GOOD - Excellent film-noir-like photography with a lot of night scenes and great shadows and light, scenes on city streets, rural areas, forests and a couple of spooky houses. This is no surprise since the director was Jacques Tourneur, who worked many years with Val Lewton in the 1940s, producing many stylish horror films. To me, Tourney's direction and Ted Scaife's photography are the best things about this film.
It was interesting to see Peggy Cummins, whom I had only "known" through the 1949 classic "Gun Crazy" (a.k.a. "Deadly Is The Female). Of course, a decade and different hair and dress styles didn't make her "hot"anymore but she still had a beautiful face. Female viewers might have had the same reaction to Dana Andrews, who was far past his "Laura" days, looks-wise. Still, both can act and did fine in the lead roles.
BAD - Wow, was this pro-witchcraft message heavy-handed, the writers slapping you in the head numerous times to convince us that all that occult nonsense is 100 percent legit. They went overboard in their preaching and some of the dialog is just laughable.
GOOD & BAD TOGETHER - The story starts off pretty cool, then lags terribly until the second half when time starts running out for "Dr. John Holden" and he has some suspenseful scenes inside a house (with a cat!), outside of it (with the demon) and then in a railroad car. Most of the film, however, is a bit tedious, to be honest.
The special-effects are hokey in some parts, especially at the end with a paper-mache monster that looks like a fifth-grader put it together, but overall, for a film almost 50 years old, the FX aren't bad. Although some of the characters are stereotypical, all the actors do a good job.
To me, because of the photography and general downer-of-a-story, this had much more appeal as a film noir than a horror film.
It was interesting to see Peggy Cummins, whom I had only "known" through the 1949 classic "Gun Crazy" (a.k.a. "Deadly Is The Female). Of course, a decade and different hair and dress styles didn't make her "hot"anymore but she still had a beautiful face. Female viewers might have had the same reaction to Dana Andrews, who was far past his "Laura" days, looks-wise. Still, both can act and did fine in the lead roles.
BAD - Wow, was this pro-witchcraft message heavy-handed, the writers slapping you in the head numerous times to convince us that all that occult nonsense is 100 percent legit. They went overboard in their preaching and some of the dialog is just laughable.
GOOD & BAD TOGETHER - The story starts off pretty cool, then lags terribly until the second half when time starts running out for "Dr. John Holden" and he has some suspenseful scenes inside a house (with a cat!), outside of it (with the demon) and then in a railroad car. Most of the film, however, is a bit tedious, to be honest.
The special-effects are hokey in some parts, especially at the end with a paper-mache monster that looks like a fifth-grader put it together, but overall, for a film almost 50 years old, the FX aren't bad. Although some of the characters are stereotypical, all the actors do a good job.
To me, because of the photography and general downer-of-a-story, this had much more appeal as a film noir than a horror film.