In 1977, I considered "Casting The Runes" one of the lesser stories by M. R. James. In 2025, I can see how wrong I was.
It brings to life two Jamesian principles:
1) If you can get away with silence, then say nothing.
"It is not necessary to tell in further detail the steps by which Henry Harrington and Dunning were brought together."
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"After a judicious interval, Harrington repeated to Dunning something of what he had heard his brother say in his sleep: but it was not long before Dunning stopped him."
2) If the story forces you to spell out the details, then do it rapidly and clearly.
"The stories kept on becoming a little more terrifying each time, and the children were mesmerised into complete silence. At last he produced a series which represented a little boy passing through his own park -- Lufford, I mean -- in the evening. Every child in the room could recognize the place from the pictures. And this poor boy was followed, and at last pursued and overtaken, and either torn in pieces or somehow made away with, by a horrible hopping creature in white, which you saw first dodging about among the trees, and gradually it appeared more and more plainly. Mr Farrer said it gave him one of the worst nightmares he ever remembered, and what it must have meant to the children doesn't bear thinking of."
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"He put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being."
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"'Ad he got a dog with him, or what? Funny thing: I could 'a' swore 'e wasn’t alone.'"
The results are lean and propulsive. The story stalks in, punches you in the face, then glides off into the dusk.
NIGHT OF THE DEMON, the 1957 film adaptation by Jacques Tourneur, transforms many set-pieces from the story into sequences equally powerful, and adds a few of its own (the children's party, the Hobart farm, the final confrontation at the train-yard). It also replaces one of the story's protagonists, Henry Harrington, with Peggy Cummins, very much to my pleasure.
The film also reveals its demon right from the start. Even though Tourneur had objected to this, I call it a strength: it shows the audience, right away, that the film's protagonist will be in serious trouble, that he is walking into a trap of his own disbelief.
This opposition between belief and disbelief, between superstition and science, was not a component of the short story. In the film it becomes a central conflict, but a conflict with nuance:
In "Casting the Runes", Karswell's intended victim is an expert on alchemical history, who rejects Karswell's scholarship as "perfectly hopeless". In NIGHT OF THE DEMON, psychologist John Holden is an American delegate to a conference on parapsychology, devoted, in part, to investigating and debunking the Karswell devil-cult. Primary investigator Harrington had died mysteriously; his niece, Joanna Harrington, believes that Karswell's magic is responsible. Karswell openly curses Holden, predicts his death right to the hour, and tells him that his mind will crack from sheer terror. Holden, rationalist and complete skeptic, calls it a bunch of nonsense... until he realizes that Karswell's game is a true manifestation of black magic.
Yet even though NIGHT OF THE DEMON revels in the supernatural power of Karswell, it ends with John Holden beating the curse by remaining a scientist. Harrington had died in panic, but Holden, calmly analytical, wins. (Joanna, too, stays calm and observant despite her belief in the supernatural: "John, he's terrified of you... He's lying... I saw it with my own eyes."). Even in the face of a clearly supernatural threat, the heroes keep their heads, and this makes all the difference in the fight against Karswell.
Much has been said about Karswell and the performance of Niall McGinnis. A vague, barely glimpsed presence in "Runes" -- stout, secretive and surly -- he becomes an arrogantly real person in NIGHT OF THE DEMON. This is one of the film's many triumphs, and I agree that Karswell steals the show.
Other thiefs are the cinematography of Ted Scaife, the low-ceilinged, shadowy set designs of Ken Adam (I love that Hobart farm!), and especially the music of Clifton Parker, in one of my favourite horror scores.
Another striking aspect of the film (also present in the short story) is that, for all its talk of devils and demons, there is no mention of churches or angels. Not even Indian scientist Kumar, a firm believer in devils, has anything to say about gods or divine mercy. At no point is there any suggestion that prayer or sanctuary will keep Holden from his fate; his only hope lies in cleverness and rationality, in beating evil at its own game. I admire this approach: with no belief in gods or in the supernatural, I can still play along happily with a film that respects my intelligence even as it conjures up a world of relentless, black magic monsters. In this, and more, NIGHT OF THE DEMON is a great respecter of its audience.
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