To continue the recent theme of possession movies, today I'd like to talk about a movie in the same sub genre that far exceeded my expectations:
Late Night With The Devil.
I didn't know a whole lot about this movie going into it. All I really need to know about a movie to want to watch it is that it's Halloween-themed. That's literally all it takes. Throw in a vintage vibe and I'm all in.
Late Night With The Devil is presented in the style of a lost broadcast of a popular 70s late-night talk show known as Night Owls, hosted by a man named Jack Delroy. The beginning of the movie gives us a little rundown of Jack's career, his constant rivalry with Johnny Carson, his controversial involvement in a "gentlemen's club" known as The Grove, with questionable intentions, and eventually the tragic death of his wife, an actress named Madeleine Piper. Jack's career takes a hit while he grieves for Madeleine, but he decides that Halloween night, 1977, will be his big comeback. He assembles an interesting group of spooky-style guests, from the medium Christou, to the magician-turned-professional skeptic known as Carmichael The Conjurer, and, most importantly, a parapsychologist, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, and her thirteen year old patient/ward, Lilly, the sole survivor of a strange satanic cult.
Let me just take a moment to say, I was not expecting the movie to be formatted this way, but the fact that it was, is one of the things I love most about it. I love watching old Halloween footage, and seeing what talk show hosts and the like do for the holiday. I grew up with my mother watching the morning talk shows every year, and I would always get so excited to see how the hosts got dressed up, or what interesting, out-of-the-ordinary guests they would bring on. I honestly would have been perfectly happy to watch a movie like this even without an element of horror, if it were just a movie meant to mimic a 70s late-night Halloween special. However, I am also a huge fan of the "lost episode" trope. The idea of strange, unusual, or horrific things being captured on tape and then buried and lost forever has always been intriguing to me, as has the idea that at any given moment, you could turn on your TV and watch something go off the rails right before your eyes. When I first discovered "creepypastas", I spent significant amounts of time poring over the "lost episode" subcategory, part of me always secretly wishing I could catch something like that in reality. I know there are a few instances of it in real life, like the infamous Wicked Witch episode of Sesame Street or the Nickelodeon Halloween special that went a little too far, Crybaby Lane, but still. It's a concept that has always intrigued me and to see a vintage Halloween themed version of that come to life before my eyes sounded like an absolute dream come true.
And it didn't let me down.
The actual broadcast portion of the movie plays out, at first, like any Halloween special of its time. Jokes, costumes, what appears to be a Hollywood medium fumbling his act...until Christou, the medium, is suddenly and jarringly contacted by the spirit of a woman who calls herself "Minnie". When no one will claim whatever message Minnie has from beyond, Christou begins a horrific descent into madness and anguish, culminating in a projectile-vomit scene a la the original Exorcist. Things only go downhill from there, as host Jack Delroy begins to believe something is amiss, confiding that Minnie was a private nickname he had for Madeleine, and Carmichael dismisses and explains away every strange thing that starts happening. (He may be my favorite character of the whole thing; he just cracks me up so much with the way he has an answer for literally everything.)
Things really get going, though, when Dr. June and Lilly arrive on set. We learn that Lilly, rescued at ten years old, now thirteen, is the only survivor of a cult that worshipped a demon called Abraxas. The cult had many strange practices, as cults often do, including raising children to be sacrificed at the age of thirteen, and it's said that anyone who witnesses these sacrifices is then opened up as a vessel for the demon. And, since Lilly is the last man standing in this cult, Abraxas, or perhaps one of his lessers, it's never confirmed for sure, has taken up residence inside her.
It's revealed that Jack's plan all along has been to try and being the demon out on camera, for the sake of saving his ratings during sweeps week and hopefully making the ultimate comeback. Dr. June was apparently on board at first, but becomes increasingly wary, realizing that Lilly's behavior is even stranger than usual around Jack/whenever he's mentioned in her presence.
Regardless, Dr. June goes through with it, against her better judgement, and Mr. Wriggles (as Lilly calls the demon, since he "wriggles in and out" of her mind) is unleashed on live TV, and claims to have met Jack "among the tall trees", also making disturbing references to Minnie, etc.
Carmichael is not having it, though, and employs his own hypnosis routine on Jack's comic-relief sidekick, Gus, making it appear that Gus is ripping open his own stomach to rid himself of worms that Carmichael has made him believe are inside his body. In a playback, we see that none of this actually happens, it's simply a trick of the mind, albeit a very good one, but things go awry when Carmichael suggests they also play back the footage of Lilly, to prove that Dr. June was using the same techniques and none of it was ever real. However, the footage shows everything the audience actually saw...and when Jack finds a frame that shows what appears to be Minnie's ghost standing next to him, everything goes to hell, quite literally.
The demon known as Mr. Wriggles bursts free from Lilly, seemingly splitting her head in half, and destroys everyone and everything in its path, including Carmichael who tries to pay it half a million dollars for proving the existence of the supernatural. (See why he's my favorite?)
As this unfolds, the broadcast style of the movie warps into a strange, trippy journey into Jack's unraveling mind. This is the only real issue I have with this movie...the pacing and format of the story changes very abruptly, and at times it's unclear what has actually happened. I initially thought Jack died and was stuck in some sort of perpetual hell version of his life, a la what happens when you get stuck on Descensum in the American Horror Story universe. As Jack relives parts of his past over and over again, it becomes more and more clear that he, at some point in the past, sold his soul for what he has, years ago at the Grove. Minnie reappears as well, and leads us to believe the cult has been keeping her alive all this time, eventually persuading Jack to put her out of her misery. When Jack stabs her, though, suddenly we're back on the set of Night Owls, and it turns out he has stabbed Lilly instead, thus unleashing the demon Abraxas, who is most likely connected to both Lilly's cult and whatever is going on at the Grove, into the world. The message "And so it is done" flashes across the screen, and, well, it is done.
As I said previously, the only issue I have with this movie is the way the format and pacing of it suddenly changed when we switched from the broadcast to Jack's hellscape/descent into madness, whatever it was intended to be. That's the only time things got a little strange and unclear, though the ending itself was a good one. The idea of Abraxas basically playing the long game through Lilly by keeping her alive for so long, and forcing Jack to commit the final sacrifice he needed to make more gateways for himself was pretty brilliant.
I can understand why the movie might feel a little slow for some people...not everyone is necessarily going to enjoy the way it's paced, with the show playing out in "real time", but I found it perfect, and honestly pretty believable, more so than it would have been if we'd just jumped right into action. And I also was perfectly happy just to sit with the vintage vibe until things really got going. I understand that may not be for everyone, but it was definitely satisfying for me.
In my previous post, I talked about how possession storylines always tend to play out somewhat the same, and initially that's what I expected with this movie. The only difference I was really expecting was, I just assumed it would be an exorcism attempted on "live" TV. But it gave me so much more than that, and I could not be happier that I watched it and got so much out of it. There were a lot of ways I was expecting this story to go, going into it almost blindly, and none of them were the way it actually did.
Late Night With The Devil is definitely going to be a new go-to for me. It's been about three days now since I watched it and I still feel as though I'm riding a high, and I feel even more inspired to bring my own vintage-inspired spooky vibes into the world. I absolutely love the feeling of finding something new like this, to feed my love for Halloween no matter the time of the year, and make me feel more like myself.
I hope that more of the spooky community will watch this movie and feel the same.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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