Your Demon Is Out for Delivery

What happens when a committed skeptic discovers that the supernatural doesn't particularly care whether he believes in it?

This time on The Introverted Obelisk, Obie Knox takes a trip to 1957 for Jacques Tourneur's wonderfully atmospheric tale of skepticism, black magic, cursed parchment, and the dangers of accepting anything from a man who openly admits to practicing the occult.

Dana Andrews stars as John Holden, an American psychologist who arrives in England determined to expose the supernatural as superstition, only to cross paths with the charming and quietly terrifying Julian Karswell, played brilliantly by Niall MacGinnis. Before long, Holden finds himself carrying a mysterious piece of parchment and facing a deadline that becomes considerably more concerning once he realizes something very large may be waiting at the end of it.

We'll also look at the famous controversy surrounding the film's demon, Jacques Tourneur's preference for suggestion over spectacle, the M. R. James story that inspired the movie, and why Karswell remains such an effective villain nearly seventy years later.

So check your pockets, read the fine print, and remember: when dealing with black magic, apparently Hell has a very strict return policy.

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Welcome back, friends, to the introverted obelisk, the horror movie podcast where we continue to learn that accepting mysterious pieces of parchment from strange men is almost always a terrible idea. But first, let's talk about this month's theme. September is finally here, and with summer beginning to give way to the darker part of the year, I thought it was time we turned our attention to some people who really should have left the occult alone. This month is Season of the Witch. And I got four movies filled with witchcraft, black magic, ancient curses, secret cults, demonic forces, and the occasional unfortunate person who thinks all of this supernatural nonsense can probably be explained rationally right up until something from hell proves otherwise. We'll be taking on Night of the Demon, The Devil Rides Out, The City of the Dead, and Black Sunday. We'll be traveling from foggy English roads and quiet little villages to satanic ceremonies and cursed crypts. We'll be traveling with Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, and a whole collection of witches, warlocks, cultists, and demons waiting for us along the way. So light the candles, pour the salt, double check that nobody has slipped a cursed piece of parchment in your coat pocket, and cozy up for Season of the Witch on the Introverted Obelisk. Tonight we're talking about curses, black magic, and the unsettling possibility that a man in a bathrobe might be significantly more dangerous than a monster with fangs. I'm talking about Jacques Tourneur's 1957 classic, Night of the Demon, as it was released in Britain, and in the United States is released as Curse of the Demon. It's one of the great supernatural horror films of the 1950s, and it's also a perfect example of how atmosphere can sometimes be far more effective than elaborate special effects. Our film begins with Professor Henry Harrington tearing down a country road in the middle of the night. And this man isn't nervous, unsettled, or even particularly frightened. This man is absolutely terrified. Whatever has happened to him has reduced a respected scholar to pure animal pant, and he's got exactly one destination in mind the home of Dr. Julian Carswell. Carswell is one of those horror villains who immediately makes an impression because nothing about the man looks like he belongs in a horror movie. He isn't a vampire brooding in a castle, or a mad scientist stitching something together in the basement. He's educated, charming, remarkably polite, lives comfortably on a sprawling country estate, and just happens to practice black magic and lead to satanic cultly spare time. Yeah, everybody needs a hobby. Well, Harrington arrives practically begging Carswell to call off whatever he's done to him. He's backed away from his investigation, he says he'll leave Carswell alone, and he'll do whatever the man wants. He just wants this thing to stop. And Carswell, calm as you please, tells him that it's done. Harrington is safe. So Harrington leaves, finally believing the nightmare is over, and it is not. On his way home, his car suddenly loses power, forces him out onto the road, and a strange cloud begins moving toward him. Something enormous takes shape inside it, and Harrington realizes that whatever Carswell promised him, that thing is still coming. He runs, scrambling desperately through the darkness until he reaches the railway tracks. But there's nowhere left to go. The creature catches him, and moments later his body is struck by an oncoming train. And that is how Night of the Demon introduces itself. No slow burn. No 20 minutes spent wondering whether the supernatural is real. The movie opens by showing us a demon killing a