‘Late Night with the Devil’ and One Weird Trick
This surprisingly effective horror flick masterfully recreates the 1970s and plays a dirty trick on its audience along the way.
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There was a point in the 1970s and early 1980s when it seemed like every movie or TV show was a period piece set in the 1950s1. American Graffiti, Happy Days, Porky’s, Animal House—man, the country just simped for the 1950s for a while there—a specific version of the 1950s that very likely didn’t actually exist, of course2.
We’re seeing something loosely similar today, as a lot of shows and films are set in the 70s, 80s, or 90s for no apparent reason. Did Love Lies Bleeding need to be set in the 1990s? Did Drive Away Dolls? Did Wonder Woman: 1984 need to be set in the 1980s3? No, probably not. For whatever reason though, the powers that be seem to think that we all want our escapism to come with a side dish of nostalgia.
Sometimes this works better than others. Take Late Night with The Devil, a nifty little horror movie starring David Dastmalchian as fictional 1970s late night talk show host Jack Delroy, struggling to come close to Johnny Carson’s ratings4. Carson was the King of Corn, but he was unassailably popular in the 1970s, so this is a bit of a Quotidian dream, driving Delroy to concoct a gonzo stunt for Sweeps Week (the week when advertising rates were set, when TV shows commonly trotted out their most eye-catching gimmicks to try and drive ratings): He’ll have a young girl supposedly possessed by a demon on, live, for Halloween5!
The film does an excellent job of recreating the look and feel of a 1970s second-rate talk show, and captures the vibe of the 1970s very well6. The show also uses that firm grip on its visual storytelling to do something subtle and very effective: It takes over the audience’s POV, and you don’t even notice it.
Ford to City: Drop Dead
The whole vibe of the 1970s was dread. You see it in the films and TV shows of the time; the ones that weren’t lightweight escapism into more innocent times depicted the world (and especially big cities) as a grim place well into an inevitable and inescapable decline. Crime was up! Cities were crumbling! War was everywhere! The economy was collapsing! Gas cost $0.53 a gallon7!
This was the era of Dirty Harry and Death Wish, when the world was depicted as a horror show. We had Satanic panics and The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror, which were all a way of saying that America was depressed and terrified in the 1970s8, and Late Night with The Devil captures that sense. And it does so by brilliantly starting off with a very realistic, non-flashy approach: A straightforward documentary-style summation of Jack Delroy’s career as a late-night host, dumping a ton of exposition on the audience while also flashing headlines and photos that remind us that, yes, 1977 was a terrible year to be alive9.
This segues into a nearly real-time recording of the episode of Night Owls that has supposedly been lost for decades. The nearly real-time aspect of it emphasizes the realism, the lack of games being played. When the show goes to commercial, the film switches from a “lost episode” conceit to a “found footage” conceit, offering up more realistic “behind the scenes” footage10. It all comes together to drive home the idea that you are seeing the unvarnished truth, what really happened on that fateful Halloween night.
Along the way, we piece together the back story: Jack was initially a kind of wunderkind on the talk show scene, and thought he had a real chance at unseating Carson. He used to run around with the weirdos at the Bohemian Grove, the focus of many conspiracy theories. Then his beloved wife, Madeleine, died from an unlikely case of lung cancer and he took some time off, returning to soft ratings. A cult rumored to worship the audience-loving demon Abraxis and to sacrifice 13-year-old girls ended a recent standoff with the police by setting their house on fire, killing everyone but one young girl, Lilly (Ingrid Torelli)—rumored to still be possessed by a demon. In a desperate bid to grab ratings, Jack has asked the therapist who brought Lilly back from the brink, June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) to bring Lilly on. To liven things up, he’s also got a corny “psychic” to warm up the crowd and a James Randi-like skeptic, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), to throw cold water on any signs of stagecraft.
After June cajoles the demon (that Lilly calls “Mr. Wriggles”11) to possess the girl live on TV, shocking everyone with her physical transformation and some physical phenomenon, Carmichael aims to prove how easy it is to trick people by hypnotizing Jack’s sidekick, Gus (Rhys Auteri)12. We see Gus become infested with worms at Carmichael’s suggestion, and the horrified man begins tearing his own skin off in horror13.
And then Carmichael snaps his fingers and the hypnotic spell ends, and everything is normal. When they play back the tape, we see there were no worms—Gus was just freaking out under Carmichael’s influence. And right there, the trick has been played.
Why Is He Acting So Silly?
Up until the hypnosis sequence, it’s fair to say that everything you see on the screen is intended to be “real”—what actually happened. The trick here is that the film literally tells you that you didn’t actually see the worms, did you? No, you were hypnotized along with everyone else. When the tape is played back, there are no worms. There’s physical proof there were no worms14. It was in your head. And so is what happens after this point is also largely in your head, and everyone else’s. The film effectively erases the dividing line between you, the observing audience, and the people in the film itself. You’re all caught up in the same delusion, you’re all seeing the most batshit stuff happen as Mr. Wriggles emerges, transforms Lilly into a surprisingly terrifying version of herself, kills several people in horrible ways, and brings home Jack Delroy’s fate while simultaneously filling us in on the true backstory behind all of these events.
It’s notable that the hypnotism scene is where the film stops trying to be realistic and starts leaning into weirdness. Prior to that scene, the show seemed to be firmly on the side of Carmichael’s skepticism; the psychic Jack brings on first is very obviously a fraud, and there’s a throwaway bit where Carmichael confirms this with some quick questions. It’s as if the writers (Colin and Cameron Cairnes, also the directors) want to be very clear that there’s a line separating reality and the demon world—a specific moment when we all lose control of what we’re seeing and hearing15.
It’s fun! Especially if you also remember staying up late to watch old talk shows featuring celebrities you’d never heard of wearing polyester pantsuits and making jokes about hippies. Man, those were good times.
NEXT WEEK: Talk to Me: The Cruelty is the Point
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There was also a point in the 1970s when I was the coolest kid in my neighborhood, but I am here to tell you … it was fleeting.
A very, very white 1950s.
Or, you know, made at all?
I remember as a child being very, very mystified as to Johnny Carson’s general appeal, but now as a middle-aged adult … I still don’t get it, honestly.
These days that’s a 30-second Tik Tok that goes briefly viral until the Olds start running it on old-timey nightly news and then gets completely forgotten.
The vibe was equal parts coke jitters and slinky basslines.
Which was $3.55 adjusted for inflation, which ... doesn’t seem so bad?
Also, apparently, very, very haunted.
Exposition is like nachos at 2AM: Usually a mistake, sometimes a brilliancy. Writing is mysterious.
If anyone “found footage” of my life it would be a lot of me talking to myself and singing little songs to myself and oh my god I might be genuinely mentally unbalanced.
The fact that Mr. Wriggles sounds like the nickname a child gives to their abuser in a Stephen King novel has to be intentional.
I want to be a sidekick on a talk show where every time the host kicks to me I’ll just be sitting on a stool reading a book, and all I’ll ever say is “Little busy here right now.” I’D BE A STAR.
Or as it’s known at the Somers residence, Saturday night! <rimshot>
Although if you think about it, how could you possibly prove you’re not filled with and largely animated by worms right now? You can’t, silly.
For me that is almost always the fifth round of Tequila Fanny Bangers.
"For whatever reason though, the powers that be seem to think that we all want our escapism to come with a side dish of nostalgia." Or they know that setting things later requires a different type of storytelling that includes on-person technology. Cell phones were enough of a challenge, but smart phones ruined a lot when it comes to modern-day storytelling.