An American skeptic is thrust into a prime role at a psychiatrists’ convention when the keynote speaker runs afoul of a local Satanic cult and turns up dead. Together with the deceased’s lovely niece, the new guy picks up where the last one left off and presses the case to its breaking point. Secure in his cynicism, he’s bound and determined to denounce the occult as nothing more than mumbo-jumbo for the gullible, even as he’s pursued by all manner of metaphysical phenomena and strange, violent weather patterns.

Given its age, I was surprised and impressed by _Curse of the Demon_’s restraint. Many of its ballyhooed death curses and evil schemes are paid out slightly off-camera or in near-darkness, leaving audiences’ imaginations to fill in the blanks. Especially effective is the big, roiling, billowing ball of smoke that rushes over the horizon in a pair of key nighttime scenes. Contrasted by dense shadows, the cloud’s creeping mass makes for an eerie, powerful sight even seventy years later. That effect isn’t lost when a flame-wrapped demon materializes in its midst... so long as the shot remains long. Of course, times being what they were (with eager executives allegedly forcing the issue over the director’s objections), we do zoom in tight for a pair of extreme close-ups on the beast, and then the illusion falters. This devil looks like a taxidermy disaster.

Still, the plot makes a good, steady sizzle and I enjoyed the confirmation that not everyone in this era was mindlessly dialed into the Bible as a literal document. That _Curse of the Demon_’s disbeliever is ultimately disproven makes for an unwelcome turn, but until that moment he speaks loudly and confidently and his many scholarly peers seem to agree, if only cautiously. Although it sometimes tests the limits of plausibility, this is far less chintzy and campy than a majority of the era’s genre films and the special effects (mostly) make good use of the black and white film stock. Not bad, really.