James C.Wasson's NIGHT OF THE DEMON is a strangely entertaining, even compelling (if it hits you in the right frame of mind) slice of zero-budget horror that certainly delivers the goods if you're looking for mean-spirited, violent thrills and spills. Despite the threadbare screenplay, the dull performances (save for Crazy Wanda and her father, both of whom are quite convincing) and the grimy photography, it's obvious that this film isn't the work of hapless amateurs - there are plenty of cutaways, dissolves, flashbacks and moving camera shots, marred somewhat by the hack editing, but the film manages to hold your attention nonetheless. Indeed, Wasson constructs his bloody tale with something approaching subtlety - given that the opening scene shows a bandaged man lying in a hospital bed being quizzed by the police about some missing students, it won't take a genius to work out that something bad's going to happen (and indeed already has) - and en route to the denouement, Wasson throws us plenty of juicy tidbits including Bigfoot's previous victims, a bizarre backwoods cult, religious mania, inter-species rape and even patricide. But the best is saved for last, as the hairy monster rips and snorts his way through the incompetent student anthropologists who've been tracking him through the movie. It may be a knock-off of the claustrophobic climax of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but the slow motion, whining synthesiser score and surreal gore lends it all a bewildering, dream-like quality that's actually pretty disturbing and can't easily be laughed off. The film also scores heavily in its use of the forest exteriors almost in the same capacity as INteriors - the trees and bushes tower above the actors and locations, swamping any real perspective and isolating them from anything resembling civilisation, so that by the time the thoroughly depressing Crazy Wanda subplot rears its ugly head the viewer is also completely detached from the 'real' world, Wasson drawing us inexorably toward the staggeringly downbeat finale. Some twenty-five years later, this STILL isn't legally available in its uncut form here in the UK, and I can't help feeling that's due more to the skin-crawling discomfort induced by the final half hour than to the blood-spouting special effects. In spite of its surface flaws, DEMON remains a rewarding viewing experience and will certainly stay in your mind, for better or worse, for a while after the last credit has rolled.
Review of Night of the Demon
