The Demon (1979 film)

The Demon (also known as Midnight Caller) is a 1981 slasher film starring Cameron Mitchell and Jennifer Holmes and directed by Percival Rubens.

Fourteen year-old Emily Parker (Ashleigh Sendin) is kidnapped from her rural home and murdered by a faceless, heavy-breathing maniac with black leather razor-blade tipped gloves. Later, the maniac hitchhikes to the city with a gregarious truck driver (John Parsonson). The maniac kills the truck driver, steals his cash, and takes up residence at "Baron Court"—a shady tenement hotel in Johannesburg's Doornfontein neighborhood.

Two months later, Emily's parents—frustrated by the failure of law enforcement officials to either locate Emily, or identify her attacker—enlist in the help of Bill Carson (Cameron Mitchell), a retired Colonel in the U.S. Marines who now works as a freelance psychic detective. Joan Parker (Moira Winslow), the distraught mother, needs to know whether Emily is alive or dead—but the angry Mr. Parker (Peter J. Elliot) is preoccupied with bloody revenge, and aggressively implores Col. Carson to find the man responsible. Carson gravely intones that the entity they seek is "an aberration of the species. Something hallucinating evil"—and warns the Parkers that it would be best if they didn't find him.

Meanwhile—for reasons left unclear—the maniac decides to fixate on a young, American pre-school teacher named Mary Jones (Jennifer Holmes), who shares a two-story bungalow in Johannesburg's Saxonwold neighborhood with her 18-year-old Afrikaner cousin, Jo (Zoli Marki). Mary first sees the elusive maniac lurking outside her classroom —disappearing and re-appearing in the fog—and later, spying on her at the mall.

When not stalking Mary, the maniac holes up in his hotel room—doing push-ups, growling, and tearing up girly magazines. He also prowls Johannesburg's Hillbrow district at night, attacking various women.