Night of the Demon

Night of the Demon (1957)
AKA: Curse of the Demon

Ranking: Meh
Slightly Trashy

A paranormal investigator or whatever (Dana Andrews) runs afoul of the leader of a satanic cult (Niall MacGinnis - you know he's evil coz he has a funny beard) who likes to summon a big scary demon to eliminate their enemies. The guy teams up with the hot neice (Peggy Cummins) of his colleague who was previously killed by the demon in order to figure out how to rid himself of the curse of the demon.

This movie was alright. It's one of those weird British things that you always hear about but you never see for whatever reason. I can't think of another example, but you know what I'm talking about. Sort of like The Wicker Man, only everybody's seen The Wicker Man. You know?

It was well done, and well acted, and reasonably atmospheric, using usual supernatural conventions effectively. There are a few creepy scenes in there, interesting ideas and a sense of approaching doom.

My one big problem with the movie is that they showed the titular demon (which looked awesome - I mean, it looked like an evil muppet but it was pretty cool) in the first ten minutes. So you kind of know what's coming and don't really have a lot to look forward to. I guess maybe had they held back on the demon a little bit the climactiic scene might have been a huge letdown.... but a guy gets fucking ripped to shreds by a big monster. It would have been cool no matter what they did.

I dunno. I guess I'd always heard that this film was really really good so my expectations of it were pretty high and yeah, it was alright, it just wasn't, you know, amazing. I guess maybe the point of showing the monster at the beginning of the movie was maybe so we would be more concerned about Dana Andrews? Maybe? I don't know.

Yeah, it was okay. I don't know. Good ending. Very satisfying.

END

Directed by: Jacques Tourneur. Written by: Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester based on the story Casting the Runes by Montague R. James. Starring: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Liam Redmond, Athene Seyler, Maurice Denham.