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DEMONS

If, like me, you were a horror fan growing up in the 1980s, Lamberto Bava's DEMONS was high on your list of favorite flicks. It had everything that embodied 1980s horror: stupid stereotypes masquerading as characters, really bad hair and clothing, buckets of bodily fluids being squirted around and a louder than loud soundtrack. It was one of those films I rented every other week from the local video store. I showed it to all my friends and we laughed and gagged all the way through the films breezy 90 minute running time. But today, it doesn't seem so great. It's yet another one of those films that suffers more and more every time I watch it. I can feel my attitude towards it changing, my nostalgia sloughing off like the dead skin of youth. I fear I may have outgrown the film. Whether it is the films fault or my own, I'm no longer able to really turn a blind eye towards its flaws. It feels a little longer, the look feels a little cheaper, the effect a little less strong. I fear it may be time to leave DEMONS in the trash bin of my yesteryears and move on to greener pastures.

For the handful of you who don't know, DEMONS is set largely within the confines of a mysterious movie house. A group of people have gathered to watch a film. Chosen at random on the streets of Germany by a strange man wearing a half-face metal mask, the moviegoers settle in. Among the two dozen or so people are four young college-age kids, a pimp and his two prostitutes, a blind man (?) and his daughter, and two young kids on a date. The film begins. It's a horror film about a group of teens who stumble upon the tomb of Nostradamus. One of the teens picks up a weird demon mask and puts it on. When he takes it off, it scratches his cheek. In no time flat, he begins to massacre his friends. One of the prostitutes in the audience notices the small cut on her cheek, the one she received while playing around with a replica of the demon mask in the movie theater lobby, is bleeding. She heads off to the bathroom to check on it. As she watches in horror, the cut on her cheek begins to pulsate, eventually exploding with pus.

When her friend shows up to check on her, she finds her friend has gone full blown demon, scratching her in the neck. Soon enough, the two prostitutes begin attacking everyone in sight, changing more of the audience into drooling, bloodthirsty demons. The remaining moviegoers fight back and try to escape, only to find that there are no windows or doors. Everything is solid brick. They try smashing all the projectors in hopes that stopping the film will cause all the madness to end. One of the group, the blind man (who very recently had his eyes gouged out), tells them that it isn't the movie that's causing all of this. It's the theater. He would appear to be correct as all of the victims of the previous attacks arise all at once, tearing apart and ripping into everyone they can lay their claws on. The survivors finally manage to reach the balcony of the theater and block off all the doors. Unfortunately, it's harder to stop a bunch of angry hellspawn than they think and they are quickly overcome. Our group of two dozen is quickly whittled down to just four and the final act of the film becomes a question of whether or not they'll manage to survive.

DEMONS is entertaining in that way only 1980s horror is entertaining. It creates a situation so ludicrous that only a complete suspension of disbelief can carry you through it. It is wall to wall absurdity and even the slightest hesitation to accept it for what it is will cause the whole affair to come tumbling down. I used to be able to go along with it, but not so much anymore. Certain things really bug me. Like Bava's sudden and utterly unnecessary inclusion of a bunch of punks. We first see them cruising along in a stolen car snorting coke out of a Coke can. Then we see them tussle with some cops. The punks make their way down an alley only to find a dead-end. A door into the theater opens. They escape inside and the door swings closed, but not before an infected moviegoer escapes. The cops enter the alley but don't find the punks, just a locked door and a drooling demon. Now the most common defense I get from fans when I mention this scene is this: if the punks don't go down that alley, that door never opens, the demon never gets out, and the citywide infection never takes place. But again, that makes no sense within the films logic. The door to the theater opens all on its own. The theater is littered with doors and windows when the moviegoers first arrive. Certainly a building which is possessed by evil can create an open window or unlock a door in the alleyway whenever it wants. In fact, we know that it can. The arrival of the punks does nothing but waste six or seven minutes. They get inside the theater and literally moments later get killed off. So why bother with them at all?

And it doesn't stop there. There's a full-sized demon emerging from the back of a possessed woman, the notion that the possession process causes massive injuries to the host yet the possessed people can be killed with a simple slash of a samurai sword, that there would be a fully gassed, fully operational motorcycle in the lobby of a theater which was, for all purposes, designed by a malignant evil force (Satan has a rather interesting sense of interior design), or the way a helicopter inexplicably crashes through the roof of the building for no reason whatsoever except to provide our heroes with a means of escape. All of these little things add up to a whole lot of head scratching.

Now yes I aware that nothing in this film is meant to be taken seriously or that I may be taking it a little too hard on the film. Once upon a time, I would have agreed with you, but nowadays I simply can't see past those things. There are other problems as well. The dubbing works on my nerves and saps the performances of any real conviction, the soundtrack is littered with screeching, horrible hair metal, the gore effects don't hold up... It just feels more and more like a mess each and every time I watch it. The worst thing however is how vanilla the film feels today. The plot vacillates between nothing happening and nothing much happening. When I was a kid, this felt like a roller coaster of a film. Now it just feels bland and slow. That's my biggest problem with DEMONS. That is hasn't maintained its level of intensity over the years is unfortunate.

Would I still recommend this film today? Yeah, I would, if only because it is still better than most mid-1980s horror films coming out of Italy. It is still enjoyable in fits and starts. Of the films 90 minutes, only 30 or 35 still have any kind of entertainment factor or impact on me today. Now whether that may be because of how much better I've seen this kind of story done in recent years (see REC and REC 2 for the best examples of a "demon possession outbreak in an isolated environment" story) or whether it's because I'm just so familiar with the film that it no longer has any kind of power over me. I don't rightly know why it is, only that it is. In any case, I still think it is a film every horror fan should see. It was one of those rare breakthrough genre films from Italy that enjoyed massive success outside of the Italian market and it deserves to be recognized for that. It must also be said that when the film works, it really does work and the few moments that have held up over time are great little bits of filmmaking. If only the rest of the film still had that magic, DEMONS would be a bona fide classic. Unfortunately, it's just another one of those films that played better two decades ago.

Recommended, with heavy reservations.