Night of the Demon

An American psychologist arrives in England to debunk a satanic cult and is passed a parchment carrying a curse with a deadline.

Jacques Tourneur, who made Cat People, wanted the demon never shown, so the film would hold the ambiguity between a curse and a suggestible mind. Producer Hal E. Chester shot the creature and cut it into the opening and the climax without telling him.

It is still the best British occult film. The seance, the children's party where Niall MacGinnis conjures a storm, and the sequence where Holden is chased through woods by something you can only see in the movement of the trees are all first-rate.

MacGinnis plays Karswell as a genial, plump man who lives with his mother and does conjuring tricks for local children, which is far more frightening than a robed villain.

Adapted from M.R. James. Also known as Curse of the Demon in a shorter American cut.