The one horror movie that influenced Sam Raimi and sent him toward greatness: “Such a great film”
In a way, few directors have shaped the modern movie landscape as much as Sam Raimi.
Alongside the original X-Men trilogy, his three Spider-Man movies proved that there was an appetite for big-budget movies based on comic books. The adventures of the webslinger made instant stars out of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and paved the way for all the success that the superhero genre would experience over the next few decades.
Those who knew of Raimi before his Spider-Man success must have been quite surprised by this career choice, being a director previously associated with the horror genre. He set the world ablaze with his seminal 1981 feature The Evil Dead, which has gone on to have a legacy most filmmakers can only dream of, and he’s routinely cited as an inspiration by fellow horror nerds, which begs the question of what inspired him to give scary movies a go.
In an interview with Den of Geek, Raimi reiterated his love for George A Romero’s influential zombie tale, Night of the Living Dead, which he’s referred to as his favourite film in the past, but the one that’s directly influenced him the most is director Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon.
“That was such a great film,” he said, “I’m very much influenced by that film even today. My brother Ivan [a scriptwriter] and I were affected by it so much that its influence can be seen directly in a movie we made called Drag Me To Hell, which really is based on Jacques Tourneur’s film. The whole idea of a curse that can be handed down to another, of an unstoppable thing from hell that’s coming to get you, is really terrifying. That was really the basis for our movie.”
Released in 1957, Night of the Demon (also known as Curse of the Demon in some territories) is based on the story ‘Casting the Runes’ by acclaimed horror writer MR James, which involves an American professor arriving in London to find that his colleague has been murdered. This leads him down a dark path that brings him into conflict with a dangerous satanic cult to terrifying consequences.
Though it flew under the radar upon its release, it now has something of a cult status, widely considered to be a precursor to the British folk horror movement that culminated with The Wicker Man, extending beyond into the music world, with dialogue from the movie appearing at the beginning of the classic Kate Bush track ‘Hounds of Love’.
On the surface, Night of the Demon has little in common with Raimi’s 2009 Drag Me to Hell, about a woman who falls foul of a curse that will kill her in three days; however, curses play a big role in the older film, and both stories also follow unsuspecting and cynical people getting in deeper and deeper trouble with a mystical force. The latter movie is far from a rip-off, but the connections are certainly visible.
As well as being an influential name in modern horror, Raimi is also clearly a student of the game who knows his stuff, and that is often reflected in his work.
