Night of the Demon

Chris Auer

Philosophy of Film

April 25, 2014

Dr. Langguth

Night of the Demon

            I love scary movies and the way they make you feel. But this movie doesn’t do that it’s not really a horror film in my eyes. If you don’t like scary movies or don’t like demons you should re think it and listen to what I have to say about it because even though it is considered a scary movie it doesn’t have that effect on you like most scary movies do. They only show the demon 3 or 4 times on the movie and the demon isn’t even that scary the creepy part of the movie is the character Dr. Karswell. A person fear comes from the suspense in a movie and in this movie it doesn’t really give you any suspense at all.

            The director of this film is Jacques Tourneur, it was made in 1957 and in 1958 it was announced a horror movie. Tourneur is a director that uses a lot of indexing in this film as well as scaling and bracketing. He does such a good job when he does this and this is what makes a good director that can catch the audience eyes with specific details that they should pay attention too. The reason for using these techniques is to show something that is important or taking note to during a film.

            In the book they defined indexing as angling or moving the camera in on an object. By indexing this helps the audience to pay close attention to that object for the rest of the movie to see if it has a significant part in the movie and in most cases it does. For example in the film “Night of the Demon” they used indexing when they zoomed in on Dr. Karswell’s business card and it had writing on it and then when Dr. Holden looked away and looked back at it the writing was gone. This gave you the clue that something wasn’t right with Dr. Karswell. Even though it was during the beginning of the movie this gave you the clue that Dr. Karswell was up to something or that he had a part in this demon being here.

            Scaling is when they make an object bigger. In the film when the parchment flies out of Dr. Holden’s hand they zoom in on the  parchment and make the writing on it bigger so the audience gets a better view and can read it better. Even though the audience can’t read what it says because it is in a different language it gives the audience the awareness that they should pay attention to the parchment later in the film.  

            Bracketing is defined as screening out everything out of the screen and just focusing on one thing. For example in the film they used bracketing when Holden broke into Karswells house and even the Holden didn’t see it the audience can clearly see it as the demon is following him into the house and down the stairs. This is considered bracketing because it shows that the demon is there and that it tell the audience that since he has that parchment that Holden is already cursed and doomed for if he doesn’t get rid of it.

            As a stated that in these three techniques they are supposed to give the audience the suspense that something is going to happen at this point. Indexing, scaling, and bracketing are three ways that can give you the suspense that is needed in the film. Even though this movie was made in the fifties I could see this being a really scary movie back then but if it was made in today it wouldn’t stand a chance. I would highly recommend watching this movie because it gives you history of how horror films were made in the past to how they are made today.