Until around a month ago I had never heard of Night of the Demon, however a chance conversation with a lady at my day job had her reveal to me it was the scariest film she had ever seen. I was intrigued and so come pay day I brought it on DVD. This film is known as Curse of the Demon in America and was edited down by 20 minutes to fit on a double bill.
Psychiatrist Professor Harrington was due to attend a paranormal psychology symposium where he aimed to expose Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) as the leader of a devil worshipping cult. However before he was able to he died in mysterious circumstances, before he died he had spoken of having a curse placed on him by Karswell giving him a runic note. His colleague; John Holden (Dana Andrews) arrives in England determined to expose Karswell in Harringtons place, however he too is soon cursed, he is told he will die in exactly three days time. Holden is a huge skeptic and pays no heed to the warning, however the more strange things happen the more he begins to suspect that maybe something unnatural really might be happening...
Watching this in modern times you have to keep in mind how this would have appeared back in the day. This feels from its time with plenty of scenes of characters talking amongst themselves with action and horror kept to a minimum. I found this to be quite entertaining as I really did have no idea what was going to happen, though like Holden I too believed it would turn out to be a hoax and so found it hard to invest too deeply into the horror aspect. I haven't seen many films from around this time period but both House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting turned out to be less supernatural than at first it seems so my judgement was clouded.
