell "accidentally" encounters John Holden in the library at the British Museum |
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| Holden watches a triumphant Karswell distortedly depart |
The debate over the first appearance of the demon is a tactical one over circuitousness versus directness in horror films. Critics of the demon's first appearance say the viewer should be left in agonizing doubt whether there really is a demon at all, allowing them to think that Harrington might have been a hysteric and Karswell a faker. I get the point about the uses of ambiguity, but I tend to agree that knowing that there really is a demon, and really quite a horrible one at that, greatly raises the dramatic stakes throughout the film. Supposedly Tourneur didn't direct either of the demon's scenes at the beginning and the end of the film, as they were forced on him by Hal E. Chester; but fortunately they are superbly done, like the rest of the film, if less subtly.
Admittedly Tourneur was a master of subtlety and of economical scares. I rewatched Cat People last night and still loved the film, which really has only three, highly ambiguous and brief, fright scenes. Most of the film could be simply a relationship "chick flick" about a man, his beautiful troubled wife, the man's gal pal who comes between them and the Lothario psychiatrist who is called in to "help" the wife.
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| Cat People premier, 1942 So the story goes, audiences laughingly "meowed" during the credits but soon realized how serious the film actually was |
Tourneur relies on strong acting--French actress Simone Simon as the wife, Irina, and British actor Tom Conway, George Sanders' half-brother, as the psychiatrist, Dr. Judd, are especially fine--and superb cinematography and editing to propel the story and create tension. The actual scares are few, though when they come they are impressive. (The indoor swimming pool scene with Jane Randolph's terrified Alice Moore is especially famous; I think that the indoor swimming pool scene in the horror film It Follows must surely be an homage.)
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| What is that shadow stalking me? the swimming pool scene from Cat People |
Irina is a Serbian native who thinks she is a "cat person," a descendant of wicked Serbian satanists who transformed into fierce cat creatures and were put to flight long ago by "King John." (Is this Jovan Vladimir? I'm not up on Serbian history before 1914.) Alice and Irina's amiable husband Oliver (Kent Reed) thinks sadly that Irina is losing her mind. Just what the truth is long left in doubt.
While Tourneur may have wanted to use the same approach for Night of the Demon, Fifties film audiences expected more obvious bumps in the night for their bucks. (Demon was released the same year as Hammer Film's big, blatant color horror hit Curse of Frankenstein.) And Night of the Demon indeed is an exciting roller coaster thrill ride. What Demon really reminds me of is an Alfred Hitchcock film, like one of the movies Charles Bennett scripted for Hitch in the olden days, like The 39 Steps, Young and Innocent or Foreign Correspondent.
Dana Andrews' John Holden and Irish actress Peggy Cummins' Joanna Harrington, niece of the dead man, figure as the boy-girl romantic couple you will find in many a Hitch thriller, though romance is rather downplayed this time around, perhaps on account of the age difference between the two players. Andrews was 48 at filming and looked a decade older, while Cummins, who co-starred in the noir cult classic Gun Crazy seven years earlier, was 31.
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| Strangers on a Plane: Joanna (Peggy Cummins) and John (Dana Andrews) meet, disagreeably. Her writing with the light on is keeping him awake and he's very grumpy about it. Don't worry, they make up. |
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| Joanna fends off the horny man to talk about the horned demon. |
Andrews gamely and arguably pestily (it's the 1950s) tries to out some moves on Cummins, but Cummins, whose character is unusually strong-willed for a female horror leading lady of the time, is mostly not having any such nonsense. But still in classic fashion the pair have a "meet cute" bickering scene on the plane coincidentally taking them both across the Atlantic to England; it could be a scene not only from a Hitchcock film but a John Dickson Carr novel. They continue to bicker, off and on, throughout most of the film. For what it's worth Joanna is completely right about everything!
Once Karswell passes the parchment to Holden to call the demon down upon his enemy, the game, as someone once said, is afoot; and the pace doesn't let up. Tension is maintained throughout the film, which is punctuated by a series of virtuose set pieces. (In this article I will try to do some justice to them with some screenshots I took.)
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| haunted at the hotel: Dr. Holden starts hearing and seeing things at London's Savoy Hotel |
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| inspiration for The Shining? |
When John and Joanna visit Karswell at his rural Warwickshire mansion (the real life Brocket Hall), the satanist is giving a Halloween Party for the local children. I always wondered a little about this. We know that news of Professor Harrington's investigation into the Karswell "cult" has been getting into the newspapers; would local parents be all that crazy about having their children entertained by a Satanist? I guess we are the assume that the stories have been quite vague so far about Karswell's actual activities.
Anyway, when John and Joanna espy Karswell, he is a dressed as a clown (another possible red flag, in light of the tendencies of serial killer John Wayne Gacy), pulling "magic puppies" out of his top hat to the delighted squeals of the young ones. John decides that Karswell is really just a kindly old man at heart, albeit a con man and grifter of the gullible, but Joanna believes there is real danger. (The film would have us believe that Andrews is quite a bit younger than Karswell, though in fact Andrews was the elder by four years.)
The childrens' party possibly owes its inception to the magic lantern show which Karswell gives for adolescents in the James short story, but where that is genuinely diabolical and terrifying--it's clear that story Karswell is an utter sadist--film Karswell seems genuinely to like children. In an amusing bit Karswell's kindly but someone overbearing mother, with whom he lives, tells Joanna that her boy loves children and should be married but he's just so fussy. Then she recalls that Joanna is not married either.
