Editorials
‘The Demon Murder Case’: The 1983 TV Movie That Was the Original ‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It’
With this past weekend’s release of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, based upon the Arne Cheyenne Johnson murder case of 1981, the furor surrounding the real life exploits of married demonologist/clairvoyant team Ed and Lorraine Warren (and the charges that they were frauds) has fired up yet again, setting social media ablaze with arguments either defending or excoriating the couple. Such reactions can be traced to the release of the first Conjuring film back in 2013, itself based on a Warren case regarding the haunting of the real-life Perron family in the 1970s. Seven films set within the Conjuring Universe have followed, ranging from “Based on a True Story” tales to utter fictions molded from the creative license of the filmmakers behind the flagship series. The questionable veracity of the former seems to fuel the hottest of the arguments, seeing passionate defenders on either side of Twitter and the like.
What cannot be argued is that, in February of 1981, Arne Cheyenne Johnson stabbed Alan Bono to death and was subsequently arrested, tried, and sentenced to a term of 10-20 years in prison, ultimately serving five before his release. The court case gained significant notoriety when Johnson’s attorneys employed the unprecedented defense that the young man had been possessed by demons at the time of the killing. Ed and Lorraine Warren backed his story, with an eventual book released detailing the horrific possession of a young child (David Glatzel, the younger brother of Arne’s girlfriend) preceding Johnson’s purported possession and Bono’s murder.
Andy Griffith and Beverlee McKinsey as Guy and Charlotte Harris in ‘The Demon Murder Case’ (1983)
The case garnered national interest, which not only brought with it an expected media firestorm, but a televised dramatization in the form of The Demon Murder Case. This 1983 NBC-TV movie covers roughly the same events of the third Conjuring film, albeit in a wildly different (and decidedly more lo-fi) way, all while changing the names of the people involved in the case. The film opens with Kenny Miller (the Arne Johnson analogue, played by a very young, post-Friday the 13th Kevin Bacon), in cuffs and being drive via prison bus to the courthouse. There, we meet: his lawyer Anthony Marino (The Thing’s Richard Masur); Joan Greenway (Young Frankenstein’s Cloris Leachman), an atheist reporter drawn into covering the trial; and Warren stand-ins Guy and Charlotte Harris (Andy Griffith and Beverlee McKinsey).
‘The Demon Murder Case’ VHS artwork
After a brief scene in the courtroom depicting Marino’s attempt to introduce demonic possession as the defense tactic for his client (with the judge swiftly striking down this plea), reporters swarm Marino for his reaction. Guy Harris trails behind, solemnly addressing the press with “I tell you, this is a battleground. This is not a case of murder. This is a confrontation between the devil and the human race.” From here, we cut to one year earlier, focusing on the Frazier family (standing in for the Glatzels) as they move into a new house. The youngest child, here named Brian, reveals to his mother that he has been visited by “the Beast”, who has followed him from their previous home. From their first night forward, Brian begins exhibiting increasingly alarming behavior straight out of the Regan/Pazuzu playbook. At their wits’ end, the family contacts the Harrises, who consult on the case alongside the prickly Father Eagon. Griffith brings his folksy charm to the role, while McKinsey radiates kindness, both creating a warm impression with their take on the Warrens.
Further outbursts, brutal attacks and levitation figure into Brian’s possession, leading the religious authorities to sanction an exorcism administered by Father Dietrich (The Devil’s Rain’s Eddie Albert). Charlotte assists, drawing out the names of the forty-two (!!!) demons inhabiting the boy, in a sequence that reminds one of Lorraine sussing out the Nun/Valak’s true name in the second Conjuring film. The sequence is hardly frightening, but it is more than a little fun (the child shouts and grumbles as the ground shakes, lights swing wildly from the ceiling, and candles spray fire into the air). Unfortunately for everyone involved, the exorcism doesn’t work, leaving Brian still under the Beast’s control even as he’s taken back home.
It all culminates with Brian attacking Kenny with a knife, with the surrogate older brother commanding the demon to come into him. From this point, we follow Kenny and his girlfriend Nancy as they move into a new home owned by Nancy’s boss Phillip Russo (Cutting Class’ Tom Ligon), who makes no secret of his designs on his pretty young employee. Tensions boil with Phillip’s growing lechery and Kenny’s burgeoning jealousy, leading to the inevitable confrontation which sees Phillip’s death at Kenny’s hands.
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From here we move back to the present, with Marino making an impassioned defense with the support of the Harrises. Nevertheless, Kenny is found guilty and sentenced. The film ends with Kenny staring out of his prison cell, muttering “Demons” to himself as he gazes into the empty night before him. One final scare at the Frazier house carries us to the end credits, assuring us that the terror isn’t yet over for the poor family.
While the film surely won’t sway any of the Warrens’ detractors, it does act as an interesting companion piece to the third Conjuring film. Whereas that new film only covers the initial possession and subsequent murder briefly in its first act before sending the Warrens off on an investigative journey, The Demon Murder Case delves heavily into the initial possession and the fraught relationships which led to the bloodshed. Curiously, even for all of the supernatural shenanigans in its first half, the TV movie illustrates that resentment and copious amounts of alcohol were far more responsible for the stabbing that took a man’s life than a demonic possession. In addition, we get much more time in the courtroom with this earlier film, depicting the trial and sentencing at length.
Though the film’s direction is a bit pedestrian at times, with chunks of the movie playing out like a cheap, neutered Exorcist ripoff, there are some genuine moments of stylish flair on display. The writing is solid, while the performances are generally quite good. While it may be a tad slow at times, The Demon Case Murder stands as an interesting enough curiosity for fans of paranormal history, The Conjuring franchise, and, yes, the Warrens. Controversy be damned.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren in ‘The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It’ (2021)
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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