Late Night with the Devil (#531)


What a surprise! Not only was the theater two-thirds full on a Sunday afternoon at 12:50, I was able to see, understand, and comprehend everything about the movie.  It was not a sci-fi, fantasy, horror or otherwise incomprehensible (to me) movie; it wasn’t even a romantic frolic. It wasn’t a mystery or a thriller or an action-packed one either. It was a straight drama, albeit not your everyday subject matter. This is the story of a late night TV host, Jack Delroy, who is trying to beat Johnny Carson in the ratings. In the beginning, he was on the rise in ratings and received a five year contract with another network.  His beloved wife contracts cancer and dies, and he’s starting to go downhill. He and his staff plan a Halloween special designed to bring him and his world back on track to success.  His guests are a psychic, a cynical doubter of psychic phenomena and the like, who used to be a famous illusionist, and a parapsychologist with a teenaged patient who presumably is invaded by the devil.  Jack is not a very good host or funny man; his foil (a la Ed McMahon) is the band leader. Both the psychic and the parapsychologist are declared frauds by the doubter, and a lot of things (disgusting and otherwise) happen and secrets revealed during this one telecast. The whole film takes place during the telecast, including commercial breaks. The lead player, Jack, is played by an actor named David Dastmalchian, who started in the business in 2009 and seems to have been busy throughout his career in movies and on TV, and although I have seen some of the things he has been in, he was unrecognizable to me.  It kept my interest and attention and there wasn’t as much of the audience leaving as usually occurs to attend to other needs (refreshments and the bathroom, I presume). Critics (96%) and audiences (82%) gave Late Night a thumbs up. 

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