Night of the Demon / Curse of the Demon (1957)

    And so it begins with what is entirely likely to be the classiest movie I’ll be covering this month, the Jacques Tourneur classic ‘Night of the Demon,’ retitled in the US as ‘Curse of the Demon.’  There exists some confusion as to the original running time with most sources currently claiming a 95 minute run time for the original “British Version.”  This is in fact an extended version intended for Europe (where it was released as a stand-alone film and not as part of a double feature as it was originally distributed in the UK and US) and is more accurately referred to as the “Continental Version.”  Both the original US and UK version runs 83 minutes but the 95 minutes version is generally now considered the standard.  This is the version I watched and from the description of the extra scenes in the Continental Version, with one exception I’ll get to, they didn’t add much to the film except run time.

That sure is a henge, that is.

    To my embarrassment this the only the second Jacques Tourneur movie I’ve ever seen and the first wasn’t “Cat People,” which is certainly on the list.  Mind you, that first one was “Out of the Past,” which I managed to catch during a college class on film and roman noir when the professor showed us his treasured laser disc copy, back when physical medium was still the only way to see these things.  It’s been a number of years but as I recall I deeply, deeply loved “Out of the Past,” one of the top five film noirs ever made in my opinion, and “Night of the Demon,” while a fine film, is nowhere in the same league.

    This was almost an RKO production and it shows, it has a certain formal charm to it that masks just how small a production it is.  I am generally not one to complain about a slowly paced movie and I didn’t mind it at the time but when the credits rolled after 95 minutes and I cast my mind back over the experience and reviewed my notes what struck me is just how little happened in this movie.  With not much tightening at all you could have cut this down to an hour easily.  You would remove some of the atmosphere and deliberate pacing but in the end I don’t think it adds up to much.

    One last production note before we start in on the plot: the movie does in fact reveal the demon and it’s a rather embarrassed-looking puppet.  Although there is some dispute it seems pretty clear both from comments by the director, screenwriter, and stars (and the clear intent of the entire rest of the movie) that these shots were inserted over their objections by the producer.  What was originally intended to be at least a somewhat ambiguous story, never fully confirming that anything supernatural was actually happening, instead fully confirmed and indeed directly showed the demon.  It doesn’t ruin the movie but it does stick out as clear executive interference.

    The opening does a pretty good job of establishing the basic premise.  Somewhere in England a Professor Harrington rushes to an estate home where he demands to see a Dr. Karswell.  Upon being shown to his office he begs Karswell to “stop it.”  Karswell, played by veteran character actor Niall MacGinnis, comes off as rather charming and reasonable, as he will continue to be over the course of the movie.  Karswell is, in my eyes, the only truly interesting character in the movie.  Peggy Cummings as Joanna Harrington, the professor’s niece, has some good moments when she’s not being sucked into the worthless romantic subplot with our eventual hero, Dr. John Holden, played by Dana Andrews a long time after “The Best Years of Our Lives.”  I will eventually grow to slightly hate his character.

    Apparently professor Harrington has been publicly attacking Karswell as a fraud, which he did not take well, and has had a curse placed upon him.  After hearing his promises to publicly retract his accusations Karswell makes as if to agree to remove the curse but pauses after hearing that a length of parchment with runes on it he’d given the professor had been burned.  He then turns out the professor with only promises to ‘see what he can do.’  The professor drives home whereupon he sees our puppet demon, tries to drive away only to crash into a pole, and gets electrocuted.

    The rest of the movie is a slow follow up on this.  Our American hero John Holden flies in to attend a very undefined ‘conference’ intended to debunk the supernatural whereupon he learns of the death of professor Harrington.  He’s familiar with Karswell and starts to make the same kind of accusations.

     Here’s where my biggest problem with the movie comes in: ambiguity about certain things, the extent of Karswell’s powers, the exact nature of the demon, that’s all well and good, but basic, basic things are left incredibly nebulous.  We’re told Holden is attending a conference but aside from a few of his colleagues who visit him in his hotel room we never see the conference, hear of its agenda, and except for one scene near the end it exists merely as a device to get an American to London and to antagonize Karswell.

    Karswell himself, although an intriguing personality, is left almost entirely undefined in terms of how and why he does what he does.  He’s accused several times of running a cult, but we only see one terrorized family very briefly and that was the only scene not included in the original version that I thought added to the film.  Take that out and this supposed cult is entirely offscreen.  We’re told that they give him money to support his lifestyle but we never learn of his background or intentions.  Although he talks several times about witchcraft the most impressive thing his does is apparently conjure a windstorm briefly, everything else is simple sleight of hand.  He’s generally friendly and urbane, even when making death threats, and during the scenes of him alone with his mother, which we are presumably meant to assume show his true self, he has exactly the same personality.  It’s very odd.

Behold the face of evil!

