Last month, CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert despite the fact that it is often the highest rated late-night show. Part of the reason may be political, but it’s also being heralded as the beginning of the end for late-night comedy, whose audience has aged and dwindled. It’s a sad end for a role that was once seen as so powerful that it inspired films like The King of Comedy, The Late Shift and, more recently, Late Night with the Devil.
That last film, which received a new Steelbook blu-ray release on Aug. 5, imagines ruling late night as a prize worth selling your soul for.
Colin and Cameron Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) wrote and directed the 2024 film, which puts a stylish spin on found footage horror by purporting to be a documentary about the Halloween 1977 episode of the late-night talk show Night Owls with Jack Delroy. The style gives the film an extremely tight sense of time and place, almost entirely set at the studio during that fateful broadcast.
David Dastmalchian is the sort of actor that elevates everything he’s in, often playing characters who are simultaneously compelling and offputting like The Suicide Squad’s pathetic supervillain Polka-Dot Man and Murderbot’s augmented former corporate spy Guarathin. Nowhere does he nail that balance more than in Late Night with the Devil. Jack Delroy lays on easy charm while constantly providing glimpses of the pain and fear lurking beneath the surface.
The documentary’s prologue provides the film’s lean backstory. Delroy has spent six years desperately trying to beat Johnny Carson in ratings (in a self-deprecating joke in his very first monologue, Delroy notes that even his proud parents are probably watching The Tonight Show). He comes closest to success during a very special episode featuring his wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig), who dies soon afterward of cancer. Ratings go into freefall after, and an occult-themed special to kick off sweeps week on Halloween might be Delroy’s last shot at greatness.
The setup allows for an excellent juxtaposition of cheesy humor and disturbing horror. The Cairnes’ play with the very premise of the film by dressing Delroy’s Ed McMahon-style sidekick and announcer Gus McConnell (Rhys Auteri) in a devil costume complete with red horns and a pitchfork. But while he is hoping for the sort of scares Delroy has trafficked in before by bringing spider wranglers on the show, Gus becomes increasingly disturbed by what’s happening on stage.
Delroy’s assembled a lineup that feels perfectly appropriate for a Halloween special. There’s the psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), who does dodgy readings for the audience while being ridiculed by the relentlessly smug magician-turned-skeptic Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss). More sensational is parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), accompanied by Lilly (Ingrid Torelli), a young girl June believes is possessed by a demon. Torelli’s performance makes the most of the TV setting. The typical markers of demonic possession like malevolent laughter and makeup that looks like open wounds are less disturbing than Lilly’s insistence on looking directly into the camera.
The relentless pace of the show, only interrupted by commercial breaks where the camera switches to black and white for “back stage footage,” means the action constantly keeps moving. The film masterfully reveals the characters and their roles based on how they react to the increasing horror. A medical emergency sends Gus into damage control mode with the costumed audience, while the mistrustful Carmichael accuses Delroy of orchestrating things to spike ratings. Night Owls’ sleazy producer Leo (Josh Quong Tart) doesn’t care why things are happening, so long as they’re getting attention.
These glimpses behind the scenes offer some of the most compelling looks at the messy price of fame. There’s speculation Delroy is romantically entangled with June, who tries to paint herself as Lilly’s devoted caregiver but is also enriching herself by putting the child on display. Part of Delroy’s success is attributed to his connections to the Grove, a secretive gentlemen’s club rumored to hold orgies and occult rituals in the woods. Like the 2019 The Twilight Zone episode “The Comedian,” if Delroy made a deal with the devil for fame, it’s the people around him who pay the real price.
The Cairnes’ commitment to using entirely practical effects that would be contemporary to 1977 adds to the unsettling authenticity. A section where a mesmerized Gus pulls worms from his body culminates in a particularly grotesque moment that could have come from a Troma film. Lilly’s demon manifests with the searing light of overexposed film. All of this could come off as campy, but it’s sold by the sincere performances of characters expecting chills and confronted with genuine terror.
That is the bargain the in-universe viewers of Night Owls presumably also made when they invited Jack Delroy into their living rooms and wound up being exposed to something really twisted. That was the old power of late-night television, where hosts were sorcerers who could reach across America to charm viewers who were eager to be entertained and surprised. It’s a power that is rapidly fading, but Late Night with the Devil offers a spooky and nostalgic way to see what it once meant for a comedian to rule the night.
