Late Night with the Devil (2023) transports audiences back to a time when late night talk shows ruled the networks, and demonic possession was trendy. The film mentions The Warrens, Bohemian Grove and alludes to characters similar to the likes of Anton LeVay. Late Night creates a very specific place and time, and then pulls us into a found footage style archival live broadcast, that devolves into pure terror by the end. This film calls to mind several real historic mock broadcasts that may have inspired the plot to some extent.
The film was written and directed by Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes, the film stars David Dastmalchian and Laura Gordan. Late Night tells the story of Jack Delroy, a late night host with mediocre ratings. After his wife passes away Jack comes back to the air for one final broadcast on Halloween night.
Late Night with the Devil is set in 1977, which predates the BBC’s Ghostwatch by 15 years. Ghostwatch was a mockumentary broadcast from the BBC in 1992. Similar to Late Night with the Devil, Ghostwatch aired on Halloween night. Though it was filmed weeks in advance, the BBC presented it as if it was live television which resulted in a scene similar to the original War of the Worlds radio show. Audiences across the country thought the broadcast was real. The BBC had over 30,000 calls into the station during the program.
Over the course of 90 minutes actors pretended to be BBC hosts investigate a famous haunted house in England. The program switches from anchors in the studio, to field reporters on location. At first, again similar to Late Night with the Devil, the actors don’t take the paranormal seriously. On top of that, they prank each other until things start to escalate. The station airs found footage style coverage of the haunting in the house coupled with terrifying stories from neighbors and residents to back up the claims, a la Blair Witch.
The haunting in Ghostwatch very clearly pulls inspiration from the Enfield Poltergeist. This famous case also inspired The Conjuring 2 and has a lot of similarities to The Exorcist. The family experienced intense paranormal phenomena; mysterious knocking, flying objects, possession, levitating bodies and guttural voices coming out of a little girl. It has set the groundwork for a lot of modern horror tropes, and of course many of those elements also appeared in Late Night with the Devil.
And of course, BBC’s Ghostwatch certainly drew inspiration from Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast from 1938. Again, on Halloween a special episode of The Mercury Theatre on The Air went live on the CBS Radio Network. It was an adaptation of the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells’ The War of The Words.
After only a portion of the broadcast, policemen started to arrive at the radio station. At first a few trickled in, but soon the station was flooded. A struggle unfolded between the police and the executives at the station to keep the broadcast live. The infamous story goes that some of the audience listening on their radio’s did not understand that the broadcast was fictional, and started to panic as they believed aliens were invading the planet. In reality, the panic wasn’t as widespread as the legend has led us to believe over the years. Especially because of the societal tensions in the time leading up to World War II.
The War of The Worlds had an impact, which still lives on today. And we can see its influence when we look at Ghostwatch and Late Night with the Devil.
The point of this article is not to say that Late Night with the Devil ripped off any other work or event that predated it. Rather, The Lunatics Projects’ entire mission centers around tracing back the historical elements that inspire modern day horror. There is no way for us to know if the filmmakers were aware of these events, but we can safely say that these events helped lay the groundwork and created tropes that Late Night was able to use successfully to create a place and time within their film.
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