Time travel with us, if you will, to the late 1970s United States: Johnny Carson is king of the airwaves, oil crisis is coming fast on the heels of oil crisis, and bell-bottoms are still in fashion. But late-night host, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), aims to change that first part. His once-popular show has been steadily slipping down the ratings scale for a few years now, but – anticipating the tasteless live TV stunts of Geraldo Rivera – he’s sure that an on-air demonstration of demonic possession will be a ratings winner and, more than that, a historic TV moment like the moon landings or The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. To that end, he’s invited four guests: corny “psychic” Christou (Fayssal Bazzi); James Randi-esque debunker/stage magician Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss); supposedly possessed Lilly (Ingrid Torelli); and parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), who has made Lilly her latest subject. Predictably, tensions between the five come up almost immediately – Jack Delroy, for all his false charm, doesn’t seem to have the important TV-host ability to act as a social lubricant between diverse guests – but Jack is absolutely determined that the show go on, regardless of objections by his guests, his producers, and his co-host/bandleader Gus (Rhys Auteri). From there, things go awry in increasingly spectacular fashion, but Late Night with the Devil is sharp enough to keep you guessing through most of its runtime, so I won’t say any more about where the plot goes to from there. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself.
And it is a real treat to watch. It’s presented mostly in quasi-found-footage style – while this conceit may occasionally break down, on the whole it’s a great pleasure to see the way the film recreates the conventions of 1970s television – the mustard-coloured sets, the beige suits, the lightly funky musical transitions – and even bothers to degrade the film, as if we’re watching a VHS recorded decades ago. The performances, too, do a fine job in evoking the feel and the texture of the 1970s, with Torelli channeling Linda Blair as the possessed girl, Auteri perfectly hapless as Delroy’s put-upon sidekick, and man of the moment David Mastalchian delivering quite possibly a career-best performance, the smarminess of Jack Delroy hewing just the right side of believability. The same cannot be said for Ian Bliss as Carmichael, whose theatricality, arrogance and sheer punchability go just a little too far. It is, perhaps, true to his real-life inspiration, but it isn’t the sort of effortless joy to watch that the other performers achieve. His scenes drag, just a little and not enough to bring down the film which is, after all, so well-realised in its look, sound and feel.
It’s a small niggle that the creators do not stick solely to their TV-broadcast vision, for there are parts in which key story details are communicated via traditionally narrative, black-and-white “behind-the-scenes footage” when the show cuts to ads. Wouldn’t it have been even more pleasurable if these “commercial breaks” had featured fake 1970s-style advertising à la Rodriguez/Tarantino/Zombie/Roth/Wright’s Grindhouse? Then we could really settle into the conceit that this is an episode of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, exactly as it aired on Halloween night, 1977. Incidentally, the distributors – primarily IFC Films and Shudder – are fools for releasing this in March when it would be such a great choice for a Halloween night cinema trip, not just due to its story unfolding on that very night, but also the way it smartly positions itself at the midpoint between Blumhouse’s factory-line schlock and A24’s highbrow horror. Still, with its televisual conceit, this is one horror that doesn’t demand to be seen on the big screen, so it’s a minor complaint. In fact, it gains a certain something from home viewing, and if you’ve got an old CRT somewhere that you can dig out, even better.
And if you could view it on VHS, even more betterer, but this Blu-Ray at least provides plenty of extras. The biggest is a new commentary by Second Sight mainstay Alexandra Heller-Nicholas who, along with fellow Australian film critic Josh Nelson, discusses the film in the context of Australian cinema and Australian culture, for, though you wouldn’t guess it, Late Night with the Devil is an Australian production with a cast made up entirely of Aussies, with the exception of Dastmalchian. And if you don’t believe me, just listen to the accents in the cast and crew interviews: “Bringing their ‘A’ Game”, with directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes; “Mind if I Smoke?” with Ian Bliss (Carmichael Haig), “We’re Gonna Make a Horror Movie” with Ingrid Torelli (Lilly) and “Extremely Lucky” with Rhys Auteri (Gus).
Meanwhile, in “Cult Hits”, Zoë Rose Smith discusses religious cults, which are a minor theme in Late Night with the Devil, in terms of both their existence in reality and their presence in fiction. This would have been preferable as a written essay, rather than a video essay, due to some of Smith’s bizarre pronunciations (“deity”: “dye-ety”; David Dastmalchian: “David Da-ma-shane”). Disappointingly, Second Sight’s Blu-Ray does not include features present on earlier Blu-Ray releases, such as a commentary with Dastmalchian and producer Leah Kilpatrick, or exactly the thing I wish for above – a cut of the Night Owls episode exactly as (supposedly) aired. This leaves the potential consumer with a dilemma over which Blu-Ray release to purchase – of course, some will opt to buy it several times; regardless, the overall releases loses a star for that omission.