Late Night With The Devil (2023) To fully appreciate the dark satire this film's putting out, you'd need full familiarity with the late night talk shows of the the 1970's.......lorded over by the crowned king of such shows, Johnny Carson.
Millennials and Gen Zs would need to check out streaming sites that offer channels devoted to old Carson 'Tonight Show' reruns....
This film's 70's late night host, Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) sure as hell is no Johnny Carson. His 'Night Owls' show resides in the Neilson ratings basement, he's lost his beloved wife to cancer and he's well on his way to showbiz oblivion......
In desperation, he goes all out to make his Halloween night show one to remember......
And oh boy, does he ever. Cause nothing jacks up the ratings like a live appearance from an actual demon from hell.
Some background for those of you who know nothing about talk shows of the 50's, 60's and 70's.
These shows accumulated a coterie of non-entity, non celebrities whose only accomplishments were their overall oddness and their aggressive self-marketing.
Psychics, Astrologers, Magicians, Fitness-Self Help gurus, and barely literate authors of throwaway books, they clung to their 15 minutes of fame like leeches who'd found a warm body. And talk show bookers sprinkled them into the mix of real celebrities.
"Late Night..." casts a wicked satirical eye on these oddballs in the form of Jack Delroy's guest lineup for his Halloween bash.....
Appearing first is a vaguely foreign (The Middle East? The Balkans?) psychic 'Christou' (Fayssaal Bazzi). A mind reader with supposed telekinetic powers, he's a mash-up of Uri Geller and 'The Amazing Kreskin). And then, to Christou's outrage and umbrage, out comes Carmichael Hague (Ian Bliss), a magician now pursuing a side career of debunking psychics as hustling grifters. (a knockoff of the real guy, The Amazing Randi.....maybbe these guys should have come out with fresher adjective than 'Amazing'....)
Delroy, dripping with showbiz smarm and insincerity, clearly enjoys these two characters clashing, but the best is yet to come......in the form of his current girlfriend June (Laura Gordon), who's been feeding on her infamy as the rescuer and now guardian of a devil possessed teen girl Lily (Ingrid Torelli)....
Oh my....what could possibly go awry here?
Everything, naturally, which leads to projectile vomiting the full array of "Exorcist" special effects and hefty doses of body ripping gore.
Through most of the movie, we admired the ambitious attempts to combine satirical thrusts at talk shows while delivering the expected goods to the gorehounds. But in its finale, the film unwisely aspires to 'elevated horror', which only comes off as pretentious.
Most of it's good, nasty fun, though, with genuine bravura work from Dastmalchian as the oily host and Torelli, who's superb at underplaying her hellish cutie-pie, until forced to let the special effects do the heavy lifting......)
BQ says keep this one in mind for Halloween night.....but only after the kiddies are safely tucked away upstairs gorging themselves on candy. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
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