"Its understated, elliptical style and brilliant final sequence make this one of the great films of the supernatural."
- Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Films.

"Night of the Demon abounds in prosaic situations turning implacably into nightmares. Every flourish is a touch not underlined but understated...Unfortunately, the film's producers could not see that this was enough....they inserted some atrocious shots of a demon at the very outset of the picture. It is a tribute to the director's skill that his movie survives such a monumental blunder."
- Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of the Horror Film.

"Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon certainly deserves its cult following. It is the best horror movie of the science fiction-dominated fifties, the most intriguing film ever made with a witchcraft theme, and the most intelligent, visually impressive entry to the genre since director Jacques Tourneur, followed by Mark Robson and Robert Wise, made that classic series of B horror films at RKO for producer Val Lewton in the early forties."
- Danny Peary, Cult Movies.

"Tourneur, who excelled at films that staged the eruption of repressed desires, made the classic horror movies Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943)...Here his extraordinary placing and handling of the camera imbue seemingly ordinary surroundings with a brooding sense of menace. The trees, objects or simply unlit areas darkly obtruding in the foreground suggest the presence of implacable forces waiting to pounce on vulnerable, isolated figures. Some suspense scenes, perfectly timed and staged, stand out as models of their kind: the shots of a car with blazing headlights speeding through the night, filmed from behind a cluster of trees; the sudden storm at the children's party presided over by the villain dressed up as a clown; or Andrews' growing panic as he walks through the woods after a visit to the necromancer....the movie is an object lesson in atmospheric horror."
- Phil Hardy, The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies

"One of the finest thrillers made in England during the '50s, despite the fact that the final cut was tampered with against the director's wishes...Even so, the rest is so good that the film remains immensely gripping with certain sequences (like the one where Andrews is chased through the wood) reaching poetic dimensions."
- David Pirie, TimeOut Film Guide.

"His reputation [Tourneur's] still refers initially to the sense of unrevealed horror within the everyday that he showed in the films made for Val Lewton...But the same talent is evident in the British Night of the Demon, taken from an M. R. James story. Time and again in these films, it is the imaginative use of light, decor, space, and movement that makes the impact of the movie."
- David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

"Despite dim work from the leads, this supernatural thriller is intelligently scripted and achieves several frightening and memorable sequences in the best Hitchcock manner."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide.

"Classic devil-cult thriller...The photography and acting is mostly top notch in a film that almost surpasses the earlier RKO-Lewton hits."
- Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film

"This still emerges as the finest horror film produced during the 1950s, with a wealth of rich plot detail....boasts excellent performances - particularly [Niall] MacGinnis as the urbane sorcerer."
- James O'Neill, Terror on Tape.

"...film convinces audience right off the bat and never lets up...Exceptional shocker."
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.

"Just as in Tourneur's Cat People, it is what the audience does not see which causes a sense of unease...Niall MacGinnis's satanist is a sinister yet affable figure, ultimately aware that he is out of his depth in his occult dabblings. His fear is believable, even if the depiction of his fire-breathing nemesis is not. Although slightly marred by some creaky effects, this remains an engaging, frightening and influential film."
- Ronnie Hackston, BFI Screen Online.

"No mere matinee programmer, this is one of the classiest and most intelligent terror films around, even with the presence of a controversial demon (a combination of puppetry and a truly horrific monster make up concoction) which may or may not betray the Lewton aesthetic, depending on which accounts one chooses to believe. In any case it's a crackerjack monster design, but the film has bigger scares up its sleeve on both an intellectual and visceral level...Tourneur operates at full throttle with this film and keeps events moving at a fever pitch."
- Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital.

"The image of MacGinnis running along the railway track, trying to catch the parchment as it blows away is one that stays with you - there are fewer images in cinema that seem to so potently portray a doomed and futile desperation. And the final image of the demon riding in a wreath of smoke on top of the train carriage is a truly extraordinary one."
- Richard Scheib, The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review.

"Director Jacques Tourneur turns in one of his best pieces of work. From the beginning, when Harrington is pursued by a strange cloud, to the very end when Karswell, knowing the runes have been passed back, tries to escape along railway tracks before being savaged by the demon, the atmosphere is always on the edge of fear. Every scene is loaded with tension, the latent fear of the unknown bubbling below the everyday surface....The secret of the film's success lies in the way that Tourneur and the scriptwriters keep to the spirit of James' original understatement."
- www.britmovie.co.uk

Compiled by Jeff Stafford