Demons . Weekly Alibi . 11-16-98

Demons

DIRECTED BY: Lamberto Bava

REVIEWED: 11-16-98

I know a lot of people thought Demons 2 sucked, but I liked it better than this first installment. This one opens with a freaky metal-faced guy handing out free passes to a movie at a new theater. A couple of saucy Italian college girls decide to check it out, although they're a little nervous that it might be a horror movie. Ha-haaaa! Little did they expect the nightmare that would befall them! Our gals meet a couple of horn-doggin' fellas who make a move, but the girls play hard to get. A pimp and a couple of his cheap working girls arrive, and one of the whores puts on a creepy monster mask she finds in the lobby. The pimp yells at her, and she takes the mask off, cutting herself in the process. As the lights fade, a goofy horror movie begins, much to the chagrin of our heroines. The horndogs move in and start holding hands with the gals. Audience members gripe and bitch. Events in the movie start to parallel certain things going on in the audience, and the injured whore turns into a pustulent, flesh-chomping demon! She slaughters her street-walkin' sister, and we discover that each new victim also becomes a greasy creature. As the body count rises, the audience panics and soon finds that they're trapped in the theater with an army of--demons! The gore flows fast and furious as the screaming idiots flee to the balcony, piling up seats to barricade themselves. Meanwhile, a bunch of cokeheads (including one of the skankiest-looking girls you're ever likely to see) drive around town, eventually breaking into the theater to provide more victims. In one scene, the audience members attempt to smash through a wall, and from the hoots and grunts on the soundtrack, you'd swear they were jumpin' around a monolith and learning to use a jawbone to kill. It's all pretty slow going, although the gore and monster action is pretty amazing in places, but I found the movie much more enjoyable once I started pretending the cast was made up entirely of the kind of low-life morons who insist on jabbering away incessantly in movie theaters. I'd love to have witnessed the savage, demonic disembowelment of the shithook behind me at Saving Private Ryan who, about 10 minutes into the invasion of Normandy, turned to his fellow nitwits and asked, "What war is this?"

--Scott Phillips

Other Films by Lamberto Bava
Demons 2

Film Vault Suggested Links
The Gates of Hell
Nightmare Concert
The House by the Cemetery

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