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Daemon [1985] The Children's Film Unit, which turned out an interesting run of features in the 1980s, is often confused with the Children's Film Foundation, which made most of its efforts in the 60s and 70s. The difference is that the remit of the CFF was to produce films for children providing the mainstay of those Saturday morning kids' film clubs that proliferated for many years while the CFU was set up to make films by children. The resident adult was director Colin Finbow, who had worked as a TV scriptwriter [The Avengers], but all the publicity material stressed that though Finbow directed and wrote the final scripts, most production and cast chores were taken by kids and that the basic ideas were developed through youth theatrestyle improvisation. All very worthy, but how did they get into this listing? Kids being kids, the junior filmmakers of the CFU were less interested in the typical CFF subject matter young Keith Chegwin foils some smugglers than in fantastical or horrific efforts. After a couple of period, literary adaptations [Captain Stirrick, A Swarm in May], the CFU turned in 1984 to Dark Enemy, a tribal drama which no doubt coincidentally follows exactly the same storyline as Roger Corman's Teenage Caveman as a small rural community struggling through a plague is revealed to be the post-holocaust remnant of society. Given expectations lowered to Suffer Little Children levels, Dark Enemy though wordy, worthy and occasionally creaky is an effective little fable, which even manages a few moments of creepiness as its heroes encounter the 'Moon Children', deformed sufferers of a fallout-induced leprosy-like ailment. The CFU's most elaborate genre effort, however, was Daemon, a ghost story set in suburbia. Eleven-year-old Nick movies into a large old house with is sisters Jennie and Clare, left in the care of Helga the Swedish au pair while their parents are away in America. Nick is unhappy at his new school, where he is befriended by a boy called Sam and intimidated by scripture teacher Mr Crabb, who is interested in the occult and demonology. Nick hears voices in the house and receives messages on his computer screen [a new touch in 1986]; he also suffers inexplicable blisters on his feet and grazes on his elbows and knees. When he dreams of burning and wakes up in a bed full of ashes, Nick tells a pyschiatrist [Susannah York in a Mum-like name-value cameo] that he feels he is possessed by a demon. Three of his schoolmates agree and, when Crabb dies in a freak accident, resolve to drive a stake through his heart. However, the cause of the haunting turns out to be Tom, a child chimney sweep from 1839 who was burned to death in the house's chimney. After a climactic fire, Tom's skeleton is discovered in the old fireplace and the ghost is laid to rest. By approaching the then-hackneyed 'evil child' theme from a child's point of view, Daemon manages to pull more narrative surprises than most adult horror films were managing ten years ago. While some of the junior performances aren't quite convincing enough [the scenes with the horror film fan schoolboys plotting the coldblooded destruction of the supposed demon don't work as horror or comic relief, especially when a fearless vampire hunter baulks at a nocturnal demon-hunting expedition because his Mum won't let him out at night] the leads are fine; indeed, next to the typicallly precocious stage school brats who usually represent British kids in films, Arnaud Morell, Sadie Herlighy and Donna Glaser are miraculously realistic in the lead roles. The film's strength lies in its ingenious storyline, which concentrates
on the physical details of the haunting and never has to descend to
contrived explanations. The symptoms that Nick and his friend interpret
as those of demonic possession the blisters, grazes and fiery nightmares
actually turn out to be down to his psychic sympathy with Tom, who was
burned alive while crawling up a Victorian chimney. This revelation
of human cruelty and injustice lurking within supernatural manifestations
is in the best ghost story tradition and allows for a finale that is
satisfyingly apocalyptic on a small scale without following the simplistic
good / evil polarities of The Omen and The
Exorcist [which both get namechecks in the dialogue]. Unlike
most 1980s British supernatural horrors, Daemon even
managed to get a theatrical release. First Published In: Flesh and Blood [issue unknown]. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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