movie: Night Of The Demon / Curse Of The Demon

This is probably of no interest to you, but I have to get it out of my system.

Years ago, when I was 12 or 13, an old horror movie came on TV one evening. The plot involved a cult leader cursing an interfering psychologist by passing him a strip of parchment with runic symbols on it. This marked him as the target of a demon, and to escape, the hero had to pass the parchment back. This movie caught the imagination of a number of us, and for a week or two, school was enlivened by the passing of strips of paper between classmates.

Fast forward almost 20 years, and I saw a VHS tape on sale that I realized was this movie. I was pleased to buy it and introduce it to Montez. Lo and behold, she had had a similar experience: saw the movie and really liked it many years ago, and hadn't seen it in a long time. The movie was titled Curse Of The Demon, and starred Dana Andrews but was a British creation, with the rest of the cast being British.

Since then, I have seen the movie several times on TV, and was infuriated each time to find that it had been butchered - whole scenes edited out, to the point that the plot was no longer comprehensible if you had never seen the full version, and the pacing was spoiled.

I don't watch VHS any more, but the other week it occurred to me to check for a DVD. There was indeed one available, showing two movies - Curse Of The Demon and Night Of The Demon. It turns out that the movie was released in England in 1957 as Night Of The Demon, running time 96 minutes or so. For some unknown reason, the producer decided to re-title and re-edit the movie for the 1958 US release, so it became the awful Curse Of The Demon, running time 81 minutes or so, and very much against the director's wishes. The VHS tape I had found managed to show the full original movie but under the new title: I don't know how that happened.

But there's more. The director was the very talented and reliable Jacques Tourneur, who has an impressive body of work. He was aware that the weakest item in the film was actually the demon itself - we are talking 1957 special effects. So he wanted to have the film build up the suspense and atmosphere (something he was very good at - he directed the original Cat People, for example), and only show the demon at the climax of the action, to minimise its screen time. But the producers insisted that the demon had to appear at the start. So the first 5 or 6 minutes of the movie is a sequence leading to the killing of a character by the demon. After that, we cut to an airplane in flight, bringing Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins from the US to London, and thus starting the movie that Tourneur wanted to make. Now, when I saw the flick on TV 50 years ago, it happened that I turned to the channel late. So, by fortunate accident, I saw it for the first time starting from the scene on the plane. And I can testify that Tourneur was exactly right. It was better his way.

I also got hold of the M. R. James short story, Casting The Runes, on which the script was based. I was quite impressed by the scriptwriter's talent, because I found the story to be handled completely differently from the script. The basic story idea was captured, but then a much different treatment was applied to make a very good script. It makes it feel all the more criminal, to give a first-rate director an excellent script, and then override him and butcher his work.

Unfortunately all too common, studios messing with a director's film.

I haven't seen these movies, but in general it's a hard sell for me to get interested in movies about supernatural things.

NoCoPilot wrote:

it's a hard sell for me to get interested in movies about supernatural things.

I understand.

This one is interesting for a novice like me, in that most of the acting is very good (even from Dana Andrews, who is actually miscast, being that he is really too old for the part), and a lot of director/editor stuff is appreciable. But I get that from repeated viewings. It was a case of being impressed first, and then watching it over and over to try and understand why I was impressed. Not many movies have had that effect on me, even in the population of movies I enjoyed watching.

A movie that has grown with repeated viewings, for me, is "Spring Forward." Ned Beatty and Liev Schrieber. On first viewing, late night on TV, it didn't strike me as anything special. The second time, during the daytime on TV, it became much more nuanced and profound. The 3rd, 4th and 5th viewings, on DVD, have turned it into a masterpiece of understatement.

There are no fireworks, but the movie hits at the core of life. There is so much wisdom and grace and beauty in the movie that I find it utterly overwhelming.

Another sleeper was "Station Agent," with Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson.