Skeptics get a bad reputation in movies.
They keep being portrayed as people who are stone set in their beliefs regarding the absence of the supernatural in the world.
They don’t believe in a monster or aliens until the beast is drooling above their foreheads.
It’s interesting to see a 1950s film treat skeptics a bit better.
1957’s Night of the Demon, released in the US as Curse of the Demon flouts the standard model, and brings us an awesome matchup: Aleister Crowley taking on James Randi.
Sure, the skeptic is a parapsychologist (Dr. John Holden, played by Dana Andrews), and at the end decides it’s better “not to know” in a rather bizarre context, but in general he doesn’t believe in the super natural until it shows itself. He has an open mind, but “that’s what investigations are for.”
Which is actually how skepticism works!
We get some of the usual lines about skepticism having its flaws and a final line that doesn’t quite work for the message of “There’s some things man’s not meant to know!” which was popular as hell in the 50s. But in the end, its primarily logical deduction that wins the day. With a little help from a practice currently considered bunk, but hey, they didn’t know better back then!
But that’s mostly the movie, the monster itself is something else—the creators of the film were divided on whether or not to include a monster at all. The producer one out, so we got to actually see a demon.
Sadly, what we get is a kind of bad marionette and a really cool head mask puppet for a monster, and a really, really bad man in a suit.
They wanted Ray Harryhausen, but he was working on The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Makes me wonder…
The Fire Demon, as it is called, represents the terrible unknown for the most part: a force with little reason to it, like a classic Japanese Kaiju.
It is not a force to be defeated, only one too avoided and to pick up the pieces afterwards.
Most of the film is spent on the buildup and murder mystery regarding the demon’s first appearance and it acts like a looming threat over the entire film.
Even though the curse that summons it binds it to take a victim at a specific time, the creature seems to relish in causing terror in its victim, haunting them with its bat-noise call and orbs of burning light chasing them down.
It’s summoner, Dr. Julian Karswell, describes it as “As the time gets closer, mental disintegration will set in: first weakness and un-sureness; then horror as the fear of what is behind you grips your heart!”
It’s kind of a jerk, really.
It’s a jerk to the point that it will apparently even turn on its summoner for having the audacity to call it up at all. Thus emphasizing that this is the classic 50s concept of “Things Man Was Not Meant to Know!” seen in a dozen sci-fi films.
Of course, the very nature of the film’s protagonist challenges that idea and he upholds that idea throughout… at least until the last instance, where he decides not to look at the villain’s mangled corpse.
Because that somehow fits in with the scheme. It’s the films’ only major thematic fault.
Biology
The creature in Night of the Demon is a classical devil in many respects, drawing from the artistic traditions of medieval woodcutters and other works: cloven hooves, the talons of a bird of prey, the stylized wings of a bat and a leonine head with exaggerated teeth, two horns atop its head and elfin ears.
A classical chimera.
Unlike most medieval demons, the creature is covered in black fur rather like a bear. It also smolders with internal heat, which burns those that it touches. The fur doesn’t burn, however, which is quite interesting to see. The creature leaves smoldering footprints when it so chooses, too. Like a lot of supernatural creatures, it seems to pick and choose which laws of physics it obeys at a time. Sometimes it glides across the ground like it’s a balloon, other times it is solid enough to tear a man limb from limb.
Rather annoying, that.
As a demon summoned by ritual, it doesn’t seem to need food or other things, returning to whatever place it was summoned from to live out its life. No doubt as a powerful predator, since it stands easily 20 ft. tall or more. Though given it’s a realm of magic and sorcery it hails from, that’s no guarantee.
One of the oddest things about the creature is a bizarre effect it has.
Be it through contrivance or psychological manipulation (which its summoner did infer it had), whenever the creature attacks, it also arranged for events to conceal its presence. The first time it attacks, the victim knocks down power lines which explain away the creature’s burns and an animal feeding explains the mutilation. The second time it appears, it is on a train track and the victim appears to, by observers standards, to have been hit by a train once they see the body.
Also in both cases, it creates its own seclusion—be it on a lonely road in the middle of the woods, or draped in heavy London fog.
At this point, there’s something else that bears mentioning: this movie has been remade.
The skeptic dropped for a pretty young girl and the ending turned into a downer.
That movie is Drag Me to Hell and it covers pretty much the same general plot points of Night of the Demon. I think it is Sam Raimi’s homage to this one, and both are fun films by their own merits. Raimi gets to go back to his Evil Dead roots and have a fun time doing quasi-comedic horror, while Demon is more of a thriller and murder mystery.
Different beasts, but same plot points about magic trinkets/symbols that must be secretly passed back to the villain, researching a curse placed on the hero/heroine for petty reasons, and a final confrontation at a train yard.
Though I do wish Raimi chose a different name for Hell’s monster. Lamia isn’t a goat-man, but a snake-woman, con-sarnit!
And because of that, and because it has a skeptic who lives to see the end of a monster movie without losing all of his skepticism, my preference leans towards Demon.
