Given his status as one of the genre’s most iconic voices, when Stephen King pipes up with a horror recommendation, then you’d best believe a lot of people are going to listen.
When it also happens to be a deep cut black-and-white cult classic from 1957 that holds a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score of 100 percent and comes suggested by the titan of terror himself right on the cusp of Halloween, then that sentiment increases tenfold.
The drawback is that King’s shout-out to Curse of the Demon (also known as Night of the Demon) was that he was informing his millions of followers it was preparing to air on TCM, so if you didn’t catch it at the time then tracking down a title that’s almost 70 years old might prove a tad on the tricky side.
Film noir legend Dana Andrews stars as John Holden, an American professor who touches down in London for a parapsychology conference, only to be drawn into the supernatural shenanigans of Niall MacGinnis’ devil-worshiping Dr. Julian Karswell. Is there really demonic foul play afoot? Based on the title, you’ve probably figured that out by now.
He might be responsible for a litany of the modern age’s scariest stories and most famous spooky tales, but King’s love and appreciation for the genre extends to long before he first put pen to paper in a professional capacity. Like he says, it’s a spiritual predecessor to a slew of classics, cult gems, and favorites to have arrived in the decades since, and the maestro’s seal of approval is always worth taking on board.
