Night of the Demon (1957)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
American professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.
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What critics compared Night of the Demon to
I was also, though, strongly reminded of Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957; aka Curse of the Demon ).
Buffs will notice a nod, too, to the classic "Curse of the Demon" (although Raimi doesn't repeat that film's mistake by ever showing his fiend too clearly).
A segment that involves chasing a little girl's ticket, which apparently has a mind of its own, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the hunt in Curse of the Demon for a parchment with runic symbols on it.
To the best of my knowledge it was kept breathing through B-movies like Jacques Tourneur's excellent Curse of the Demon (1957), but it wasn't fully resurrected until the British studio Hammer began doing their versions of the monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, etc. Their most influential film was Terrence Fisher's Horror of Dracula (1958).