Some Thoughts on Night of the Demon

I too thought that the scariest scene in the Night of the Demon was the scene with the hand on the railing. What made the scene so scary was that the hand was disembodied. Whenever a body part is typically shown in a movie, you always are later shown the person it belongs too, but in Night of the Demon you are left with a very eerie feeling when you never are shown who this hand belongs to. That scene left me completely uneasy and then this sense of dread was immediately diminished with that terrible cat scene. I had a surmounting feeling of “art-horror” and then this feeling was completely robbed from me when Holden was “fighting” the ridiculous panther. I completely agreed with Tourneur that Chester had cheapened the movie by adding in poorly done monster scenes.

The beginning and ending of the movie I would have preferred just the Tourneur way of doing things without the intrusive input of Chester. I liked the opening scene of the long winding road on a dark empty night full of shadows, but then when the demon comes it completely takes away the sense of fear because all sense of mystery is lost. If Tourneur would have done some shadows in the beginning and then a touch of ambiguity, the scene could set the viewer up for a sense of mystery as to exactly how Harrington died that night. Ambiguity would have been a good inclusion, especially in the beginning of the movie because there needs to be some suspense built up to interest the viewer as to what will follow. I liked the scene in the woods with Holden seeing the smoke and hearing the demonic noises, but never actually seeing the demon itself. This could have been all in his mind, but because of the beginning of the movie the viewer knows it is really the demon and does not have maximum curiosity because they have already seen this alleged demon and know that Holden’s time of death is not to come until the next day.

I liked how the ending of the movie had Karswell chasing the slip of paper with the runes written on it. I thought there was a possibility the paper would stop, just as it had in the scene with Holden where the paper almost flies into the fire but stops. The paper never stops and then to add to this sense of desperation, the paper self-destructs. At this point, I thought “well done” Tourneur, but then that poorly made monster comes into view and a King Kong-like scene is shot where the super-sized demon picks up Karswell and shakes him around and beats him a little. This ending could have been better had the demon not appeared so clearly, but maybe just see outlines or shadows in the shape of the demon and then play the demonic sounds. Then Karswell’s death could have occurred behind the train as the train passed and we could have just seen his steaming body lying on the ground after the train passed. That would have been scarier and more effective in stirring up the feeling of “art-horror” and maybe even some cosmic fear in the audience. Instead the audience is shown everything that occurred and is left with no sense of horror, awe or mystery.