TCM Movie: Night of the Demon (1957)

I detest the expression 'horror films,' I make films on the supernatural and I make them because I believe in them." (Horror Noir: Where Cinema's Dark Sisters Meet. Meehan. 2008) Jacques Tourneur believed in Charles Bennett's screenplay of M.R. James's "Casting the Runes" enough that production was not the easiest of his career. When Professor Harrington is found dead, an American colleague (Dana Andrews) tracks down the cult leader Karswell (Niall McGinnis) in the suspicion he possibly killed the professor through the use of a demon all the while being skeptical of all that fantastical events around him.

The greater question was whether to present the demon in a physical form. A creation of the screenwriter Charles Bennett, there was a lot of drama as to how to present this nameless being onto the silver screen. "I shot the sequence in the woods where Dana Andrews is chased by a sort of cloud. This technique should have been used for other sequences. The audience should never have seen the demon" insisted Tourneur but then in an interview with Joel E. Siegel contradicted his original statement. "I wanted, at the very end, when the train goes by, to include only four frames of the monster coming up with the guy and throwing him down. Boom, boom -- did I see it or didn't I? People would have to sit through a second time to be sure of what they saw." (Fujiwara. Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. 1998)

But for an unknown reason, producer Hal E. Chester would often interfere with the filming. Tourneur would battle with him over upgrading the electric fans for the wind storm as well as the issue of showing the demon. But there was no love lost among the cast and crew, Dana Andrews going as far as calling Chester "a real little schmuck." "He would come up and start telling Jacques how to direct the picture. Jacques would say, "Now, now, Hal," and try to be nice. But I just said, "Look, you little son-of-a-bitch! You want me to walk off this picture? I didn't come all the way over here to have the producer tell me what he thinks about directing the picture. I came because Mr. Tourneur asked me.  Let the director direct the picture!" (Fujiwara. Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. 1998)

It was during post production that Chester fully exerted his power as producer. 13 minutes were cut for the American release (renamed The Curse of the Demon) as well as inserting the actual image of the demon into the beginning and ending of what would have been another Tourneur psychological horror film. The actual creature itself was "taken right out of a book on demonology... and it looked great." (Fujiwara. Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. 1998) Tourneur was heavily critical of these choices as was Bennett. "If [Chester] walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead." But Tourneur was far more vocal about his disappointment. In his interview with Joe E. Siegel, he continued in explaining, "But after I had finished [the film] and returned to the States, the English producer [Frank Bevis] made this horrible thing, cheapened it. It was like a different film."  (Fujiwara. Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. 1998)

(The Night of the Demon will be playing on Turner Classic Movies tonight at 11:00 CST/12:00 EST)