You know, the devil has something here. Very pleasant. Dr. John Holden arrives in England to attend a paranormal convention where the recently deceased Professor Harrington had intended to expose Dr. Julian Karswell as being the leader of satanic cult. Upon learning of Harrington's death, Holden finds that the only link to the mysterious death and Karswell's alleged cult is an accused murderer called Rand Hobart, who is currently in a catatonic state. While Harrington's niece Joanna is convinced her uncle was felled by supernatural forces, Holden sets about debunking it all as pure hogwash. Something that may yet prove to be fatal to his well being? Prior to 1957, director Jacques Tourneur could boast on his résumé psychological horror classics I Walked With A Zombie & Cat People, the simmering pot boiling Western Canyon Passage and the rightly heralded film-noir piece that is Out Of The Past. He was in short the perfect choice to direct this loose adaptation of M.R. James' story "Casting the Runes". Why then? That producer Hal E. Chester chose to interfere and not let Tourneur have full rein to deliver a supernatural picture that is more about what you don't see is actually what scares you? Is open for scornful debate. The problem, and the source of much discussion over the years, concerns the demon of the title. Goofy looking and at once taking away the quizzical factor fo…

*Night of the Demon* commits what ought to be a fairly serious horror-film mistake almost immediately: it shows us the demon. Not a shadow, not an uncertain shape in the trees, but the great medieval-looking brute itself. That means when John Holden arrives determined to explain away witchcraft, curses and Julian Carswell’s occult practices, we already know he is wrong. His professional scepticism occasionally becomes less “rational man investigating the inexplicable” and more “come on, John, do try to keep up”. Oddly, the film survives this beautifully. Partly that is because Jacques Tourneur turns Holden’s certainty into dramatic irony. We are not really waiting to discover whether the supernatural exists. We are watching a man’s intellectual defences being dismantled while a small slip of paper becomes increasingly difficult to get rid of. The film is full of spaces where things can be concealed, transferred or misunderstood: books, newspapers, pockets, train compartments, smoke. Even an enormous old-fashioned newspaper starts to look suspicious once you realise practically anything could be hiding inside it. It helps enormously that *Night of the Demon* is still astonishing to look at. Stonehenge, skeletal trees caught by headlights, the depth and geometry of Carswell’s house, the British Museum reading room, corridors, staircases and railway platforms all give the film…

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