Wednesday 7 September 2011

Night of the Demon.


Oh joy.  After years of waiting, one of my favourite films of all time is available on DVD.

The 1957 film adaptation of M R James Casting the Runes is on sale in the UK.

I saw Night of the Demon for the first time way back in the eighties when it was part of a double bill of horror films that BBC2 used to show on a Saturday night. I loved it then and still do, in my opinion it's a classic of horror cinema.

It's a cracking story, brilliantly filmed by Jacques Tourneur (who made the equally as impressive Cat People) and containing great performances, with Dana Andrews excellent as the sceptical Dr John Holden and Niall MacGinnis as the villain of the piece Dr Julian Karswell.  It obviously had some kind of influence on me as Karswell is my chosen user name for the various forums I inhabit and my own website is Casting Runes...

There's some nice touches of humour in there (I'm thinking the seance scene) and the special effects are actually pretty good.  There was some disagreement between director and producer as to whether or not to actually show the Demon. The film would have worked had they not - and added a touch of ambiguity - but I'm glad they did decide to show it as they managed to create one of the truly iconic images in horror.

If you haven't seen it then try to (there's no excuse now!) - you won't be disappointed.

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