Night of the Demon review (DVD) ★★★★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham, Athene Seyler,
Liam Redmond, Reginald Beckwith, Ewan Roberts, Peter Elliott | Written by Charles Bennett & Hal Chester
UK Certification PG | UK RRP £19.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 180 minutes | Directed by Jacques Tourneur

This long overdue release from Mediumrare Entertainment marks the very first time that cult classic horror Night of the Demon from 1957 (not to be confused with 1988's Night of the Demons), known in the US as Curse of the Demon, arrives on DVD in the UK at its full, uncut 95-minute running time. This first edition also includes the 82-minute US cut, which was heavily edited in order to follow Hammer's The Revenge of Frankenstein as a double feature, so what a way to celebrate the restored film's digital debut in your home.

First of all, don't be fooled by the film's PG certificate. Let's not forget that Spielberg's Jaws has always had this rating in the West, and that landmark movie continues to keep generations out of the water in fear of what may lurk beneath the surface. Night of the Demon is, even to this day, genuinely frightening and it isn't marred by time like so many genre films of the '50s. It's PG because it's scary. Not gory, not gratuitous, but purely an effective exercise in supernatural horror.

Dana Andrews is Dr John Holden, an American who flies to London for a paranormal psychology convention where a renowned professor is scheduled to expose Dr. Julian Karswell (MacGinnis) as the devil-worshipping leader of a satanic cult. Unfortunately for the professor, he becomes the victim of a towering demon within the opening few minutes of the film, just a moment after an altercation with Karswell, and we're the sole witness to his demise. With the convention suspended for obvious reasons, Andrews begins to investigate a possible connection between the death and the cult leader in an effort to get to the truth, with a mystical sheet of parchment holding the answers. But Holden's scepticism means that the journey to discovery is one that rolls back and forth between belief and disbelief, even when he begins to be plagued by mysterious forces.

This is one to watch for the ubiquitously good performance of MacGinnis as the creepy and crafty Karswell. Andrews' role on the other hand is a little on the wishy-washy side. The only fault with his character is that his scepticism gets somewhat annoying with him raising a question and then creating a thin excuse for absolutely everything out of the ordinary, especially since throughout the entire film we already know of the demon's existence thanks to the opening. The late leading man's acting in itself wasn't up to his usual standard and many have blamed his highly-publicised battle with alcoholism at that stage of his career, and the string of on-set issues that it supposedly caused.

Speaking of ordeals during production, Andrews aside, writer Hal E. Chester had wanted the demon to be prominently featured from beginning to end, but director Jacques Tourneur fought vigorously to make sure that didn't happen. He in fact didn't want the monster, which resembles a Chinese dragon, to be seen at all, yet I think it adds an extra dimension to the film. I wouldn't be too satisfied with an ambiguous ending to this story and so I think that the few occasions where the demon takes form do the film a great service. It's one of the better looking practical creatures of that era, too, and remains a fearsome beast of cinema.

Night of the Demon is highly suspenseful, tense and eerie with its spellbinding use of imagery courtesy of Tourneur's direction, and it's a film that firmly deserves its critically-acclaimed place as one of the greatest British horrors of the '50s.

EXTRAS ??? Curse of the Demon, the 82-minute retitled US cut; a stills gallery; and a 24-page booklet written by documentary film-maker Marcus Hearn.