Late Night With the Devil

This is out on Shudder now, should be on demand soon. I've been looking forward to it for over a year, probably, and finally get to see it tonight.

I watched this today. An interesting concept and there are some effective moments. It's nifty and mostly fun, but never quite reaches greatness. I wouldn't consider it one of the best recent horror films, but it is an enjoyable and satisfying watch.

I couldn't NOT recall the inspiration (if satanic stuff can be inspired).....TV junk show host Joe Pyne and the Devil Himself, Anton Szandor Lavey, a bit low on FX compared to the movie trailer -

Can't imagine watching this at home, in a theater it was such a great communal experience with a whole audience all feeling the same heavy dread... and then the big reveal!

Which of course I can't reveal here...

I would tend to agree.

Im gonna try and convince my buddies to watch it over the weekend if they havent seen it already.

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The movie Late Night With the Devil itself was inspired by an Australian talk show hosted by American Don Lane. I remember Don Lane and his show - he used to like inviting the likes of Uri Geller and psychics on, he really believed in that stuff. One day he invited a famous skeptic (James Randi) on the show and had a huge fight with him.

Here's "psychic" Doris Stokes on his show, followed by the James Randi moment - the clips are introduced by Australian Bert Newton and Don Lane.

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Pyne went down this road starting in the early 60's. His "guest list" included lots of political outsiders from the '60's, from right-wing to Black Panthers, get rich quick schemes, psychics, early gay rights advocates, mind readers and wacko UFO believers. Satanists, including Levay, provided some additional fodder for Pyne's parade of strangeness. Pyne was gone by 1970, a chain smoker who got lung cancer.

I enjoyed this. Unfortunately, good-not-great, which normally I'd be pleased with but in this case I'd been looking forward to it for a long time. It creates a lot of possibilities and resolves them reasonably well, but there were a few points where it was obvious they were mentioning X because it was going to factor into something later.

Also, this is gonna sound weird, but...I'm surprised it wasn't a little scarier. It's not a pacing problem, it really takes its time and allows dread to build, but there's a little something missing in the execution. I felt very little dread, even though the creation of that distinct emotion seems like it's the entire aim of the film. When there is some kind of (saying this to be non-spoilery) "release," tension-wise, it just feels like a thing that happened.

That said, it's well-acted, they nailed the aesthetic and the tone of the era and lots of other things. It's ambitious and creative and interesting basically the whole time. I admire the swing and I'm glad to have watched it.

I'm curious, what put this on your radar so long ago? I think I hadn't heard of it until the week before it hit theaters here and don't think I was familiar with any of the names on the film (outside of Michael Ironside doing the initial voice over).

Oh, yippee, another place I can talk about how beyond terrible this movie is.

I really love high concept films, and I've enjoyed the wave of "smart" horror we've seen over the last decade. I'm always intrigued by horror but kinda disgusted with a lot of it, so the prospect of finding something that inspires genuine dread, while kind of awful to actually experience, is always tantalizing. And this had all the makings of something potentially thoughtful. And that does turn out to be the case in that it at least has those aspirations, and isn't just about splatter.

A few other reasons:

1. The setup is particularly inspired, because the "let's all keep smiling and keep the show moving" vibe of talk shows dovetails perfectly with a horror film's need to keep characters skeptical. In other words, it's a reason for the people to stay in the haunted house.

2. I've long been interested in late night talk shows and it was evident from the first trailer that they put a lot of time into matching the feel and aesthetic of them (which they did, very well).

3. David Dastmalchian is an interesting/underrated character actor.

I also had some pet theories, as soon as I heard the premise, which would have been quite exciting to see played out, even though it didn't end up delivering on them. But this is the back and forth I have with concept films, be they sci-fi or horror: I keep coming back for those rare occasions where it completely Goes There, even if that remains a rare thing.

For the collectors out there: