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Overview

Classic black and white with a kaiju like demon. One of those with different versions for American and British audience, because we can't handle it I guess.

You might be surprised at how good this movie looks and that it hasn't been remade. We were surprised by that also. It is a great one to watch if you 've been following all of our free public domain movie reviews.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050766

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Demon

Trailer

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https://archive.org/details/curse-of-the-demon

Amazon - https://amzn.to/3QPIH87

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Transcript

Side Dish 11 - Night of the Demon

We'll just get rolling 'cause we didn't-- I got us hard out. We got plenty of time, but, all right, so another side dish. This one is a Vincent Price movie. Or that was the one I just put up. Oh my God, I'm getting confused. Sorry, this one is an M.R. James story "Curse of the Demon."

A really interesting public domain movie, I thought.

Ironically enough, what you actually have is Night of the Demon, which is just slightly different.

Yes, and that brings up the point of why this is public domain, and it isn't.

Yeah. There's an English version and an American version, and it came out in 1957. It's a, it's an English film, and as you said, it was based loosely on a short story by M.R. James called Casting the Runes.

Yes. Which, if you don't know M.R. James, he's one of those old authors that's, been gone a long time. But there's a lot of people that reference his work as being something that inspired them when they were younger people older than us and that. And he has huge collections. When you see those big collections of stories, it's 3,000 stories for a penny.

It's 'cause they're all public domain but he usually has a very large section in it.

It was originally 96 minutes long,

Perfect time.

in modern parlance is the perfect time for a horror movie. When they were gonna release it in the United States, they decided to cut out 14 minutes. So it was 82 minutes long when it released in the States, and it was called Curse of the Demon because there was already another movie out there called Night of something, and they didn't want them to be confused.

Okay.

The version we saw was the unedited version, the British version from '96,

Gotta be better. Come on, if you're cutting 14 minutes out the story moved along pretty good as it was,

it did, and, this is a pretty widely acclaimed film. Martin Scorsese lists it in one of his top 10 films. And it has 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a well-loved horror film from 1957 or whenever.

Yeah, and, we talk about special effects from the older times especially the old "Silence" we've watched. But this one, the first thing I was realizing was, wow, that demon looks really good for 1957.

The funny thing is the demon wasn't supposed to be in it Jacques Tourneur was the director. He's French. He was born in 1904. He died in 90-- oh, in '77. He did-- I don't know if you've ever seen it. I was just always a big fan. I saw it on one of those Saturday morning… the 1942 film, Cat People.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, that was him.

Yeah, Superhost played that occasionally.

Yes.

I met him.

Oh, okay. Not Jacques Tourneur,

though. no. But I wonder, you said he died in '77. I wonder if he got to see "Star Wars."

Oh, good question. He he wanted to hint at the demon or maybe just show little bits but not the whole thing because he thought that kind of ruined it. That's along,

yeah.

along your lines. But the studio overrode him on that, and he w- he wouldn't even be there for the filming of the scenes with the demon.

So that was somebody else sitting in the chair while they did those parts.

I must say, for a '57, that whole thing with the demon boiling in on the cloud and showing the huge hulking demon looked really good. That's, this is Godzilla timeframe, and I thought it looked a little better than Godzilla,

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I do think it being in black and white helped a lot.

Always, yeah.

But it was produced by a guy named Hal E. Chester, and we don't typically talk about producers very often. But I mention Chester, He produced, I don't know if you ever heard of them, the Joe Palooka film series from the 1940s.

Based on the bubblegum comic strips?

Kind of, yeah.

Okay.

He produced all of those, and there were a lot. There were, like, I don't know, five, nine, something like that. But the screenwriter was Charles Bennett. He and Tourneur hated Hal E. Chester. They loathed each other to the point that Bennett was like, "If I saw him coming up my driveway, I'd shoot him."

Jeez.

And I'm like, "How do you guys work like that?"

Yeah pressure builds diamonds,

that's true. So there's a couple things in this film that really stand out to me as quizzical, as something to puzzle over. It's a British film. The main character is a character named John Holden, played by Dana Andrews, who died in '92. He had 103 projects, none of which you and I would know in this day and age.

Huge fan of Tourneur. In fact, when he went back to the States and started another movie, he had Tourneur come in and direct it for him. But he's American. So it's a British film about British society, and the hero is an outsider from America.

Yeah, the- these last two public domain, the last one had Vincent Price over in Italy filming in Italian, and now this one is, so

Yeah, it seemed really odd to me that, I don't know if it, it's like the brash American persona they thought would fit better for that character or what, but,

Yeah.

Peggy

Cummins. they w- speaking of "Godzilla," they Orson Welles did that. He was the reporter when they Americanized the film. They added all these reporter bits to make it more palatable, sometimes they make weird calls.

Yeah. Peggy Cummins played Jenna Harrington. She died in 2017. She only did 29 films in her career.

Neil McGinnis played Julian Carswell. He was well-known in the European theater scene, much less so here in the States.

He was a great villain in this. He just had enough slimy oiliness to him, and it was a little, is he bad? Is he good? But it's like I can take care of you."

they based him on Aleister Crowley,

Oh, wow, okay. That makes a lot of sense, actually.

The other thing that really-- So the film is really well done. It's not overacted. The effects, especially considering the time, pretty amazing.

and like the big weather storm he pulls up at one time, and that looked really good. Now, it was probably a sound stage. They could do a lot, but it didn't have that hokey, "Oh, look, they have flashing lights with someone holding sheet metal." It didn't have that feel at all.

And that was, like, one of the fights they had with with Chester was Chester wanted to use fans for that stuff, and Tourneur wanted to use jet-- or plane engines

To get some wind going.

Kids flying through the air.

Dana Andrews threatened to leave the film if they didn't do it Tourneur wanted.

Wow.

That would've been their star gone.

They would've had to recast. So yeah it's a great film. I'd recommend watching it. But reading through the thing about how, it was 90 s- 96 minutes, and they cut it down to 82 to release in the States, this just… it's blowing my mind. And it's stupid because 96 f- minutes they thought was too long for an American audience to sit through, so they cut it down to 82, 96 to 82 minutes. But in the States today, where our short-form content goes way, is far more widely accepted than our long-form, but our movies are now two and a half hours long.

Yeah, commonly. Even movies that don't need to be two and a half hours long

I, what, how does that happen where our attention span is crossing over in this

yeah. Which, we talk a lot about the YouTube and TikTok channels, which anyone listening, go check out our YouTube, TikTok channels. But the clips do well, the short 30-second clips do well, but the longer stuff doesn't do as well. You think we- we're losing our attention, but then you go see a movie, it's you better take a pee break first because you're gonna be here until it's dinner time.

Absolutely. It, like-- So right now the "Superman" movie is out and the "Fantastic Four" movie is out. We went to see the "Superman" movie once. It was sold out, so we watched "28 Years Later." We went back to see it later, and we got in to see it. But when I was looking for times, I was like, "Oh my gosh, the drive-in is doing the 'Fantastic Four' and 'Superman' as a double feature."

What-- You'd be leaving at what? 4:30 in the morning?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's crazy with that sometimes. It's funny you say that though. This-- we watch a lot of these movies. This is one that's like, why has nobody redone this movie? It's already a good story. It's already a good movie with modern… If they do it right with modern techniques of the special effects and stuff it could be a pretty fantastic movie, a- and it would be two and a half hours long probably. I could see it doing that, yeah.

I honestly think-- So the whole gist of the story is you have this stoic non-believer who ends up believing, wholeheartedly in, in what's happening. But…

A, a little bit of a almost Hitchcock twist at the end, how they end it.

Yeah. But I think it's one of those films But we did one earlier, the German expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Caligari,"

Yeah.

that is held in such high esteem that I think filmmakers are scared to do them. You know what I mean?

Which I understand. But the ones that are getting old enough, I think could have a good re- because the only people that know some of these are the film students, the ones down at the film school in LA, they know it. A few podcasters like us know it, but general public doesn't.

I'm surprised some executive hasn't snatched it up. And again you, you-- we look at film, remakes and stuff a lot They can make a remake and I can like it or not, but that doesn't change whether I can like or not the old one, and it might draw attention to this old classic film and bring it back around.

