All this month, The Pink Smoke will be delving into the inarguably excellent but strangely undervalued work of French-expatriate Jacques Tourneur. From his hand in creating the Platonic ideal of film noir with Out of the Past to redefining the horror genre by focusing on its psychological elements with Cat People, Tourneur's role in cinema history is substantial and (get this!) multifarious - so, why isn't his name uttered in the same breath as Howard Hawks, Tod Browning or even Edward G. Ulmer?

By exploring the filmmaker's body of work, The Pink Smoke hopes to shine a light on the filmmaker's influence, introduce readers to some of his more overlooked films and make a case for why you (yes, you!) should mutter his name in your canonical exhalations - or at least nod your head in thoughtful appreciation every time his name comes up in casual conversation at your local Carl's Jr./Hardee's.

Today we bring you writer and artist Tenebrous Kate, host of the Bad Books for Bad People podcast, whose longstanding fascination with all things dark, fantastical and forbidden make her ideal to explore the Tourneur classic Night of the Demon. Dive in, and then be sure to check out her website!

{AGAiNST AUTEURiSM: CAT PEOPLE
& CURSE OF THE DEMON}
{SECOND CHANCES: OUT OF THE PAST}
{PiNK SMOKE PODCAST: BERLiN EXPRESS}
{THE MOViE SHELF: NiGHTFALL}

~ by tenebrous kate ~

If the chief pleasure of horror as a genre comes from its ability to convey a sense of the strange and forbidden (and I'd argue that this is exactly the case), then Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon truly earns its reputation as one of the finest examples of horror storytelling on film. The best horror stories work on multiple levels, challenging our definition of the plausible, conjuring alternate realities, tweaking our folkloric memories and pushing our notions of worst case scenarios to their most absurd and terrifying limits. All of these mechanisms conspire to prove that things we believe to be unreal by the light of day might well exist once night has fallen. Night of the Demon hits on all of these cylinders, achieving the rare goal of delightfully chilling its audience while demonstrating cinematic artistry and a richness of symbolism. What makes the movie’s success all the more magical is that there were many opportunities for missteps, from adapting its literary source material to the ten-plus minute run time difference between the US and UK edits of the movie¹ to the frequently-debated use of creature effects.

Charles Bennett's screenplay for Night of the Demon is based on the 1911 short story "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James. James's brand of ghost tale stripped away many of the histrionic layers of 18th and 19th Century gothics, preferring instead to set his stories in solidly middle-class British environments and allowing the interplay of the mundane and the supernatural to create dread. "Casting the Runes" injects more than a bit of wry humor into its creepy proceedings. In this story, a scholar named Dunning makes the mistake of harshly rejecting a manuscript by self-professed alchemist Karswell, who in turn seeks his revenge by passing a runic curse on to Dunning. Dunning's skepticism turns to paranoia after mysterious incidents support Karswell's dreadful reputation and he turns the tables by secretly returning the paper bearing the runes to his nemesis. Karswell is killed during an accident involving a falling stone, but the reality of his curse is left to the reader to determine. The feud between the two men is portrayed with dry British wit, providing incisive commentary on the kind of petty squabbles James himself may have seen in his work as a medievalist scholar.

Bennett maintains the essentials of James's story in his screenplay but shifts its shape subtly to take full advantage of the film medium. Where "Casting the Runes" suggests a conflict between modernity and ancient folkways, it’s primarily a story of academic rivalry that comes to a horrific end. In the hands of director Jacques Tourneur, this conflict is amplified and made central to the movie. This is characteristic of Tourneur, who elevated his B-movie scripts by picking out their most essential elements and emphasizing them, creating an atmosphere of ambiguous dread. Under Tourneur's direction, the potentially lurid Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie become examinations of what happens when the mysterious intrudes on the modern, calling into question the very definition of "supernatural." Night of the Demon takes a similar approach, juxtaposing a demonic attack with a mild squabble on a transatlantic flight within its first moments. The skillful black and white cinematography of Edward "Ted" Scaife brings out the deep shadows of the forest attack scene and contrasts this with the glossy, man-made interior of the plane. The ancient and unknowable has quite literally crashed into the plastic secularity of a late-50s world. That the plane argument takes place between an American man and a British woman is no mistake—it sets the stage for the story’s pivotal conflict between the mentality of the New World and the Old.

After touching down on English soil, American parapsychologist John Holden (Dana Andrews at his most square-jawed) discovers that his colleague Professor Harrington has died in a car accident and he suspects his late friend's research into a rural devil cult may have something to do with his untimely death. Niall MacGinnis portrays cult leader Julian Karswell as a plump and comfortable man living alongside his charmingly air-headed mother on a lavish country estate. It’s a depiction that’s in keeping with the Karswell of James's story, but the smug knowingness of the screen portrayal bears a sinister edge that rivals any ghoul in the Karloff/Lugosi mode. The self-proclaimed sorcerer demonstrates his magical abilities by degrees and in manners that Holden can easily dismiss as coincidence. The windstorm Karswell summons could be a quirk of the weather and Holden’s encounter with a panther in Karswell's library could be a hallucination... or these events could be evidence of powerful black magic. Even if he does not possess supernatural powers, Karswell is undoubtedly sinister and his belief that he can control dark forces is proof enough of an unhinged mind to unnerve the skeptical Holden.