man, and then essentially turns to the audience and says, Alright, now let's watch everyone else try to figure this out. And thus begins one of the finest horror films probably ever made. Well, we soon meet Dr. John Holden, an American psychologist, arriving in England for a conference on paranormal phenomenon. Holden is a man of science in the strictest sense of the word. He believes in evidence, reason, observation, and has absolutely no patience for, you know, superstitions, seances, haunted houses, demons, curses, or anything else that can't be properly examined and explained. In other words, he's exactly the sort of person you want showing up five minutes after the audience has already watched a demon kill somebody. So Holden has come to London intending to expose the frauds and charlatans who profit from people's belief in the supernatural. And unfortunately for him, one of those supposed charlatans is Julian Carswell. Professor Harrington has been working with Holden before his death. Harrington's niece, Joanna, approaches Holden and explains that her uncle had become increasingly terrified during the days leading up to his death. He believed Carswell had placed some kind of a curse on him, and was convinced that something supernatural was coming to kill him. Holden listens sympathetically, considers the evidence, and reaches the perfectly rational conclusion that all this is nonsense. From his perspective, Harrington became so consumed by superstition that he frightened himself into an accident. There was no curse, there's no demon, and of course, Julian Carswell certainly didn't summon something from hell to murder. Ordinarily, I'd be inclined to give Holden the benefit of the doubt here. I mean, too was a scientist. He's following the evidence that's available to him. Just there's one, you know, tiny problem. We, the audience, saw the demon. Like we met that thing before we even met Holden. So while Joanna is trying desperately to convince him that her uncle was murdered by forces, he doesn't understand. Holden is confidently explaining why that couldn't possibly happen, and the entire audience is already about 15 minutes ahead of him. Well, Joanne, understandably, isn't convinced by his explanation. She knows how frightened her uncle had become. She knows he believed Carswell was responsible, and she isn't willing to write his death off as an accident simply because the alternative makes Holden uncomfortable. Holden naturally remains skeptical. He's going to remain skeptical with a kind of determination that normally is erg for a man who has absolutely no idea what genre of movie he has wandered into. And it's one of those things I enjoy most about Holden is that he isn't arrogant in the usual sense. Like he's not rude, he doesn't think everyone around him is an idiot, and he isn't dismissing the supernatural because he enjoys feeling smarter than everybody else. He simply believes that the universe operates according to rational laws until someone gives him compelling evidence otherwise, he's going to continue behaving accordingly. So as Holand digs deeper, he discovers that Carswell has developed quite the reputation. He's wealthy, intelligent, well educated, and surprisingly well liked by many of the people who know him. He's also spent years studying the occult, and people who seriously cross him have developed an unfortunate habit of becoming dead shortly after. Now, correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but after the third or fourth mysterious death, perhaps we can at least put a post-it note on the courtboard, you know what I'm saying? Well, eventually, Holden meets Carswell himself, and Neal McGuinness is absolutely wonderful in the role. I mean, we got Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Boris Carloff, notwithstanding, I gotta say there are very few horror villains from this period who manage to be quite this effective. Carswell doesn't cackle, rant, or spend the movie announcing his evil plans. The dude is charming, soft-spoken, intelligent, and completely confident in himself. He behaves like an exceptionally pleasant neighbor who just happens to know how to summon demons. Carswell invites Holden to visit his estate. And Holden accepts because apparently investigating a man you suspect of being a dangerous occultist means accepting invitations to his house. Now, in fairness, Holden doesn't believe any of the occult stuff, so from his perspective, he's visiting a fraud he intends to expose. From our perspective, he's going to spend the afternoon at the home of a man whose demon murdered somebody during the opening credits. Once again, we have information that Holden does not. When Holden arrives at the estate, however, the movie throws us another curveball. Carswell is hosting a party for local children, and he seems to be genuinely enjoying himself. The guy is performing magic tricks, entertaining the kids, and behaving less like the leader of a satanic cult and more like somebody's favorite eccentric. And