There's plenty of theaters. Colin found a theater in Baltimore that's all they do is show this classic movies and, less popular movies and stuff. He's "I got a membership,"

yeah I remember when I was at Case Western at Strosacker, every year they would show Casablanca. And it's just a completely different feeling when you're watching it on a, 40-foot wide screen than, watching it on television. It's…

a-

celluloid shines through.

especially if they've gone through and cleaned them up and brightened them and made them look really good without changing it, i'm not telling them to go in and mask out guns because it's not correct now. It's, screw that noise, but cleaning it up so it's not so grainy and not so dark, and that really makes the old movies, especially the black and whites, really shine.

So-- And if any, any burgeoning directors are listening to this is what I suggest. If you're gonna remake this, do it, but rename it something else.

yeah, that's not a b- based on a book by…

because "The Last Man on Earth," which you just mentioned basically was remade as "Omega Man" and then remade as "I Am Legend," so that in both of those cases, both of those films stood on their own without having to reference back to the Victor Price.

But I just watched "Suspiria," the remake, and it was a good movie, but it wasn't "Suspiria," it wasn't-- It was only v- so vaguely based. It was like somebody had taken the original D'Argento film and just waved it in the room, and that was good enough for them to call it that.

That, that's the problem with a lot of the remakes. They don't get the heart of what makes it a good movie, and they do very superficial story on top of a movie, and it's like, "What the heck is this?"

Yeah. And I think in my mind "I Am Legend" was good 'cause they didn't reference it back. They let it stand on their own. In the case of "Suspiria," it was a good movie, but they were cashing in on the fame of the name of the '77.

And I think that was still in the days Amazon was experimenting, trying to figure out how to make a good movie that people would like. And I think that was one of them that fell in that timeframe. It's let's remake this one and see what happens." Which I'm glad they did those experiments, 'cause now they have the James Bond license and they're doing a James Bond show.

So that's one, I love James, the corniness, campiness, and fun of James Bond, that they could screw it up in multiple ways. They can make it too campy or they can make it too serious. It doesn't need to be either of those, so we'll see,

yeah. So if you're gonna do it, call it something like "The Demon Face Train" or something like that. Just, just- Let it stand on its own. Don't cash in on the value of the name from way back when.

Yeah, read the story and find out exactly what made it good. And this, it, this is good because it does talk a bit about, like you said, casting the runes as the original story. So there's some witchcraft in there. There's some folk horror in there a little bit with mythology and stuff passed down through ages and, a little bit of this, that, and the other thing is all in here, along with a really cool demon for '57.

And I haven't really dug deep into this, but I came across the fact that someone was saying that this was the only, the second folk horror film in history after "Hexen."

Really?

And I'm like, "Holy cow, can that be true?" I suppose it could be.

that's 30 years separated.

And then if that's the case, this sparked what-- 'cause the '60s and '70s were rife with them.

Yeah, "Wicker Man" and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Wow. That'd be interesting to do a little research on that to

Yeah, dig into that a little bit.

Yeah. But y- yeah it still has a lot of good elements. And the end with the demon picking that guy up and eating him in half, that was really cool. Very Godzilla-like there, but…

Yeah. Yeah. What's next for our side dish, Steve?

man, you had to ask, and you know what? I totally forgot to, to look at that. Oh, actually, I was going to put a different one up. Oh, I don't know what's coming up next because I'm failing today.

The suspense, you could just leave us all in suspense if you want.

yeah, I'll just, I'll dub it in.

There you go.

No, hold on. Next on our list is "Faust," which Colin recommended as one of his favorite top 10 films. And there was another one, and unfortunately now I forgot it and I didn't mark it down that I was thinking that to get added. So when that other one comes back, I'll add that one also.

Okay, sounds good.

yeah, we got "Faust" and then we got the 1910 "Frankenstein," which I gotta start looking for to see about. That one's probably gonna be a little hard to get, I think. Oh,

or not.

we've g- I've got a question mark with "House on Haunted Hill" coming up which would be another Vincent Price one,

I got it on DVD if you need to borrow it.

Yeah, I think I do too.

It's around a lot, all right, so there we go. "The Night Curse of the Demon." That, that's what the new remake's gonna be called.

There you go. Good one

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