by ·Comments Off on Demons 2 (1986, Lamberto Bava)

Sally dances to Morrissey then goes to her room to watch horror movies alone during her own birthday party, relatable. She finds a TV movie about other young people uncovering demons (some idiot hellraisers a dead demon by bleeding into its open mouth) – but this is not the movie Demons. Then a demon videodromes through the TV, demonogrifies her, and she murders all her party guests then… melts(?), and her cursed acid blood plays hell on the apartment building below. Everyone acts like they’re the character in a TV commercial who needs a miracle product to perform a simple task, and no miracles are here, just the manic unstoppable demons of an Evil Dead movie.

Movie is properly disgusting – a demon child breaks into a woman’s apartment then convulses as an Audrey II-mouthed rubber alien bursts out of his chest and chases the woman around until defeated by a murphy bed. There’s an elevator shaft escape, an ineffectual parking garage showdown, and the hetero couple ends up at a quirky movie theater TV studio (which is maybe supposed to evoke the movie theater of Demons 1 but really only reminded me of Scanners 3). Among the doomed women is Asia Argento. Half the crew followed this with Dario Argento’s Opera and prospered, the other half made Graveyard Disturbance and did not. Speaking of Opera, I wrote “Argento characters never behaving like actual humans makes the movies more phantasmagorical,” and that’s sure true of the dialogue here – but I’ve never been to Italy, and what if the people there are really like this?

Hetero couple triumphant:

by ·Comments Off on Demons (1985, Lamberto Bava)

I remember thinking this was quite bad when I saw it on VHS twenty-plus years ago, and it probably is, but all qualitative analysis goes out the window when you’re watching Demons in a sold-out theater with Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performing the soundtrack live. In fact it’s a solid horror movie once you throw out the idea that characters or dialogue or motivation or logic matter. What matters is that people are trapped in a theater full of demons – most will be killed horribly and/or turned into zombie demons themselves, and a few might survive. And after the credits roll, you forget which ones survived and why, as Goblin performs a full set of hits synched to music videos of kills from Argento, Romero, and Deodato movies.

Internet says the two who escaped through the hole in the roof caused by a helicopter smashing through the roof (!) are Urbano Barberini (the killer cop of Opera, who’d previously motorcycled through the theater cutting down zombies with a sword) and Natasha Hovey (who turns demonic and dies over the end credits). The victims are gathered by invitation of Michele Soavi to watch a movie about a demonic plague caused by a cursed mask, as the same scenario plays out in the theater. Some hopped-up punks break into the place only to become extra victims. A bloody, oozy, gory good time with a big crowd, and even Claudio was laughing at some of the English line deliveries. I haven’t seen Bava/Argento’s part two, and an attempt to make part three resulted in Soavi’s great The Church.

Hovey inviting doom from Soavi:

Victim #1:

Getting to the chopper:

Brutality in front of 4 Flies and No Nukes posters: