I must respectfully disagree (pardon my persistence: I consider this film among one of Andrew's best, and is perhaps my favorite of his later roles). That concept would be deviating greatly from the spirit of the M.R. James story (not that this is anything new to filmizations), but apart from that, trying to inject ambiguity into the proceedings just doesn't make any sense to me. The whole question of whether or not to have a demon physically appear is perhaps insignificant, because where does Karswell get his powers from if he isn't dealing with things demonic? The wind storm is not imaginary, neither is the attack in the library. Showing these things yet questioning the existence of the demon would rob the film of most of it's impact.Carl_Rollyson wrote:More was involved in Curse of the Demon than just arguing about whether a special effect would look cheesy. Tourneur wanted to portray a certain ambiguity about the supernatural. In order to do so, he had to leave the question open: Is there really a demon, or not? He didn't want to resolve the issue. Showing the demon DESTROYS the director's conception of the film. Tourneur and Dana were very angry about the appearance of the demon because they shared the same vision of the film. They had all sorts of battles with Hal Chester, the producer. A whole book, by the way, has been published about Curse of the Demon.
And of course, I'm one of those people who believes the witches in Macbeth to be, quite simply, witches.