My take: An interesting tale of witchcraft and demon summoning.
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars
Curse of the Demon, also known as Night of the Demon in the UK, is a pretty basic, run-of-the-mill demonology movie. There’s a cult, a skeptic and a curse. It’s got a creepy cult leader who reminds me of Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls and a bit of Otho in Beetlejuice. There’s a seance and an ancient book that holds evil spells to invoke demons. The story as a whole reminded me of Drag Me to Hell, The Ninth Gate and other demon-summoning stories.
Demonic cult leader Karswell and his familiar (aka his kitty).
The movie is about an American psychologist/skeptic named John Holdin. Holdin is brought to the UK by Professor Harrington to investigate a new demonic cult. But when Holdin gets to England, he finds Harrington died under mysterious circumstances. As he looks into Harrington’s death, with Harrington’s pretty blonde daughter by his side, he finds that Harrington had been cursed by the cult leader. Now, the leader of the cult is after Holdin, and Holdin discovers a similar curse has been placed on him.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good demonology or satanic cult movie. I rented a copy online via Amazon and it is available from other similar sources. Here’s the trailer:
Don’t be put off by the cheesy looking demon in the trailer. The movie does a good job building suspense in spite of the limits of 1950s effects.
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