I should say a few words about Karswell's depiction in the film and Niall MacGinnis' inhabitation of him. Love both! MacGinnes' Karswell totally dominates the film (with the exception of the demon's appearances). Alternately menacing, charming, sulking, chiding he's fascinating to watch. And underneath it all he himself seems is terrified of the unearthly forces he has invoked. MacGinnes' performance is a joy to watch and in modern times, with a big budget behind the film, it might have snagged him an Oscar nomination. (On the other hand Nicol Williamson's enchanting performance as Merlin in Excalibur didn't get nominated either--so much for wizards!)
Athene Seyler as Mrs. Karswell is marvelous as well. It's a good role for her to have worked with. Initially Mrs. Karswell seems simply the sort of comic relief matron beloved of Thirties films (including Hitchcock's own), but you gradually realize that there's much more to this woman than simply being a doting, indulgent mama. She really doesn't like what Karswell is doing and occasionally allows it to show for all her self-effacement. "Have I done something wrong?" she asks her pettish son at one point, clearly more out of exasperation than guilt. It's a wonderful passive-aggressive moment.
Karswell may be a satanist but he does indeed seem genuinely to like children and he is kind to his mother, a dotty enthusiast of spiritualism but clearly no hellish fellow traveler in the depths with her son. A "confirmed bachelor" (possibly gay; see his comments on the children's snakes and ladder game), Karswell seems to anticipate modern kooky basement-dwelling incel influencers, only they derive their power not from Satan, but, worse yet, social media.
Karswell even talks of the money he gets from his "followers" that has made his and his mother's comfortable life possible. He can't have meddlers like Harrington and Holden threatening all that, he tells his mother; but, it's even worse than that: if it's not Holden's life that is taken it will be his.
While talking with John at the party, Karswell, frustrated with John's obstinate American skepticism, casually conjures a cyclone (wind storm) to demonstrate his powers to his nemesis, but that simply isn't good enough to do the job with know-all John. In doing so Karswell endangers the children, who are sent scattering across the lawn like bits of wrapping paper with their adult chaperones, in a scene reminiscent of the first bird attack on the schoolchildren in Hitchcock's The Birds, which came six years after this film. (I admit I'm not the first person to make this observation by any means.)
Finally Karswell bluntly tells John that he will die on the appointed date unless he drops his investigation. Yet John still scoffs.
The bulk of the rest of the film is devoted to John gradually realizing, finally, that the danger is real, that there is indeed a hellish supernatural menace at work to bring about his demise. Gradually the demon becomes more and more manifest on earth. The climax comes aboard a train--trains are so important in Hitchcock films--with John and Karswell essentially playing a sort of frantic game of keep away with the parchment (except there is no one who actually wants to get it). As for the parchment, it actively attempts to destroy itself, so that the demon can never be averted.
One man's life depends on who wins this game.
Along the way there are some smashing set pieces, which were Tourneur's great wont. There's the seance with medium Mr. Meeks (Reginald Beckwith), for example. Mrs. Karswell persuades John and Joanna to attend the proceeding, which she hopes will convince the American that the danger to him posed by her son is very real indeed.
This proceeding quickly goes from quite comical--Mrs. Meeks (Rosamund Greenwood) and Mrs. Karswell warble the tune "Cherry Ripe" because the spirits do like music so, don't you know--to rather horrible as Mr. Meeks becomes inhabited by the spirit of the late Professor Harrington and begins shrieking in horror that the demon is up there, in the trees. John angrily switches on the lights, bringing Meek out the trance gasping in pain (to the great chagrin of his doting wife), and marches out of the Meeks' home, convinced that this is all just a cleverly calculated con.
Then there's John's tense and explosive scientific hypnosis session with rustic farmer Rand Hobart (Brian Wilde), an accused murderer in a catatonic state and a member of the Karswell cult. Also involved with this session is Professor O'Brien (Liam Redmond), a genial Irish Catholic professor rather less skeptical than Holden. Both Wilde and Redmond (the latter of whom appears periodically throughout the film) bring terrific conviction to this scene (see pic near top).
Wilde, who appears for only about five minutes, during that time is so good he does about as much to sell to the viewer the reality of that damn demon as the demon itself does. Even John gets persuaded. It's a scene which would have graced any noir film. (And here let me add for Andrews' detractors that I very much enjoy having one of the great Forties/Fifties noir actors in this film.)
I exclude from this article pics of the demon itself in the hope that it will be a surprise for people who are lucky enough to watch the film for the first time. (Since the demon was pictured in all the film's promotional material, it's probably a fat chance, however.) Personally I love its appearances and find both of them quite terrifying, though the demon is only a model (and at one point a man in a suit I suppose), rather than a computer simulation. But then I find the giant ape in the original King Kong awesome too. You decide for yourself!
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| Holden finds himself but an incidental fragment in a fearfully malevolent world. |
Setting that matter to one side, however, I still think Demon is a great film. I've heard people say that The Spiral Staircase is the best film Hitchcock never made, but I can't help thinking that had Hitch made a supernatural monster film, it would have been a lot like Night of the Demon.
Below: Julie Andrews sings "Cherry Ripe" in Victor/Victoria (1982).
