Saturday Evening Movie Thread [moviegique]: Late Night With the Devil

The most preposterous element of the '70s-based recent horror flick Late Night With The Devil is the notion that anyone—even the Devil himself—could compete with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

What's commendable about it is that it's interesting enough to hold your attention to where the third act, which is probably going to divide people, isn't such a big deal. (That's good movie making!)

The story is about Jack Delroy, a host who has a late night talk show that manages briefly to challenge Carson's numbers, only to crash and descend into a more controversial Wally George/Morton Downey style. Delroy and his sleazy manager Leo plans a last ditch spooky spectacular on Halloween to try to get that coveted top spot before being canceled by their corporate owners. The centerpiece of this spectacular? A girl possessed by the gnostic deity Abraxas, and her guardian, a psychologist with a book to sell.

Verisimilitude, no?

The logo on the camera is VERY similar to ABC's, which ultimately settled for a lesser demon, Ted Koppel.

It's ostensibly a "found footage" movie but it takes too many liberties to sell that, at least to anyone with knowledge of the '70s. The Red Letter Media boys faulted it to some degree for that, but for normal humans, the departures are a good thing. The level of detail is way better than it would be "realistically", there's a lot more freedom with the cameras, and "backstage footage" allows for filling in the story details.

There's also a hypnosis gag which is kind of clever: We see concrete evidence of paranormal phenomenon, and the skeptic, a James Randi-surrogate, performs a trick with similar effects with mass hypnosis. The implication there is that we, the viewing audience, were also hypnotized, and didn't see what we thought we saw.

You could carry that hypnosis idea , I suppose, to paper in all the parts that couldn't possibly be "found footage", though the denouement is clearly from Jack Delroy's perspective. The interesting thing about this is that the story is perfectly well set out in the first three acts, and David Dastmalchian (Suicide Squad, Oppenheimer, Dune, Weird, etc.) does such a fine job that, personally, I didn't find it necessary.

I didn't object. I did feel the script had dropped enough clues that things didn't need to be spelled out. I also didn't object to the splashy SFX final sequence. It was more trippy than spooky or scary, but the movie has largely succeeded by this point.

Better blocking than you'd see in a '70s movie, much less a nighttime talk show.

In a world awash in '80s nostalgia, the '70s callbacks were refreshing. The color scheme, clothing, the talk show format and guests. The RLM boys objected to the theatricality of Ian Bliss' Haig Carmichael, the skeptic who insults and hypnotizes everyone, but then immediately concede that this sort of behavior was fairly common on '70s TV talk shows. (Hello, Charles Nelson Reilly!) I thought Bliss nailed it, being as smarmy and unlikable as "professional skeptics" tend to be.

Actually, from Laura Gordon as the parapscyhologist to Fayssal Bazzi as the fake/real psychic and Ingrid Torelli as the possessed girl, everyone is so good, you might wonder why you haven't seen them before.

They're Australian. That's why. The movie was filmed in Australia, and I think entirely cast with Australians except Dastmalchian. (Rhys Auteri, the pitch-perfect sycophantic sidekick, may not be. He hasn't been in enough things for me to tell.)

Anyway, I didn't realize it until just now, so excellent job on the accents. (Fayssal Bazzi has a "latin" accent, which seems to turn into a very straightforward American one under stress, which I thought was a nice touch, because it implies he's a fraud generally, but genuine in that moment.) This helps the whole authenticity of the movie, actually, with everyone sort of familiar but not actually recognizable.

Perfect sidekick vibe. Gus (Rhys Auteri) has strong feelings about messing around with the devil but a paycheck's a paycheck.

The key, though, is that the movie is spooky and dread-inducing and compelling long before you get to any serious special effects. It could literally be an artifact of the '70s, and you would keep watching just to see if Haig was going to ever admit to anything supernatural, or if Delroy was going to crack or be exposed.

And that's without considering the amusing little references to Billy Carter, Nielsen ratings, sweeps, Amityville, the "Brady Bunch" couture, or the "technical difficulty" cards. (The last caused some kerfuffle because some or all were AI generated.) The Pines or The Woods...whatever that secret club in California is called plays a part. (To quote Nixon: "It's pretty faggy.") A cult clearly modeled after Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, with a dash of Jonestown and Waco thrown in, provides Lilly (Torelli) the possessed girl who looks directly at you, yes, you!

A nice, subtle touch I haven't seen anyone mention: When the band plays Delroy in, the bass line is very, very evocative of "Tubular Bells". Not only does this recall the Satanic movies of the '70s (Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist), it feels like it could have comfortably been made in the '70s.

Ingrid Torelli, as they have her made up, could stand alongside Linda Blair or Susan Swift (Audrey Rose) without looking out of place.

This movie has a lot of enjoyable references to the '70s without those references being the only reason for it to exist.

Genuinely engaging, in other words. The Boy said "Somebody cared about this." That's sort of our criterion these days: Did the people involved in making it care about it? They did, and it shows.

Currently streaming on Shudder.

The devil himself can't take down Carson.

posted by Open Blogger at 07:34 PM

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