Iconic Demon in Unabashed Supernatural Horror Makes Good
So...this guy, Hal Chester, messed up the screenplay quite a bit. It was so good, the screenplay, that it couldn't be completely destroyed, only half destroyed. It's still considered a good movie. I think the job Jacques Tourneur did with what Hal Chester gave him was awfully good. Hal Chester, as far as I'm concerned, if he walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead.-- Charles Bennett (screenplay, Night of the Demon, quoted in Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriter's of Hollywood's Golden Age)
It's funny how the same mainstream script-to-screen development journey is undertaken again and again: script gets written, then gets rewritten by Hollywood-type (sometimes plural) who sticks his or her two cents in while pinching every other penny out of production, usually creating a penny-wise but pound foolish cinematic disappointment. In the case of one film, Night of the Demon (or the shortened Curse of the Demon in America), the script actually survives "improvements" by said Hollywood-type--Hal E. Chester--and the vexing Bureau of British Film Censors, to become an effective supernatural chiller in spite of the Woolworth's bargain-basement special effects involving a beautiful-in-concept, godawful-in-execution, puppet demon, and bad-boy drinking habits of one American actor determined to climb inside an empty bottle of booze head first. Of all the remakes, reworks, and re-imagines circulating Hollywood these days, this little cult gem of supernatural horror really deserves attention.
But did Hal E. Chester or the censors really hurt the film? Or did they inadvertently help polish it into a tidy, tension-mounting story showing how psychologist and paranormal debunker John Holden steps into it, only to realize what's sticking to his shoe is real and hairy and cannot be rationally explained away by science?
That the traditionally structured Night of the Demon was produced at all is surprising. Hammer Films, at the same time, was moving away from the don't show, just hint intentional ambiguity of Jacques Tourneur's noir black and white terrors in favor of the brighter, bloodier, mush-your-face-in-it gasps of Curse of Frankenstein, which was not ambiguous at all. When Night was released in America it was even double-billed with Terrence Fischer's Revenge of Frankenstein, providing audiences with quite the Mutt and Jeff of horror opposites in visual and intellectual involvement, but keeping one similarity: neither movie was ambiguous.
Contrary to Jacques Tourneur's preference for implicative events and obfuscating shadows to force uncertainty of what's really happening and a did-I-see-what-I-just-saw? feeling, there is no doubt whatsoever a fire demon is coming to horribly mangle one, very skeptical, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) for daring to expose devil-cult leader--and part-time children's magician--Karswell (Niall MacGinnis).
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Article comments
1 - El Bicho
Bravo. You force everyone to raise their game.
2 - ILoz Zoc
Thanks El Bicho, I greatly appreciate that.
3 - Byron Allen Black
A very enjoyable review, and I was thrilled to see the excerpt of the screenplay revealing the Faustian bargain Karswell had made, to reap riches and attract followers - patiently explaining the danger to his aged mother (who double-crossed him in the end, gee thanks mum). As for the seance arranged to communicate with the hapless Professor Harrington, I fail to understand how any critic would fault this: it's classic paranormal theatre, made weirder by the singing of "Cherry Ripe". By the way, the slimy "Hally" Chester died just this year - when I read he had been a Hollywood child star I could see how easy he'd have turned into a pushy know-it-all asshole. Dana Andrews was no prize casting either: what a wooden dummy. Should have gone for someone like James Wood (except he was still a teenager, tee hee).