Night of the Demon - Will's review

In a short introduction a paranormal investigator, Dr. Harringtonton, meets with cult leader Dr Karswell, begging the satanist to "call it off", Karswell makes a half-hearted promise to "do what he can", but the scientist is killed by a demon on his way home. 

Cue the bulk of the movie, in which Dr. Holden, an American scientist and friend of the now diseased investigator, travels to England to look into Harrington's death (which Holden believes to be either an accident), and himself take over the work of exposing Karswell as a fraud. 

Karswell, of course, places the same curse on Holden which killed Harrington, and tells the scientist that he will die on the 28th unless he is willing to publicly state that the cult has the power it claims to have. 

As more and more aspects of the curse appear to come true, the sceptical Dr. Holdon hand-waves away sign after sign of the curse as a co-incidence. 

Eventually of course, the coincidences pile up to the extent that it's easy to believe the curse is indeed real.... Especially of course, as we saw the real demon in the opening reel!!!

And therein lies the problem with this otherwise great movie; what should be a mystery is rendered moot by our knowledge that the cures is, in fact 100% real. 

Apparently, this was a point of disagreement between the writer; who wanted no literal demon to be seen on screen, and the director, who got his way. 

Forgetting that the demon looks like crap (even by 50s standards) and looking at showing it simply from a story point of view, I am 100% on board with the writer on this one; I can even see the point of revealing the demon at the end (although personally I would have left the question for the viewer to make up their own mind), but showing the demon so soon takes a voyage we could have been on, a journey we could have taken with Dr. Holdon, it's destination unknown to us; and downgrades it to a journey we watch him blunder through. 

It's a crying shame, because watching Holdon travel without us is entertaining enough that I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but it could have been so much better by simply cutting one or two scenes. 

An enjoyable movie, which could have been marvellous.