Night of the Demon aka Curse of the Demon (1957)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) I haven’t yet seen enough Jacques Tourneur movies to say whether they’re all better than average, but let’s just say that his biggest hits are worth a look, and you can count Night of the Demon among those. What could have been an ambiguous psychological thriller gets the studio-mandated no-ambiguity treatment here, with special effects used to show the titular demon tormenting those who get too close to the truth. Questions of fate and curses weigh heavily here as an American academic in England investigating strange happenings. Will he be cursed by his curiosity? Is the sinister cult leader really after him? The climax, memorable, takes place at a train station. For Tourneur, this feels a lot like the kind of film he was making fifteen years earlier with Val Lewton—it’s got dread, an effective premise and a bit of restraint gloriously thrown aside by some blunt special effects work to show the demon. Even today, Night of the Demon remains quite enjoyable as a return to the bedrock of horror movies.