I kind of addressed the art-horrificness of Night of the Demon in my other blog, but briefly put, this film is pretty clearly art horror. The demon is show on screen a few times, and it is clearly supernatural, disgusting, and dangerous. Karswell is a monster too, and he kind of fits this description. He is frightening, and dangerous. I don’t know if he could be called disgusting—he does things that are kind of disgusting, but I’m not sure to what degree consorting with demons is disgusting. It’s more just generally evil. It’s not like he sucks virgins’ blood or anything.
I think it was Freud who said that much of horror arises from things that should be normal, but aren’t. This is really true in Night of the Demon. Karswell isn’t threatening. The first time Holden meets him, he’s wearing clown makeup, and not really the threatening kind. He does magic tricks. He gives kids ice cream. He’s not particularly impressive physically. He’s normal.
But then he starts spouting off about demons, and how Holden will die soon, and how he can control demons. He still seems pretty ordinary here. He could be ranting about his belief in UFO’s or séances or something. But since the themes he is discussing are at such variance with the tone and impression he leaves while discussing them, we are frightened. Had he been the creepy character from the short story, the fright associated with him would have been lessened.
This film’s plot was part overreacher, part complex discovery. We knew more or less what was happening from the beginning—we saw the monster in the second scene, and Karswell tell Harrington that he can control demons. So basically, we know the whole situation in the first two scenes.
But since we are supposed to identify with the main characters, and they don’t know what’s up, this is also a discovery plot. The problem in this story is not so much what is happening, but how it happens—what are the limits of Karswell’s powers, and how can one defeat him?
The protagonists don’t know the answers, and neither do we, so that aspect of the film is complex discovery. The parchment, for example, is scary because we don’t know what it does. We gradually discover its purpose, and that is what makes the film scary. In fact, the fact that we know something the main characters don’t makes the complex discovery aspect all the more effective. In each scene, they find out something, and we find out something, but we know just a little more than they do, and a few more of our answers are filled. This builds suspense because we wonder just when they’ll finally figure out the truth.
Speaking of suspense, this film has a fair amount. Carrol says suspense is “the situation in which the undesired becomes increasing likely to happen with time.” This happens in this movie. The main problem here, as I see it, is whether or not Holden will discover and realize the significance of the parchment. At first, not a big deal—the parchment probably isn’t anything good, and we kind of know what it does because we saw what happened to Harrington, but he’s got lots of time, and surely he’ll figure things out before then.
But he doesn’t, and it seems more and more likely that he won’t make it. When he is in the coach with Karswell, and Karswell is refusing to accept anything with only a few minutes left, the suspense builds. We know that Karswell and Holden both know what’s happening. Holden is desperate to find a way to slip the paper to Karswell. Karswell is equally eager to stop this. They go back and forth. Then Holden offers Karswell the coat, we know that his is his last chance. This is the peak moment of suspense.
The theme of this movie, I think, is the conflict between science and the paranormal. Holden is a skeptic—that seems to be his job, debunking the supernatural. It’s who he is. If someone proved between all doubt that the supernatural exists, he would go from Important Scientist to crank. He doesn’t believe in the supernatural, and doesn’t want to believe in the supernatural, to the point where he behaves irrationally in his desire to avoid the truth.
Tourneur was really good at using cinematography to make his movies scary. There were some really good examples of that here. One was his use of humor to make scary stuff seem weirder and lighten the mood. For example, when he first meet Karswell, he’s kind of a comic figure, a plump little guy bustling around in greasepaint and talking about ice cream. Then he starts telling Holden about how he’ll kill him. The disconnect there makes things more scary.
Ditto with the séance scene. The medium is a weird little guy, his helpers sing that Victorian hymn off key, nothing is very scary there. Then the medium starts doing voices, which is silly, because his contacts in the underworld aren’t very impressive, but also scary, because we’re not sure what’s going on and the spirits confirm that Holden is in danger.
This method is used pretty well in Joss Whedon’s series’ Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which is much better than the name suggests) and Angel. (It’s also used in Doctor Who). In both those shows, scary stuff will be happening, then someone will drop a pop culture reference or the monster will turn out to be more normal than people suspected. If you’ve seen the third season, the Mayor is a good example of that. He’s evil and dangerous, but he’s so darned nice.
Another effect Tourneur uses is the use of creepy and unexplained events. I know everyone mentioned this, but the hand on the railing was pretty scary. Hands on railings are pretty normal—but the fact is wasn’t there in the other shot, and the scary, dark house combined with its inexplicably, served to make that scene really scary.
I think this movie is about due for a remake. With better effects and acting, this could be a really amazing movie. I mean, if you’re going to spend money on five Resident Evil movies, I think you can spare a little for this one.
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