Whereas Eye of the Devil (see earlier post) was what Frank Sweeney referred to as “folk horror”, invoking The Wicker Man as the film that established this genre retrospectively, Curse of the Demon is in the “witchcraft/devil worship in modern times” genre. Modern meaning 1957, which in demonological terms is like yesterday.

Like Eye of the Devil, this is on the high end of such productions, with a cast including Dana Andrews and Peggy Cummins. It is based on a short story, “Casting the Runes” by the famous English writer, M.R. James, first published in 1911. Lovecraft gave high marks to James in his 1927 essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”. James was a medieval scholar at Cambridge and Eton but is more famous for his ghost stories, which often reflected his antiquarian interests, as this tale certainly does.

Here is the opening of Wikpedia’s plot summary:

“In England, Professor Harrington begs his rival, Dr. Julian Karswell, to rescind a curse he inflicted on him; in return, Harrington will cease his investigation into Karswell’s Satanic cult. After learning that a parchment he gave Harrington has been destroyed, Karswell promises to do what he can. As Harrington arrives home, he perceives a gigantic demon in the trees. Harrington tries to escape in his car but crashes into power lines. The authorities declare electrocution as the cause of death.”

Our hero, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), an American, is in England to attend a convention at which Harrington had intended to expose Karswell’s cult. Holden is a rational, debunker type, and does not believe the rumors of the death being due to supernatural causes.

Holden goes off to meet Karswell at the Reading Room of the British Museum, because where else would a not-hiding-it-very-much Satanic cult-leader with the obligatory goatee go to paw a lot of occult manuscripts. Karsell invites Holden to his mansion (you didn’t expect this guy to have a suburban semi-detached, did you?) to show him a particularly juicy volume.

Holden teams up with Harrington’s niece (Peggy Cummins) in a typical horror movie relationship, and they go chez Karswell where the goateed-one whips up a windstorm as proof of his Satanic bona-fides. Holden is still having none of it and Karswell lets him know he will die in three days.

Holden finally starts to get it through his thick, scientist skull that Karswell is the real thing. Things start to pick up pace with hypnosis, seances, a cat that changes into a panther, a parchment with runic writings, a climactic battle on a train, and, against the wishes of the director, Jacques Tourneur, an appearance of the demon, in a baleful monstery-visage that seems a bit more kaiju than western-demon, and brings to mind schlockier horror films of the era such as Varan the Unbelievable.

That’s our demon on the left below; Varan is on the right. Varan looks a lot like Gorgo, but I have a fondness for Varan having seen him in a double feature for a quarter at a local theater in the mid-1960’s.

In an interview with Films and Filming Tourneur said, “The monster was taken right out of a book on demonology -3,400-year-old prints copied exactly – and it looked great, I must say, in a drawing so I said, ‘Fine, go ahead.’ Then they put this thing on a man. I thought it was going to be suggested and fuzzy and drawn, in and out, appearing and disappearing, like a cartoon, animated…the delineation of that monster belonged to another type of film which is the teenager horror film.”

There was a British release of the film that only showed the demon at the end. The TCM version has the demon appearing in the beginning as well. Jacques preferred a lot of billowing clouds to indicate demonic presence. I favor not showing the demon at the beginning, as it deflates the uncertainty as to whether there really is a demon, or what that means; but I like having the demon at the end, a la Rosemary’s Baby or The Devil Rides Out. I do agree with Jacques that it’s just too much like a guy in a rubber suit. (Just wait until we get to Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla!)

Not to get too deep into demon iconography, but for reference here is an example of a demon image from the aforementioned Hammer production, The Devil Rides Out, which emphasizes the goat-imagery that one more typically associates with reverse-Christian demonology.

Jacques Tourneur started directing movies in France in the early 1930’s and was working in Hollywood by the early 1940’s, when he teamed up with Val Lewton to make the moody horror films, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man for RKO (all worth viewing). These movies were more on the atmospheric side, with understated sexual undertones (especially in Cat People). So Jacques was not the kind of guy, even fifteen years later, who wanted to go for the easy shock of the rubber-suited demon.

The movie is well-made, with a very professional cast. Dana Andrews is perhaps a bit stolid in his portrayal and Niall MacGinnis is a caricature of the bearded, bookish chief-devil-wrangler; but Peggy Cummins does a decent job in a role that does not give her a lot to work with.

A good yarn overall.

The film was originally released in the UK as Night of the Demon; and reputedly cut by ten minutes for its US release as Curse of the Demon. The version that TCM shows is entitled Curse of the Demon, but appears to be the original cut.

I will leave it to a future PhD candidate to do a semiological analysis of all the horror movie titles that start with “Night of…”, “Curse of…”, “Horror of.…”, “Eye of…” etc; with a particular focus on films such as this one that actually used both in alternate titles.

For our next entry, we will dive into the bloody Hammer pool with Horror of Dracula.