Curse of the Demon*

The skeptic and believer. The great battles that continue to this day. The ultimate debate: show me your proof and I’ll believe. And ultimately the rebuttal: if I do you’ll just find some reason not to believe it. The meat and potatoes of Curse of the Demon (1957) are that very battle. Dana Andrews has made it a career, a life, of debating superstitions, religions, the occult, witchcraft, séance, soothsaying, and magic. He battles with his major weapon: show me the evidence. I believe as director Tourneur, actor Andrews, and writer Bennett that showing the monster was not needed. I remember bringing that up as a topic on the IMDb Horror message board a few years ago when it was still activated and met with some resistance. Some horror fans were glad there was a monster, a demon that arises from the fiery smoke following those accursed with the “runic parchment”. The Stonehenge at the opening credits, visited by American psychologist Andrews who realizes the parchment left into his unknowing possession by a leader of a cult of devil worshippers, Niall MacGinnis, is legit in that it holds runic language lifted right from them. He sees the smoke coming at him--after an unpleasant “night intrusion” into MacGinnis’ home, which was met with a cat turning into a leopard--when traveling back to the car driven by Peggy Cummins (the niece of the murdered professor MacGinnis turned the demon loose on for a scathing public scandal he encouraged against the devil cult leader) through MacGinnis’ woods. MacGinnis even supposedly stirs up a storm just by clasping his nose, closing his eyes, and thinking of a spell with Andrews more than a bit taken aback by the wind’s great power. This storm just emerging with no sign after a sunny, seemingly pleasant day should serve as a warning to Andrews who doesn’t budge. It will take an accumulation of circumstances to nudge Andrews out of his stonewall resistance. A farmer and former cult member under hypnosis revealing details about the parchment during a conference which Andrews is a chief speaker, the storm stirred up by MacGinnis, the séance Andrews considers baloney that had the supposed spirit of the professor warning of the demon, the leopard attack on Andrews, the cloud chasing after Andrews, among other events accumulate to convince the psychologist that there might just be something with this parchment and demon business. I think the monster is menacing enough but I think the Val Lewton approach (that Tourneur was accustomed to) would have been so much better. To leave it up to our own conclusion could have really only benefited this film even more I think. Some don’t though, and it gives those who want it their monster…their evidence. Cummins believes what MacGinnis insists and her stakes in not allowing Andrews, even at his skeptical behest against being “bewitched” by what he always considers much ado about nothing, to invite death due to “closed-mindedness” is a nice development, I felt. Because all three—MacGinnis, Andrews, and Cummins—are presented as educated and realistic, I thought that only enhanced the story. MacGinnis has seen the effects of his studies and beliefs, Cummins is not just some easily duped buffoon, and Andrews does explain away a lot of what he sees by denouncing the fantastic through experience. But that ending isn’t so easy to explain away and when Andrews passes that parchment back, it is clear something has encouraged his change of mind. Athene Seyler, as MacGinnis’ mother is so different than him, a sweet, good-intentioned doting woman seeking to help Andrews despite the psychologist’s belief that she just wants to rescue her son from his investigations into possible murder as a result of the devil worship practices. Liam Redmond, as a colleague in England of Andrews’, I know from, of all things, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken!