Late Night with the Devil

Waning late night talk-show host Jack Delroy made television history in 1977 when his Halloween special of Night Owls went fatally wrong. Four decades on, Late Night with the Devil is an expose of the footage from that night.

Jack Delroy, introduced in a true crime mockumentary style, is the talk show host for late night variety show Night Owls. Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he never beats Jimmy Carson in the ratings list. However, for audiences of Late Night with the Devil, everything we’re seeing never really happened. A fictionalised TV show, with all its horrific events written and directed by brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes, with our enigmatic talk show host played magnificently by David Dastmalchian.

As audiences are fed the needed exposition about Delroy, we learn rumours involving his private life as an occult member; his wife’s potentially suspicious death and then, after only a month, his sudden reappearance back onto TV screens. All of course, whilst trying to maintain fleeting relevance in an industry constantly looking to modernise.

In its last-ditch effort to attract viewers, Night Owls puts on a Halloween spectacular, with the recorded episode, and behind the scenes footage compiled supposedly for the first time in this ‘documentary’.

For its Halloween special Night Owls invites Christou (Faysaal Bazzi), a clairvoyant, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss), a former magician, now cynic; and Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) an occultist specialist, who rescued and then raised Lilly (Ingrid Torelli) from a satanic cult, to join Delroy on stage to discuss whether anything, or anyone is waiting for us in the spiritual world.

However, when Christou falls ill when communing with a spirit, and Lilly begins channelling her demonic possessor, the show becomes something that Delroy never would have expected.

Admittedly, Late Night with the Devil isn’t wholly innovative. Though its Americanised setting of a late-night show, a format of giant smiles and inflated personalities exaggerates the satire, it becomes a clear imitator of both Ghostwatch (1992) and Inside No. 9’s Dead Line (2018). Two British TV shows, both coincidentally previously airing on Halloween, presented as a taping gone wrong, and which teeter that line of fiction and fact with distinctive ease compared to Late Night with a Devil, all whilst subverting audience expectations with the inclusion of a demonic, or ghostly presence. Yet, if the movie were also set in Britain, the subplot involving en-mass hypnosis would be removed to pass broadcasting requirements. Thankfully, for the 1970s American talk show, anything goes.

The issue is that Dead Line made its point in 32 minutes, whereas Late Night with the Devil took three times as long to arrive at the same conclusion. However, by imitating TV, Late Night with the Devil does raise the question about the role of the audiences in watching TV versus a film. Audiences, even subconsciously, associate television with a lean-back, passive form of entertainment, while film, a medium meant to engross, is labelled lean-forward. Late Night with the Devil, attempting to service TV and film audiences, undeniably results in a lean back reaction, allowing audiences to revel in the unfolding chaos.

Despite audiences leaning back, the Cairnes brothers create a manufactured susceptibility to their comedy, and it’s in the satire that Late Night with the Devil finds its stride. One returning gag involving a commercial break from Delroy invokes a knowing self-awareness reminiscent of Wayne’s World (1992): “Ladies and Gentlemen, please stay tuned for a live television first as we attempt to commune with the devil. But not before a word from our sponsors.” Similarly with Delroy on the edge of redundancy, a past-his-prime presenter, hoping to stay relevant by any means necessary, there’s an air of Alan Partridge found in the host who lingers in the camera’s view or speaks up till the last few seconds of the broadcast. His swagger, and performance entwined for as long as the camera stays rolling.

Whilst its horror is on the tamer side, the aesthetic, such as the analogue 4:3 TV production and its dated decor, illustrates the attention to detail from those involved, not least the cinematography team fronted by Matthew Temple, when during its finale, the aspect ratio shifts into 16:9 relying on Dutch angles, as a wormlike creature, as though from The Tingler (1959) wiggles its way into our psyche and our screens.

Late Night with the Devil may not be inventive, but the comedy, the slow burn horror and its culminating finale makes it an incredibly enjoyable piece of entertainment that would make any TV producer proud.

Late Night with the Devil is in UK cinemas from 22 March.