The likes of The Orphanage and The Conjuring have proven that the latest previous isn’t just a international nation, however a downright scary one. This horror, additionally set within the Seventies, lies on the identical kitsch-uncanny continuum, with a nice ambassador within the form of sickly confronted David Dastmalchian, taking part in on-the-wane US late-night selection present host Jack Delroy. Seen creeping it up in all places in character roles over the previous couple of years – from a Harkonnen mentat in Dune to one in every of Oppenheimer’s detractors, in addition to Suicide Squad’s Polka-Dot Man – Dastmalchian will get a well-deserved lead position right here.
An preliminary company promo fills us in on Delroy’s résumé: perennial second fiddle within the scores battle to Johnny Carson; someday member of an Illuminati-style lodge; widowered when his spouse, Madeleine, is struck down by lung most cancers. Making a shaky comeback from this tragedy, all the pieces appears to relaxation on his 1977 Halloween particular, whose grasp tapes, we’re informed, make up what we see in Late Night time With the Satan. His first visitor, Christou the psychic (Fayssal Bazzi), is pressured off after a bout of Exorcist-style vomiting – permitting his second visitor, twirly tached paranormal debunker Carmichael (Ian Bliss), to spoil the get together. So “Mr Midnight” is eager to make up floor in his third merchandise: parapsychologist June (Laura Gordon) and her teenage ward Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a former cult hostage who’s supposedly host to a minor demon.
Author-directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes – who sound like a light-entertainment act themselves – capably bottle the strained ersatzness of studio tv and shake it up into droll fizz: “Women and gents, please keep tuned for a dwell tv first, as we try to commune with the satan. However not earlier than a phrase from our sponsors.” The black and white B-roll footage between segments is the place the dapper however mildly exploitative Delroy reveals his careerist colors, like a vampiric Jimmy Fallon with slip-ons and sideburns.
Whereas the horrors behind 70s TV bonhomie at the moment are widespread data, due to Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and their ilk, the Cairnes brothers don’t minimize fairly by way of to something genuinely disturbing. Even the blow-out occult finale, that includes some spectacular FX work, stays caught within the realm of unchallenging primetime blarney (albeit a bloodsoaked model). However the administrators and Dastmalchian – excessive on his personal bogus gravitas – have enjoyable with a recent premise that reminds us that gentle leisure is the anteroom of hell.
