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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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6
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7 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Do
not eat while watching this movie.
There's enough pus-popping, bile-drooling,
bloodsplattering action in Demons
for two trilogies of Evil Dead
flicks. Producer/co-writer Dario Argento and director Lamberto
Bava (A Blade in the
Dark) really pull out the stops in this gore extravaganza,
which piles on the shocks courtesy of Italian special effects
wizard Sergio Stivaletti. While not always effective (and occasionally
just plain cheesy), there are a number of gore effects on display
which will definitely put you off snacking.
Pretty young student Cheryl (Natasha Hovey)
is riding the Berlin metro when she sees the reflection of a
sinister masked man in the train window. Arriving at a deserted
station she is frightened by just such a strangely garbed figure
(Michele Soavi, director of The Church),
who hands her a free movie pass to a sneak screening at the
Metropol theater. As the masked man hands out passes to newly
arriving commuters Cheryl requests an additional one for a friend.
"Are you dressed like that to promote the film?" she
asks. Ominously, he continues on his way without reply.
Cheryl and her friend Cathy cut class that
evening to attend the free screening. "It better not be
a horror movie," Cathy chides. At the strangely decored,
cathedral-like theater additional characters are introduced:
elderly blind man Werner and his young "seeing eye"
wife Liz; a bald, burly pimp (who seems to have had hustler
training from Dolemite) with two
of his girls; an uptight middle-aged couple; a pair of high-school
age lovers; a beautiful, enigmatic usherette. Also attending
the show are George and Ken, two young college guys who immediately
zero in on the unattached Cheryl and Cathy. One of the hookers,
Rosemary, playfully dons a demon mask on display in the theater
lobby. It scratches her face, drawing blood, but the incident
is forgotten once the movie gets underway. And yep, it's a horror
film. "I knew it!" bitches Cathy.
In the untitled movie being shown on the
screen, four college kids out motorbiking decide to explore
a deserted crypt at night, the reputed burial site of fabled
16th Century mystic Nostradamus. Sure enough, an ancient book
and a cloth-wrapped
object are found, confirming the location of Nostradamus' tomb.
One of them begins translating the book's Latin, which foretells
the
coming of the Demons — "instruments of evil" who will
unleash a plague upon
the Earth. ("They will make cemeteries their cathedrals
and tombs your cities" it reads.) Another kid (also played
by Soavi) tears away the rotted cloth to reveal a demonic mask...
one which looks exactly like that which scratched the prostitute
in the Metropol's lobby. Soavi's movie character also tries
on the mask as a joke; he too is scratched. Unsettled by the
bizarre coincidence, Rosemary realizes the cut on her face is
still bleeding. She heads for the restroom to check it out.
We're about 22 minutes into Demons
by now; time for all hell to break loose. In the bathroom the
cut instantly swells into a festering boil which bursts, spewing
yellow ichor. Rosemary is transformed into a murderous demon,
whose slightest bite or scratch will infect any human with the
evil contagion she's contracted from the mask. Mirroring the
action on the theater screen, the hooker slaughters — and infects
— a number of the patrons before audience members realize that
something is terribly wrong.
From here on out Demons
becomes a horror rollercoaster built for maximum shock value,
totally dispensing with any kind of logic on the way. Heads,
limbs and viscera fly hither and yon in abundance; the ultra-nasty
eye-gouging of the blind man, a bloody scalping, and a doomed
victim biting off a demon's fingers are perhaps the most wince-inducing
scenes in the film. (Have no doubt, there are plenty of other
"goodies" on hand for gorehounds.) This isn't necessarily
a bad thing...
If a movie ultimately makes no sense, it
should at least provide a wild ride. Argento and Bava certainly
deliver on that score if nothing else.
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Having
previously seen this notorious Italian splatter film only on muddy,
fullscreen, EP-speed videotape, Anchor Bay's treatment of Demons
is a revelation. It's never looked better despite a non-anamorphic
1:66 transfer plagued with occasional grain in dark sequences.
The Dolby 5.1 audio track really pumps up the movie, which was
scored using pulsing synthesizers and drum machines by frequent
Argento collaborator Claudio Simonetti of Goblin. As in the
Argento-directed Phenomena
(1984) a number of rock songs by popular '80s artists are also
featured on the soundtrack, including Billy Idol ("White
Wedding"), Saxon, Scorpions, and Motley Crüe. This serves
to give the flick even more of a Reagan-era rock 'n' roll teen
monster drive-in movie feel —
despite having been made in Europe.
DVD bonus features consist of a short clip from Dario
Argento's World of Horror on the creation of some of the
film's special effects and an audio commentary with director Bava
and effects artist Stivaletti. 4/14/01 |
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UPDATE
On September 25, 2007 STARZ/Anchor Bay is reissuing Demons
with an anamorphic transfer.
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