Night of the Demon

After a late-career return to the noir cycle with Nightfall, Tourneur traveled overseas to direct this adaptation of “Casting the Runes,” a short story by English medievalist and legendary ghost story writer M.R. James. The film stars Dana Andrews as an American professor brought to London for a parapsychology conference. Once there, he is pulled into an investigation surrounding a satanic cultist and the diabolical force he may have conjured. Although the titular monster was allegedly inserted into the film without Tourneur’s consent, Night of the Demon remains a heady, uncommon entry in the filmmaker’s oeuvre: a slow-burning chiller, peppered with irony and sly humor, about witchcraft in contemporary England.

Explore the Jacques Tourneur brochure flipbook or read below.