‘It’s in the trees!’ Night of the Demon script

Night of the Demon (1957) script cover
Credit: BFI National Archive
Night of the Demon (1957) annotated shooting script
Credit: BFI National Archive

Night of the Demon screens on 29 August as part of the BFI’s Monster Weekend at the British Museum.

Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film is a major four-month film season at BFI Southbank and across the UK from October 2013 to January 2014.

This is assistant director Basil Keys’ annotated shooting script for Jacques Tourneur’s scary occult classic Night of the Demon (1957). Note the working title ‘The Haunted’ on the cover page, then turn to the page where the demon appears in the trees on a dark night.

The demon’s apparition is famously referenced later in the film in a séance scene, where Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham) – in the grip of communion with the spirit world – utters the bone-chilling words: “It’s in the trees! It’s coming.”

Herself a child of the British gothic tradition, singer-songwriter Kate Bush later used a sample of these words in the opening moments of her 1986 song ‘Hounds of Love’: