Night Curses.

Night of the Demon (1957)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

The demons mostly come out at night, mostly. Have you ever watched a film as a child and it sticks to you so hard that it becomes a sort of obsession? I remember sitting in my bunk bed turned ghost galley pirate ship while wearing my awesomely realistic latex devil mask. It was like 2am in the morning and I was watching horror films on my little black and white television when the film Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon came on. I starred wide eyed with delight as the giant demon comes running out of the smoke to claim his first victim. "Goddamn, this was the best movie I had ever seen" I thought to myself. Yeah, I was a weird kid.

I loved old horror films. While my friends wanted to dress up as Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees, I was all about wanting to be The Demon from Night of the Demon, or the Bride of Frankenstein, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Okay yeah, I loved Freddy and Jason too but I was complicated.

So the story goes, this one dude likes to summon demons and mess with the dark arts and stuff. Then this other guy who is a non-believing, smug jerk wants to debunk all this "hocus-pocus nonsense" and make a fool of demon summoning dude. Dude curses the jerk and the demon is going to kill him in a few days. Meanwhile the smug jerk hooks up with some other dead guys snooping daughter who is trying to find out why her dad was electrocuted by the demon and they go all Scooby gang and snoop on the demon loving guy. Did the dude really summon a demon? Does the smug jerk die? Does the demon eat his face? That I won't tell you so you should watch for yourself.

By the way, Jacques Tourneur is one of my favorite film directors. He directed one of my all time favorite films, The Val Lewton masterpiece Cat People and one of my fave film noirs the superb Out of the Past. His use of shadow and atmosphere are one of a kind. So after you watch this film watch more of his other films. You won't regret it. xoxo