Night of the Demon

A puppy from a hat, a demon from the headlight of a train—illusions both benign and sinister run through Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, where the wise men of science conducting a hypnosis experiment are no less credulous than the children watching a backyard magic trick. Tourneur’s old boss, Val Lewton, might have balked at so bluntly revealing the demon whose appearance bookends the film—an oversized rabbit this mangy is perhaps better left hidden inside the magician’s coat—but the film’s grim power is located in the terror-stricken faces of the true believers, not the monster’s animatronic snarl. The sight of a runic curse reducing the masterful magus to spluttering panic or driving the hypnotized madman into a suicidal frenzy is where Tourneur finds his horror, and the collision between science and the supernatural creates explosions deadlier than any mystery fireballs. In fact, the film functions as the shadow of the director’s earlier exploration of the precarious balance between faith and rationality, Stars in my Crown. But whereas that film conjures goodness through a willingness to believe in the goodness of others, Night of the Demon shows the devout followers of evil similarly rewarded for their own twisted acts of faith. Beware of which gods you enshrine, the film suggests, for they may just answer your prayers.