Raising the stakes in this game of reason versus witchcraft is the presence of Professor Harrington's daughter Joanna, played with luminous elegance by Peggy Cummins. After their initial in-air quarrel, Holden enlists Joanna's aid in uncovering the truth about Karswell’s cult. Though there is an attraction between the two, the purpose of the on-screen relationship is not to create romantic heat. Instead, it is used to underscore the difference between Joanna's Old World belief in the supernatural and the extreme pragmatism that characterizes Holden's New World mentality. In fact, there's very little eroticism in Night of the Demon, particularly when compared with the centrality of sex to Tourneur's Cat People, a story whose plot hinges on the mercurial menace of female sexuality. While the chubby, smarmy Karswell is fascinating, he's also one of the more asexual villains in horror history. It would be easy, and frankly cheap, to code Karswell as incestuous or (cheaper still) gay simply because he's an adult man who lives with his mother. His complete lack of sexuality is especially unusual since he’s meant to be seen as a charismatic cult leader—wherever his power stems from, it's certainly not from the sacral chakra.

Night of the Demon is steeped in centuries of tradition surrounding witchcraft. The prop design and art direction of the film brilliantly evoke imagery associated with British black magic folklore, from woodcuts of the devil to standing stones to the runic inscription itself. With its themes of sinister forces lurking behind the civilized veneer of modern British culture, there’s an argument to be made that Night of the Demon is a spiritual precursor to The Wicker Man and therefore worthy of the recently-coined British Folk Horror label. Though mention is made of the worldwide phenomenon of demonology and Satanism, with the character of Indian mystic Kumar representing this universality, the movie is very much concerned with how black magic manifests itself on English soil. The scene in which Holden questions the family of Rand Hobart, a former Karswell cult member who has been driven mad by a vision of a demon, takes place in a thatched roof cottage that feels as if it comes from a prior century.²

Further alluding to the pastoral roots of witchcraft, Holden pays a visit to standing stones in order to puzzle out the runes he's been given. Both scenes are played for maximum eeriness, emphasizing the chasm of cultural difference between today's cities and yesterday’s folk ways. Karswell himself is a deeply British character, the stereotype of the self-satisfied estate owner who occupies his time with hobbies like mysticism and, peculiarly enough, children's entertainment. The scene in which he breaks away from his performance as a clown in order to whip up a windstorm to prove his powers to Holden is one of the more memorable in the film. It's noteworthy that this event takes place at a Halloween party for children. There’s heavy symbolism in the fact that this secular reinterpretation of an ancient pagan rite is interrupted by a dramatic demonstration of ancient magic.

The movie's magical roots go deeper still. I was struck by the fact that the core group of characters all have names that begin with an H or a K, even going so far as to change the central character's name from "Dunning" to "Holden" - it's such a deliberate choice that it stood out as other than coincidental. All of the curse victims have names that begin with H (Holden, Harrington, and Hobart) while occultists Karswell and Kumar have names that begin with K. The letters H and K both have antecedents in the Anglo Saxon runic alphabet that Karswell uses to write his curse—Haegl and Kenaz respectively.³ As discussed in the film, these runes carry magical significance to modern-day pagans and occult practitioners. In these traditions, Haegl is translated as "hail" (the form of precipitation) and in a divinatory context, it is into the new via destruction of the old. This is in line with Harrington and Holden’s position as representatives of rational, 20th century modes of thought and with all three characters' attempts to disrupt the workings of Karswell's cult. Conversely, Haegl is also associated with moments of crisis, which is how the sorcerer would view these intrusions into his lucrative occult practices. Kenaz provides an even tidier link to our K-named characters: with a translation of "torch," it is connotated with ideas of esoteric wisdom. Karswell and Kumar possess occult knowledge and are therefore suitable bearers of names beginning with this portentous letter.

The British folk occultism of Night of the Demon resonates with musicians whose work deals with similarly magical topics. One of the most enduring quotes from the film is the evocative "It's in the trees! It's coming!" Spoken during a séance arranged to commune with the spirit of Professor Harrington, this has been used by artists like Kate Bush and Coil. The British neofolk band Sol Invictus includes a sample of the debate between Holden and Karswell in the opening of their track "Black Easter," a song that invokes the darkness of pagan religions.

Not all is chiaroscuro chills and elegantly woven folklore in Night of the Demon, however. One element of this movie still prompts debates by audiences and film historians: the very literal creature effect that bookends the movie’s events. There has been some discussion as to how early in the filmmaking process the demon effect came into play. It's perhaps too delicious to imagine American producer and former Dead End Kid Hal "Dippy" Chester insisting that the movie include a hairy, grisly monster while his more sophisticated European counterparts Bennett and Tourneur begged for a less explicit approach. In his book Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon, film historian Tony Earnshaw argues that the demon was intended to stay in the picture from the earliest stages of production, but interviews with Tourneur suggest a different story. Whatever the case may be, the presence of a giant, bewinged, stop-motion, goat-man hybrid beastie contrasts with the subtler horrors at the movie’s heart. It's made stranger still by the closing line of the film: Holden's assurance to Joanne that "maybe it's better not to know."

Those that argue the film's effects are at odds with Tourneur's established track record of ambiguous storytelling seem to miss that the on-screen demon is absolutely wonderful to behold. Its manifestation begins with an ominous double-exposure effect of a brightly sparking cloud, with the demon emerging by degrees, backlit and titanic. These initial frames convey a deeply threatening presence, half-seen by the audience. The demon does not remain half-seen, however. Designed to evoke medieval woodcuts of a monstrous Satan, its marionette movements and slavering close-ups bring a playfulness to the proceedings that harkens back to the wit present in James's short story. The demon is a wink and a nod to the audience - yes, Holden and his cadre of rationalists may ultimately agree that it's better not to know... but we do know.