The 50s were the heyday of monster movies, and there are tons of amazingly bad ones to choose from. My mom used to stockpile them to watch with me when I came home for breaks in college, and Night of the Demon, also known as Curse of the Demon, is one of the more memorable but lesser known monster movies that we watched together.
It’s another bad monster movie that could have been a good monster movie if not for the meddling studio. In the first ten minutes, we see a man get cursed by a satanic cult leader and then hunted down and killed by the demonic monster. Enter Dr. Holden, a specialist in debunking claims of the paranormal. Looking to prove that the cult leader is a fraud, he begins to investigate the man’s death and the demon curse. Before the studio got their hands on it, the movie was meant to be ambiguous about if the demon and the supernatural are truly real, but because they added in more monster, instead we get a movie where we know the demon curse is real and the tension is in watching a skeptic do foolish things that put himself at risk. It’s a slightly different story but still an enjoyable one. Plus, the creature design is really great.
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