    Then there is the matter of the runes.  The direct threat, or ticking clock, or however you want to phrase it, is a length of paper with a line of runes written down one side.  Karswell apparently sics his demon on people by slipping them this length of paper then waiting several days for the demon to kill them.  The movie ties these runes directly to Stonehenge, opening with a voiceover during a montage of shots of the henge as well as an insert scene of Holden briefly visiting Stonehenge for no particular reason.  Karswell is accused several times of running a Satanic cult, and the one time we get an actual Karswell devote to express some kind of belief system it’s literally just “good is evil and evil is good.”  Perhaps in 1957 the concept of olden-times writing was enough to conflate runes and Satan but from a modern perspective it’s just puzzling.

    The movie is essentially one long slow burn.  After a brief phone conversation Holden and Karswell meet in a library.  Karswell is very upfront about who he is and what he does but still offers to lend him a book that bubbles under the surface for the entire rest of the move threatening to become a plot point but never does.  During their meeting he slips Holden a length of parchment containing runes and we’re off to the races.

    What ensues is a series of small escalations.  Holden will be told over and over he’s in danger but never actually is.  He will occasionally see and hear odd things but they’re never really threatening.  A couple of times he mentions he’s cold when everyone else considers it warm, which again ends up going nowhere.  The one member of the cult that’s actually plot relevant is mentioned early on as having been accused of murder and being catatonic in the hospital and slowly over the next hour they secure his release to interview him, and even that is handled through throwaway bits of dialogue of no particular importance.

    The only sequence that I think entirely works is when Holden and Harrington’s niece take up Karswell’s offer to examine the book by visiting his estate.  When the two get there he’s giving a magic show to the village children, doing simple sleight of hand magic, then he and Holden have a decent little conversation about how the line between psychology and reality isn’t always so clear cut.  This scene is why I am a firm believer that the actual demon shots were inserted over the director’s objections.

    This is when Karswell conjures the windstorm, after which he casually drops that Holden is going to die in three days if he doesn’t stop attacking him.  After they leave he confides to his mother that he’s made some kind of undefined bargain where to maintain his powers either others have to die or he does.  This is a pretty interesting idea, at no point does Karswell seem to take pleasure in the power he has over others, but again this goes mostly unexamined.

    During a dinner date our supposed hero essentially forces on Harrington’s niece Holden discovers the length of runes slipped to him by Karswell, at which point it flies from his hand directly towards the fire but is stopped by a fire grate.  It’s a neat little effect but you rather get used to it as it’s the main source of tension for the rest of the movie as it keeps trying to fly away from his grasp.

The only thing to stop ultimate evil: the fire grate.

    Some more incidentals happen, he visits the cult family, is persuaded to attend a séance held by Karswell’s mother, who does seem to be an overall decent lady (which included a moment that made me bolt upright in shock, I’ll address that in a moment), breaks into Karswell’s house to look at the book before being attacked by an apparent conjured panther then is politely shown the door by Karswell, interrogates the cult member as part of that nebulous ‘conference’ who manages to throw himself out of a window to his death but not before revealing the only way to survive the curse is to return the parchment to the person who gave it to you.

    As the deadline approaches Holden decided to return the parchment to Karswell who is about to board a train to avoid this very thing.  For some reason that isn’t even borderline explained he also kidnaps Harrington’s niece.  Holden manages to board the train and in a scene that’s just two rewrites away from an early Marx Brothers routine keeps offering things to Karswell who increasingly nervously declines.  Eventually when the train stops at the next station two police officers enter the cabin, still following up on the death of Professor Harrington, and in the confusion of bags and coats and papers Holden manages to slip the parchment to Karswell who instantly twigs.  He attempts to return the parchment but it flies out of his hand and onto the tracks.  He chases after it only to watch it spontaneously catch fire as the deadline expires and the puppet demon shows up and kills him.  The officers examine the body and decide he must have been killed by a train and Holden and the niece walk off without examining the body in a futile attempt to have an ambiguous ending.

Yeah, I know they tried, but ... yeah.

    This is widely considered a classic horror film and while I did overall enjoy it the one thing it most definitely is not is a horror film.  Suspense, sure, psychological drama, fine, but there’s nothing remotely scary about this.  This is an extremely simple story told with deliberate pacing, some decent effects and lighting, and one really good performance.  I do wish my copy had been of a higher quality, I wasn’t quite willing to splash out on the DVD for this and as far as I can tell this isn’t streaming anywhere, as the cinematography and lighting would probably be pretty impressive at a decent bit rate.

    And as for the part that made me full on bolt upright?  During the séance scene the medium channels the late Professor Harrington and in describing his death intones the immortal words, “It’s in the trees!  It’s coming!”  So yes, in case you were ever curious, this movie is the source for the opening bit of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love.”  The more you know.