again, that's another one of the things that makes Carswell so interesting to me. The movie doesn't suggest that every pleasant thing about him is necessarily an act. The man can apparently enjoy entertaining children in the afternoon and still be perfectly comfortable condemning someone to death by demon later that evening. What do you get to do? Humans contain multitudes, I guess. Carswell eventually gets Holden alone and decides to give our resident skeptic a little demonstration. The weather forecast calls for clear skies, so Carswell tells Holden that he'll summon a storm. And then he does. We're talking clouds immediately roll in, the winds pick up, trees begin thrashing around, and would have been a perfectly pleasant afternoon. Suddenly looks like somebody angered the Old Testament god. Holden, of course, refuses to accept that Carswell caused any of it, and again, I can't entirely blame him. The weather changed isn't exactly ironclad proof of Satan. Well still, the timing is doing Carswell one hell of a favor, though. So Carswell then drops the friendly host routine just enough to make his position clear. He knows why Holden is investigating him, and he strongly recommends that Holden abandon the whole thing and return to America. Of course, Holden refuses. Because if there's one thing we've learned about this man, it's that telling him something is supernatural only makes him want to investigate it harder. Carswell seems, well, disappointed, but not surprised. And before Holden leaves, Carswell quietly slips a small piece of parchment into his possession without him noticing. Because Carswell has just handed Holden his death sentence. Now back in London, Holden continues investigating, consulting experts and digging deeper into Carswell's history, while Joanna keeps trying to convince him that perhaps the dead uncle, you know, the occult expert and the well-timed hurricane are all pointing in the same direction. Then Holden discovers the parchment. It's covered in strange symbols and runic writing, and he eventually learns what Coswell has done. The parchment carries the curse. Once it's been passed to somebody, the person only has a limited amount of time before the demon comes forward. There's an important rule here. This isn't the ring. Holden can't photocopy the runes and hand them to, like, you know, say the mailman and make the demon somebody else's problem. Parchment has to be returned to the person who gave it to him. Which means if Holden wants to survive, he's gonna get it back to Carswell and with him not noticing. Now we're finally getting some Holden still isn't ready to throw everything he believes about the universe out the window. But I gotta say, there's a notable difference between I don't believe in curses and I don't believe in curses, but I'm gonna keep this cursed parchment where I can see it. And that's where I think Night of the Demons starts to really shine. Holden doesn't wake up one morning and suddenly announce that magic is real. The wall that is his certainty is slowly dismantled brick by brick. Every strange occurrence removes another rational explanation until he's left trying to reconcile the world he doesn't understand with the one that clearly doesn't care whether he believes in it or not. As the deadline approaches, that becomes considerably harder. Holden begins to experience things he can't explain. A seance produces information it shouldn't be able to produce, and people who have dealt with Carswell aren't merely suspicious of him, they're flat out terrified of him. Carswell, meanwhile, remains perfectly calm, and you know why wouldn't he's played this game before. He knows the rules, and most importantly, he knows when Holden's time runs out. Eventually Holden realizes that whether he believes in the curse or not has become completely irrelevant. The demon apparently isn't conducting a survey. If he wants to live, that parchment needs to go back to Carswell. His opportunity finally comes aboard a train. Holden follows Carswell, carrying the very thing he has spent much of the movie insisting couldn't possibly have supernatural power. And suddenly our rational scientist is desperately trying to slip a cursed piece of parchment back to a practitioner of black magic before an enormous demon arrives to collect him. And I gotta say, I love that. That is my favorite part of this film. Because Holden doesn't defeat Carswell by becoming better at magic. He doesn't learn an ancient spell or discover that he's secretly from a long line of demon hunters. Dude just simply learns the rules. Holden manages to return the parchment to Carswell without realizing what has happened. Holden manages to return the parchment to Carswell. And for the first time in the entire movie, Julian Carswell loses that immaculate composure because he now knows what's about to happen. He watched it happen to who knows how many others, and now it's his turn. And his confidence absolutely evaporates. The charm disappears, and suddenly the man who has