MIFF Session 7: LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

As a ploy to revive moribund ratings, a talk show host stages a Halloween show with some very special guests: a medium, a skeptic, a parapsychologist and her demonically possessed charge, a twelve year old girl. It's the late '70s and everyone remembers the sensation that was The Exorcist as well as the boom in possession movies it ushered in. Those ratings are just gonna rocket.

Sibling team Cameron and Colin Cairnes have boiled up something that seems to have brought together the best of their previous two features, the rude but funny 100 Bloody Acres and the more contemporary-minded Scare Campaign. Late Night With the Devil is a triumph of tone management and pacing. After the corny banter between host and second fiddle, the psychic's performance is kept edgy as it's in constant danger of collapse but has a coda scene that breaks it from parody or notions of fluke into the film's reality. The James Randi-like skeptic is perhaps played with too much flamboyance but we already know his career started in showbiz magic. The scene of demonic possession is straight out of the era's Exorcist rips but is balanced by the masterstroke debunking attempt by the skeptic. 

The film is introduced with a slide show describing the era, the PTSD American '70s after Watergate, Vietnam and the Manson trials. The voiceover has a cadence to it remarkably similar to William Holden's in Network and I would bet a silk pyjama that that was intentional. There is also a trove of detail about the struggling host Jack Delroy, his career and marriage that does feel like foreshadowing but it's kept interesting enough and by the time he makes his entrance as the host we feel well acquainted.

The recorded tv show forms most of what we see and counts as found footage. When Jack calls for an ad break we get a period correct card but we then go into another realm which might give some viewers pause. We go from a tv shaped aspect ratio that looks more like film than analogue video (but so did the performance sequences in the real '70s movie Network) to what can sometimes be a split screen in black and white that does in no way look like it was shot during the breaks. While I'll bet the Cairnes tried a more gluey old video look they probably erred on the side of clarity so as not to distract from the mass of information given in these sequences. Also (this is a stretch but I like it) it is a kind of callback to the dual images in the Blair Witch Project with the washed out video mixing with the monochrome 16mm film footage.

Performances are kept on a fairly even level but can frequently overheat or stray into overload. This can affect Ingrid Torelli's turn as Lilly who, at first, might appear distractingly older than her character. Then again, she has to the ol' grin and tear it Linda Blair Boogie so can get a pass. Holding everything together, though, is David Dastmalchian as Jack. Here's one to his agent who has surely earned that 10%. This year alone Dastmalchian been in everything but a Barbie. That aside, he plays the host as a live performer, continuously alert for ratings hazarding moments, diversions and saves, coming across as one who understands the need for performance in the presentation of puffy glitz. More natural in the ad breaks, we see both the character and actor live in the difference. He could have got away with a much bigger, self promoting style but opted for nuance.

The Cairnes have made a film that joins a very short list. Horror-comedy is a tough brief. Most attempts fall towards one of the sides and end up with woozy comedies. It takes a great commitment and concetrated effort to allow both things in where they must be carefully managed to keep their audiences. The likes of Scream, The Old Dark House, or Sean of the Dead feel like faith creating events beside flat parodies like the Scary Movie franchise. 

In Late Night With the Devil we get enough of each tone it will be using early on and as it progresses we are allowed to be surprised by8 outbreaks into horror, knowing the levity can be brought back out of its box when needed. That's why the possession scene with all its trappings of '70s Exorcist ripoffs doesn't feel funny and its why the combination of those tones makes the "debunking" scene so genuinely powerful. Perhaps that's the secret of horror-comedy, the creation of goodwill and respect for the bargain with the audience.  This is a little film, aware of its scale with no intention to reach beyond that but that really only points to its solidity.  You can pack it up in your pocket as the credits roll  but you'll probably want to see it again.