Directed by James C. Wasson
For the final day of Bigfoot week, I wanted something memorable to go out on, something that pushed the limits of Bigfoot cinema. In my research, I heard rumblings of a Bigfoot movie so bizarre, so unhinged, that people wouldn’t even describe it. They would just say “You have to watch it yourself.” After more digging than usual, I managed to find Night of the Demon, and after watching it I came to the startling realization that no one was lying. Night of the Demon is one of the strangest Bigfoot movies I’ve ever seen. Let’s get into it.
Night of the Demon starts off with police interviewing a heavily injured Professor Nugent, who is the sole survivor of a school expedition to research evidence pointing to the existence of a Bigfoot-like creature. Nugent tells the story of the doomed expedition, explaining that his students set out into the wilderness to speak to the outdoorsman who sent in the evidence. While out there, the group is told of the horrible murders supposedly committed by Bigfoot and soon learn that their boat has been stolen, trapping them on the island. As their exploration into the legend grows more intense, the group learns more and more disturbing things about the nature of the creature, his connection to a local woman, and a cult that has formed around him.
While it may not be totally clear from the summary, Night of the Demon is a Bigfoot slasher movie, and a shockingly gory one for its budget. There clearly wasn’t much money in the budget but they did the wisest choice possible by spending it all on the gore effects. Okay, maybe that wasn’t actually the wisest choice possible given the low grade film stock and kind of ridiculous Bigfoot costume, but I support their priorities. They were clearly proud too, we get a lot of diverse kills, and there are usually close ups of the gore, I guess because they wanted you to see where the money went. If that was where the movie ended, just as a Bigfoot slasher with some of the most ridiculous acting I’ve seen, it would still be a great watch, but Night of the Demon goes much deeper.
I rarely comment on the score in most reviews, and I’m trying to be better about that, but typically I consider the score to be part of the entire tone equation. Usually, music isn’t a problem in movies and I only point out when there are particularly great scores, kike in movies like Drive, Birdman, or the Halloween movies. Night of the Demon is not one of those cases. Its music is so absurd and tonally disconnected that I was at first assuming that there was something wrong with the edit I found or that my TV was broken. Nope. When we get to the main story, the first music we hear is this peppy upbeat tune that sounds more like the opening to a family comedy rather than a slasher movie. I thought it might just be because we were in the calm before the storm, but they reuse that same music over and over in less and less fitting spots, leading to some of the greatest tonal clashing I’ve seen.
Speaking of clashing, the entire story is clashing with itself constantly. The premise is fairly straightforward, students go to investigate Bigfoot sightings. But once they get out there they find out about the murders and, let me tell you, I remember being a college student and if a class sent me out to investigate something and then I found out there were a bunch of murders there, I would have just failed the class and walked away. They try to give some lame excuses about the boat being gone but we clearly see a town with shops and such. Surely one of them must have had a phone or rowboat that the students could use. But no, these people, for reasons unknown, continued to investigate, getting themselves into a bizarre story with a woman and the Bigfoot who…mated with her. Yes, the movie goes there. Yes, it is onscreen. Yes, it is shocking.
There’s a lot more to this but I need to defer to the previous commentators. I cannot give it all away here. If you’re up for something insane, something memorable, and something shocking, Night of the Demon is the perfect Halloween movie. I watched it on the streaming site fawesome. It shocked me that Tubi wouldn’t even carry this, but after seeing the full movie, I guess that makes sense. Have a good weekend, a Happy Halloween, and thank you for joining me on this trip!