‘It’s in the trees!’ Night of the Demon script
Look inside the script of supernatural classic Night of the Demon. It’s a dark night, there’s a pale moon, and something is moving in the trees…
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’:
