General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Night of the Demon

Night of the Demon is a 1957 British horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur, adapted from M.R. James's short story "Casting the Runes" and starring Dana Andrews as an American psychologist cursed by a devil-worshiping occultist. Produced by Sabre Film Productions for Columbia Pictures, it was released in the United States in a shorter cut under the title Curse of the Demon, and it is now regarded as one of the key British horror films of its decade.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / year	Jacques Tourneur, 1957, United Kingdom¹
Source	M.R. James's short story "Casting the Runes", adapted by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester³
Cast	Dana Andrews (Dr John Holden), Peggy Cummins (Joanna Harrington), Niall MacGinnis (Dr Julian Karswell)⁴
Running times	About 95–96 minutes in the full British version; about 82–83 minutes in the US cut⁴^•⁵
US title	Curse of the Demon, paired in the US with Hammer's The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)⁶
BBFC certificate	X on cinema release in 1957; 12 on video in 1996; PG from 2007¹
Production design	Demon design by Ken Adam, later famous for his James Bond sets⁷

Spoilers

Plot and cast

The film opens with Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham) driving at night to the manor of Dr Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), hoping to have a demonic curse lifted; Karswell had placed the curse after Harrington tried to expose his witchcraft publicly. Harrington is killed by a giant demon that emerges from the woods in a billow of smoke.⁶

Visiting American psychologist Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews) arrives to attend the convention at which Harrington had planned to expose Karswell. A skeptic by nature, Holden is drawn in when Karswell passes him a cursed parchment in the British Museum reading room and tells him he will die within four days. With the help of Harrington's niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins), Holden follows a trail of clues to Karswell while his rationalism is tested.³^•⁶

Memorable sequences include a séance in which the spirit of a little girl is evoked, Holden's night burglary of Karswell's manor during which a domestic cat turns into a leopard, Karswell conjuring a windstorm at a children's garden party he is entertaining as a clown, and the hypnosis interrogation of curse survivor Rand Hobart (Brian Wilde). The climax comes on a train, where Karswell's own curse is thrown back at him.⁶^•⁵

Censorship history

The film's passage through the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) began two years before release. In January 1955 the BBFC received a screenplay titled The Bewitched from Marcel Hellman Productions, and the examining team judged that a film from that script would almost certainly need an X certificate, meaning no admission to persons under 16. The examiners warned that restraint would be required, noting that "a good deal will depend upon the sound, including screams, which can become excessive even for the 'X' category." A further amended script arrived in October 1956 under the title The Haunted, with the same warnings repeated.¹

The completed film was submitted in June 1957 as Night of the Demon. An X certificate was recommended contingent on changes: reducing Hobart's cries and close-ups during his interrogation, and removing his line "We blaspheme and desecrate… in the joy of sin, will mankind that is lost find itself again." When the film was resubmitted later that month, it was classified X.¹

On video in 1996, under the US title Curse of the Demon and with previously cut material reinstated, it was classified 12; an examiner wrote that "the film is, by today's standards, restrained in both treatment and visual process." Seen again in 2007 alongside the shorter US version, it was reclassified PG.¹

The demon controversy

The film's best-known production dispute concerns the titular monster. According to the standard account, the demon was inserted at the insistence of executive producer Hal E. Chester against the wishes of Tourneur, screenwriter Charles Bennett, and star Dana Andrews, so the film could be sold to the US drive-in market.⁶ The film scholar Tony Earnshaw, author of Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon, showed that the demon was present in the script from the beginning and that its basic design, by Ken Adam, was approved by Tourneur; the disagreement was over how it was used, since Tourneur never conceived the film as a monster movie.⁷ Writer Christopher Frayling has argued that Tourneur knew of the demon's intended appearance but was disappointed by the finished creature, while the critic Kim Newman has suggested the reveal should have been saved for later in the film.⁶

Versions and running times

The full British version runs about 95 to 96 minutes. For a US double bill it was trimmed to about 82 or 83 minutes and retitled Curse of the Demon; the trimming was done for scheduling rather than censorship, since the removed material had already been approved by the BBFC.⁴^•⁵^•⁶ The BFI lists an 82-minute print, and restored presentations of both lengths and both titles exist on home video, including a 2K BFI National Archive restoration.⁸^•⁹

Locations and style

The story is set in 1950s London, Salisbury, and Hertfordshire. Stonehenge appears over the credits and again near the end, and the production shot at the actual site on Salisbury Plain rather than using a replica; Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire also stands in for Karswell's country house. A 2017 BFI survey found many of the locations largely unchanged after 60 years.²

Tourneur had built his reputation with the low-budget Val Lewton horrors at RKO, including Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and his approach here is similarly atmospheric: the supernatural intrudes on ordinary settings, and the film plays the conflict between rationality and superstition with dark humor. The BFI curator Vic Pratt has described it as "a cerebral piece" that chills slowly and makes witchcraft "creepily contemporary," paving the way for later occult films such as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973).³^•¹⁰

Reception and legacy

Contemporary coverage was sparse. The film was first advertised in Kinematograph Weekly in October 1957 before a December release, and that trade paper welcomed it as a "supernatural melodrama" and "first-rate British X certificate." The researcher Alison Peirse, who has examined the BBFC and BFI archives, found reviews in few major British newspapers; the Monthly Film Bulletin in January 1958 called it "an essay in the occult" and suggested an A certificate, while the only broadsheet review, in the Irish Times five months after release, called it "the lowest standard for horror films."¹¹

Later standing rose considerably. The BFI has called it one of the greatest of all British horror movies, and it was included on Martin Scorsese's list of the scariest horror films of all time.² It is frequently described as "the best Val Lewton movie not made by Val Lewton," a nod to its continuity with Tourneur's earlier work, and its influence is traced in later supernatural horror from The Innocents (1960) to Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026