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Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Posted By: newland
Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)
DVDrip | English | Subtitles: EN, FR, ES, PT-BR (optional) | 1:35:47 | 720x448 | H264 | NTSC 23.97fps | Audio: MP3 - 160kbps | 1.45 GB

A skeptical American psychologist comes to England to investigate and disprove the concept of the supernatural. But before long he finds himself cursed by the leader of a witch cult and disbelief becomes terrifying reality.

This is the extended British cut of the film under its original title "Night of the Demon" and not the shorter U.S. cut renamed "Curse of the Demon".

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

One of the finest thrillers made in England during the '50s, despite the fact that the final cut was tampered with against the director's wishes. Tourneur had used MR James's short story Casting the Runes as the basis for a marvellous cinematic dialogue between belief and scepticism, fantasy and reality. His intrepid rational hero (Andrews) is a modern scientist who is gradually persuaded that his life is threatened by a black magician. The director employed a number of e normously skilful devices to ensure that the audience experiences the hero's transition from confident scepticism to panic, and the process is observed with such subtlety that, in the original version at least, the interpretation of the plot was left open (i.e. the hero may simply be the victim of a conspiracy and/or his own imagination). The producer decided that the film lacked substance (in fact it was far more terrifying than most horror films), and added special effects of the 'demon' very near the beginning, which of course missed the whole point of what Tourneur had been attempting. Even so, the rest is so good that the film remains immensely gripping, with certain sequences (like the one where Andrews is chased through the wood) reaching poetic dimensions. — DP, Time Out Film Guide

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957) largely continues the director's subtle, suggestive approach to horror. Despite being book-ended by appearances of a crudely animated demon (whose brief appearances were insisted upon by the producers), the film is mostly an exercise in understatement. Just as in Tourneur's Cat People (1943), it is what the audience does not see which causes a sense of unease.
This is in marked contrast to another couple of British horror movies filmed at around the same time, namely The Curse Of Frankenstein (d. Terence Fisher, 1957) and Dracula (d. Fisher, 1958). These first two outings in what was to become Hammer's 20-year domination of the genre eschew supernatural mystery, in favour of florid Gothic melodrama and (for the times) an excess of Technicolor bloodletting. Night of the Demon, on the other hand, is filmed in black & white, and owes more to M.R. James's suggestion than explicit gore.
Scenes such as the storm invoked by black magician Karswell (Niall McGinnis), dressed in clown's makeup, are genuinely unsettling. This scene of a children's garden party suddenly interrupted by demonic intervention anticipates The Omen (US/GB, d. Richard Donner, 1976). As in that film, Night of the Demon's lead character, Dr John Holden, is an American, coming to terms with what he initially sees as 'old European' mumbo-jumbo. As Holden, Dana Andrews is initially somewhat wooden, but his performance improves as the character becomes more convinced of the reality of what he is up against. This theme of the modern, rationalist American adrift in a world of superstition can be traced through several films, including An American Werewolf In London (US, 1981) and "The Ninth Gate" (US, 1999). Even in Universal's famous horror cycle of the 1930s and '40s, the settings were often in a generic 'old Europe', were often made by European directors such as James Whale and Carl Freund, and starred European actors such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
Unlike the hammy histrionics of those films, Niall McGinnis's satanist is a sinister yet affable figure, ultimately aware that he is out of his depth in his occult dabblings. His fear is believable, even if the depiction of his fire-breathing nemesis is not. Although slightly marred by some creaky effects, this remains an engaging, frightening and influential film.
— Ronnie Hackston, BFI ScreenOnline

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

The working titles of this film were Night of the Demon, The Bewitched, Casting the Runes and The Haunted. The film opens with an image of a Stonehenge-like ruin over which an offscreen narrator states: "It has been written since the beginning of time even unto these ancient stones, that evil, supernatural creatures exist in a world of darkness. And it is also said man using the magic power of the ancient runic symbols can call forth these powers of darkness, the demons of hell." The film was produced at Associated British Picture Corp. Studios, which is abbreviated on the print as A.B.P.C. The Copyright Catalog lists the film's running time as 95 minutes, which according to a modern source, was the running time of the British release.
In an interview contained in a modern source, director Jacques Tourneur stated that he was opposed to showing the demon. Tourneur said "The scenes in which you really see the demon were shot without me. All except one. I shot the sequence in the woods where Dana Andrews is chased by a sort of cloud. This technique should have been used for other sequences. The audience should never have completely seen the demon….They ruined the film by showing the demon from the very beginning." In a different interview Tourneur explained, "I wanted, at the very end, when the train goes by, to include only four frames of the monster…but after I had finished the film and returned to the U.S., the English producer made that horrible thing."
— TCM

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)

Jacques Tourneur – Night of the Demon (1957)








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