Late Night With the Devil

Opening this weekend, the new Shudder film Late Night With The Devil is currently playing in select theatres. I caught a screening of it last night at my local AMC.

The movie is filmed in both found footage and faux documentary styles, showing a live broadcast and the behind the scenes of the taping of a 1977 program. David Dastmalchian plays Jack Delroy, the host of Night Owls, a late night talk show that’s trying to compete with the Johnny Carson show for ratings. The beginning shows his career trajectory, as he begins hosting the show, marries an actress named Madeline, who soon contracts lung cancer. He brings her on the show, talking about her diagnosis and how they met, and it becomes his highest rated episode. Soon after, however, she passes away, and the ratings of the show continue to plummet. In an effort to boost them, he decides to host a special Halloween episode for sweeps week, where he will have several guests displaying their supernatural abilities, and a skeptic who attempts to debunk them. These include a psychic named Christou, parapsychologist and author Dr. June Ross-Mitchell and the subject of her latest book, a 13 year old named Lilly who was the lone survivor of a fire that killed all the members of a Satanic cult. The skeptic is Carmichael the Conjurer, a former magician who has now devoted his time to exposing anyone claiming to have real psychic abilities or evidence of the supernatural. As the night progresses, things start to get out of hand, as Jack is determined to push the envelope in a desperate effort to boost ratings.

While this movie is getting lots of praise, it should be noted that it’s not really scary. So anyone going into this expecting a serious horror movie will most likely be disappointed. What it does offer is a lot of campy entertainment and fun. The late 70’s style works to its advantage, accurately duplicating the look and feel of a talk show from that period. The cast is great, especially Ian Bliss as Carmichael the skeptic, coming off like an arrogant douchebag. Ingrid Torelli, who plays Lilly, ends up stealing the show, doing a fantastics job of portraying the demonically possessed kid, especially when she keeps looking into the camera with a dead stare. There are some good practical effects and body horror elements, and the climax is wild but not too over the top, and features a nice twist. You should definitely pay close attention to the segments where they discuss Jack’s history and what went on in the cult that Lilly was a part of, as they offer clues to what happens in the end. I definitely found myself laughing several times, thoroughly enjoying the shenanigans. As long as you don’t buy into the hype and go into this expecting some campy fun, you should enjoy it.

Comments

Titanic Creations Yongary 1967

This figure was released in late December, and I got it about 2 days before the New Year, so I'm counting it as a 2025 release. It is the Titanic Creations version of the Korean kaiju Yongary, Monster From The Deep. The film was released in 1967 as a Godzilla ripoff, with several ideas copied from the Gamera series, such as his tusks, his ability to fire a stream of flames from his mouth, and even firing a laser beam from his horn, similar to the slicing one used by Gyaos. The film is pretty goofy, but Yongary, like most of those Asian monsters, was pretty cool (to me, at least), so I was psyched that someone finally made a figure of this lesser known kaiju. When Titanic Creations put it up for pre-order, they announced a series of tiers, where they would add accessories when a certain number of orders were met. Enough fans ordered him, so that Yongary ended up with a shit ton of stuff, making him absolutely worth the price. In addition to the kaiju, you get a flame breath effect, ...

S.H. MonsterArts Godzilla Evolved Version (2024)

Early last week, this figure was delivered. It is the Evolved Godzilla from the film Godzilla vs. Kong: The New Empire, from S.H. MonsterArts. I admit, I haven’t bothered to watch the movie. When I first saw the trailer (about a month after having watched Godzilla Minus One and still being on a high from it), the trailer for The New Empire dropped, and I thought it looked stupid as fuck, especially this bad CGI scene of Godzilla and Kong running towards the camera like superheroes. The rest of it looked like Planet of the Apes, so I chose to pass. However, I do think Godzilla’s new evolved look is pretty cool, so when S.H. MonsterArts announced his figure, I went ahead and preordered it. And now, Pinkzilla is finally here. Godzilla Evolved has a sleeker, leaner body, with a bigger head and pink dorsal spines. His tail ends in pink spikes, like an ankylosaurus. The figure turned out looking great, with the spines painted but also translucent, really standing out from the rest of his bod...

RICSAN Custom Toys The Unbelievable (Varan)

For the last few months, I had been seeing photos and YouTube reviews of custom Godzilla kaiju from someone known as RICSAN Customs. He’s a guy in Mexico who makes 3rd party customs of articulated figures that no other company is making. Due to licensing issues, he gives them different names, such as The Dream Ogre and The Infant (Gabara and Minilla), Monster from Odo Island (pre-mutated Godzilla Minus One), Sō Shingeki Serpent (Manda), etc. This one is called The Unbelievable, and is basically the Toho monster from the film Varan (aka Varan the Unbelievable from the English dub). His figures are made of resin and use thick string articulation instead of ball joints (similar to Meego figures). So they are articulated and posable, you just need to be aware that they’ll move differently from standard ball joint figures, so practice a bit more care when handling them. Ok, let’s get the one negative out of the way. He packs his figures in styrofoam, and since that stuff can be sticky, my V...

Musings of an Inkd Geek

Search This Blog