Any film that found itself banned by the infamously censorious British Board of Film Censors demands to be seen, in my opinion, if for no other reason than to remember that such dark days of legislated morality actually happened in the fairly recent past.

Night of the Demon is one of those "video nasties" -- a true classic form those glorious years of late 1970s/early '80s straight-to-video low-budget filmmaking. Amazon's streaming video is indeed the original uncut version, so you don't have to worry about wasting your time with the edited version (minus over a minute and a half of the best gory footage) that finally got this film released in Britain in 1993 (albeit with an 18 certificate, even then, which is just ridiculous).

Objectively speaking, Night of the Demon is not a very good movie -- the cinematography is terrible, the acting is pretty poor for the most part, and the video quality is vintage VHS with occasional lines running through it -- yet at the same time it's hard for a gorehound like me not to love it. This 90-minute romp gives you plenty of gore, gratuitous nudity, a Bigfoot rape scene, fresh human intestines being used as a whip, some kind of weird cultish sex ritual and -- of course -- the infamous castration scene.

A word to the wise: you just don't want to go whipping your junk out -- for business or pleasure -- in Bigfoot's woods. Trust me on this.

So the basic premise is that an anthropology professor talks five of his students into accompanying him deep into the woods in search of traces of Bigfoot. That's a heck of a long way to go for a little extra credit, especially given the fact that everyone who has ventured into that section of woods in recent years was later found horribly mutilated or simply disappeared. Come on, professor, couldn't I just write a paper instead?

Over the campfires at night, Professor Nugent (Michael Cutt) likes to regale his students with stories of people coming to really bad ends in that very area, which provides the viewer with multiple flashbacks of wonderfully varied Bigfoot attacks. Once he hears local stories about a young hermit woman called Crazy Wanda who hasn't spoken since giving birth to a horribly deformed baby nine years ago, Nugent becomes convinced that finding her will lead him to the truth about the creature he seeks. Oh boy, is he right about that.

With its decidedly dark twist on the Bigfoot legend, Night of the Demon is worth watching, despite -- or maybe even because of -- its various shortcomings. I think gorehounds will definitely get a kick out of the viewing experience, even if they hate the plot. You know, for many years it was difficult to find a truly uncut version of this film, so don't miss your chance to see it now that it's readily available.