One night has horrified the Parker family, and that was the night that the daughter of Mr And Mrs Parker was kidnapped by a large, razor-gloved man who broke into their house, tying up the mother and throwing the teenager over one shoulder, then disappearing into the night. The girl was never seen again, but her parents want justice and now, a couple of months later when the police have been unable to help with their enquiries they decide on their last resort. He is Colonel Bill Carson (Cameron Mitchell), an American military man who claims to have psychic powers - but can he implement them to track the attacker and bring him in?
The answer to that is so idiotic that after the scenes with Mitchell are over, you may be wondering what on earth he was doing there in the first place in this, one of the few horror movies to emerge from South Africa during the dreaded days of apartheid. Not that you would see any representation of that kind of oppression here, there's not one black African in it, and besides it would never have been distributed at the time should the authorities have thought there was subversion afoot - hence all nudity was included solely in the foreign version. This left a film which could just as well have been American if it had not been for the South African accents on some of the characters, so slavishly did it follow the slasher model from the nation which gave us Halloween and Friday the 13th.
There were a few imported actors, and Mitchell was one of them, by this time a mark of, well, not quality anyway, more an indication what you were watching was pretty much the opposite of that. So gauchely plonked down into the plot are his scenes that you could have left them out and they would have had no bearing on the rest of the film whatsoever, but then we wouldn't have had the entertainment value of watching him "act psychic" which involves dramatic poses and facial expressions to indicate he is seeing the abductor when no one else can. So that's good for a laugh, but in addition shows to us the maniac is of supernatural means, hence presumably the title of The Demon.
It's as good an explanation as any, because writer and director Percival Rubens (something of the South African exploitation auteur) doesn't offer any more than that, even at the end we know nothing about the villain's motivation or identity for that matter. When you weren't appreciating Cameron going over the top - and his character's drawings of the target, making him possibly the vaguest psychic ever, and that's saying something - there was an entirely different plot to be getting on with, and that involved schoolteacher Mary, played by another American import, Jennifer Holmes (she and Mitchell would reunite for trash favourite Raw Force a couple of years later). Mary lives with best friend Jo (Zoli Marki) in a big house, though Rubens might have been trying to make a star of the latter given how much screen time she gets.
Indeed, Jo's romance with rich kid Dean (Craig Gardner, an expat American) takes up far too much of the running time, leaving you wondering if Rubens had lost interest in the horror element and decided to change horses midstream to turn this into a romantic comedy. The mystery man did continue to pop up, offing minor characters with his trademark plastic bag over the face technique (not much gore in this one) until he began to close in on Mary. Also notable was a nightclub called Boobs Disco which seems to be real, though not a strip club as that name might indicate, though the two actresses made up for that as if the director was all too aware he was losing the audience by compensating with lengthy nude scenes. There was even one at the finale which even for fans of gratuitous nakedness in movies might seem a bit much as Mary, clad in nothing but her knickers, makes a bid for escape as the shadowy killer advances on her. Oh, and what happens to Mitchell was memorably absurd. Music by Nick Labuschagne.
