Night of the Demon (1957) on Netflix
NR19571h 36mFantasyHorrorMystery
Dr. John Holden, an American professor, arrives in London for a conference. The colleague he was to meet was killed the day before, while investigating a cult run by Dr. Julian Karswell.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.4/1017,666 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Professor Henry Harrington asks his rival to lift the curse Dr. Julian Karswell placed on him, offering in return to cease investigating Karswell's Satanic cult. Harrington dies when his car strikes power lines, and the death is ruled accidental electrocution. Dr. John Holden, an American psychologist, arrives in Britain for a convention where Harrington meant to expose the cult. He learns that the only link between the death and the cult is Rand Hobart, a suspected murderer in a catatonic stupor. Harrington's collaborators consider supernatural forces; Holden rejects the idea. He meets Karswell at the British Museum Reading Room, and at Harrington's funeral, Harrington's niece Joanna gives him her uncle's diary. The next day she and Holden visit Karswell's mansion during a Halloween party, where a windstorm begins and Karswell says he made it with a spell.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Night of the Demon (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter Charles Bennett was so angry at producer Hal E. Chester's changes to his script for the film that he said: "If [Chester] walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead."
- Producer Hal E. Chester and co-producer Frank Bevis decided to show the demon at the start and end of the film over director Jacques Tourneur's objections; Tourneur said the demon scenes were shot without him and the audience should never have been certain of seeing it.
- Jacques Tourneur wanted to use two airplane engines instead of two electric fans for the film's wind scene; when producer Hal E. Chester hesitated, star Dana Andrews threatened to leave unless Chester let "the director direct the picture".
- Columbia Pictures asked stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen to create the film's demon, but he was already committed to his Dynamation film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad with producer Charles H. Schneer.
- Screenwriter Charles Bennett sold his script to Hal E. Chester and later regretted it, because RKO had wanted to buy it and let Bennett direct, with Robert Taylor and Dick Powell in line for the leading roles.
- Kate Bush used a sound clip from the film, featuring the line "it's in the trees, it's coming!", in her 1985 song "Hounds of Love".
- Night of the Demon is regarded as a precursor of British folk horror; Little White Lies called it arguably the second film of the folk horror genre, 35 years after Benjamin Christensen's Häxan.