spent the entire film making everyone else afraid is now himself absolutely terrified. Carswell realizes the parchment has been returned and desperately tries to get rid of it. But it's too late. He jumps from the train and runs along the tracks as that familiar cloud begins forming in the distance. The demon is coming, and unfortunately for Carswell, it doesn't care that he's management. The creature descends on him, and the man who spent years using supernatural forces to destroy his enemies finally discovers the problem with keeping a demon on the payroll. Eventually, somebody's gonna screw up the paperwork. Carswell is killed, his body subsequently struck by the train, bringing us right back around to Harrington's death at the beginning of the film. Carswell subjected Harrington to this exact nightmare, and now he receives the exact same sentence. Poetic justice rarely comes with this many horns. Well, Holden and Joanna don't go down to examine what's left. Holden essentially decides that some things are better left alone. Which is a pretty significant development for a man who arrived in England, determined to drag every supernatural claim into the light and dissect it. And that's where Night of the Demon leaves us. What makes all this even more interesting is the decades-long debate surrounding the demon itself. You see, director Jacques Tourneur preferred suggestion and atmosphere, and reportedly did not want the creature shown so explicitly. Well, producer Hallie Chester felt differently, and the finished film gives us a very visible demon. And I understand the argument against it. Tourneur had already demonstrated with movies like Cat People that he was exceptionally good at allowing darkness, suggestion, and the audience's imagination to do the heavy lifting. And in fact, there's actually an alternate version of Night of the Demon where we never clearly see the creature, and spin the movie trap much closer to Holden's perspective, never entirely certain how much of this is real. And I can absolutely see how that could work, but I also have to admit, I like the demon. It's it's huge, it's smoky, it's grotesque, and looks exactly like the sort of thing you should not summon unless you've read every single line of the terms and conditions. And more importantly, showing it at the beginning changes the kind of suspense the movie gives us. Holden spends the movie asking whether the supernatural is real, but we aren't asking that question with him. Because we already know. Our question is, how long is it going to take this man to figure out he's in a horror movie? I feel it bears pointing out that the film was actually adapted from M.R. James' casting of the rune. Although the story was expanded and altered considerably for the screen, James had a wonderful talent for writing about educated, rational people who stumbled into something ancient and supernatural, all to discover that all their learning isn't necessarily going to protect them from. And Knight of the Demon understands that perfectly. Dana Andrews makes Holden work because he never stops behaving like an intelligent human being. His skepticism isn't a character defect that needs to be beaten out of. It's a perfectly reasonable worldview being confronted with increasingly unreasonable evidence. Even when that worldview finally begins to crack, Holden doesn't suddenly become somebody else. He simply adjusts because the facts have become impossible to ignore. And then there's Naomaganus. For me, Carswell is one of probably the great pleasures of this film. He's dangerous without constantly performing danger. He's intelligent, courteous, occasionally even likable, but also absolutely willing to have a demon tear someone apart if they become inconvenient. There's something so much more unsettling about that than a villain who spends the entire movie reminding us how evil he is. And for me, that's really kind of the secret sauce of Night of the Demon. The movie understands that horror doesn't require something jumping out of the darkness every 10 minutes. Sometimes all you need is an ancient curse, a deadline, and the slow realization that everything you spent your adult life believing about the world might be completely wrong. And of course, having an enormous demon spooking around certainly doesn't hurt either. So there you have it. Night of the Demon, a story about skepticism, superstition, black magic, and the importance of checking your pockets after visiting an occultist estate. Because if somebody who only practices black magic slips something into your coat, and then strongly and then strongly recommends that you leave the country, maybe don't wait until the runes start glowing before taking the situation seriously. And if there's one lesson I'm taking away from this movie, it's that you should always read the fine print before summoning a demon. Carswell spent years handing out supernatural dissonances, only to discover that hell apparently has a very strict return policy. Good night and real crew.