Review“I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s the movie that’s making this happen!” – CherylDemons was an attempt by Italian horror masters Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava to break big in the North American market. We can tell this by the soundtrack listing that includes Billy Idol, Motley Crüe, and, uhmm, Go West. Strangely for an Italian attempt at the English-speaking box office, there’s no British or U.S. actors involved at any stage. Was Barbara Steele on holiday at the time? What we do get is a really strange combination of giallo and horror awash with Italian flavourings of gore, art house, and Euro-rock. A heady mixture and one that Bava puts onto a fast boil and keeps stirring as the movie progresses. We open with Cheryl on the underground heading toward some unnamed class. She notes a reflection of some guy wearing a metal mask in the train window, and just to get things on the chill side, mask-boy isn’t on the train. She later meets him at an underground train station and receives a couple of complimentary passes to a new movie in a refurbished cinema. Naturally, this being a horror movie, that’s not going to be the best thing happening in her day. Along with the usual assortment of complimentary moviegoers, including a blind guy, Cheryl and her friend Kathy (hope it’s not a horror movie) checks out the film which is about two young couples finding Nostradamus’s tomb in an abandoned abbey/church/whatever. When they open the big N’s tomb they discover a book and a demonic mask. One of the onscreen dudes reads some passages from the book, which is all about Nostradamus predicting demons walking the earth. The other dude puts on the mask and cuts himself. One thing leads to another and our mask-wearing dude turns into a demon. Of course, this all ties in with Rosemary in the real world who put on a demonic mask in the cinema lobby and who also cut herself. You don’t think? Pretty soon Cheryl and her crew are running for their lives, barricading rooms and such, as a demonic outbreak threatens their enjoyment of salty goodness at the movies. An arty horror movie ensues that will have you cheering all the way through. The opening scene, involving Cheryl on the underground to hell, sees director Bava channelling his giallo roots to their utmost. We get the same inconsequential details that will have an impact later in the movie, the almost sterilised sets washed of colour, and the fast cutting between close ups and medium shots. Bava is able to inject tension into the scene with very little to work with. Typically Italian, it’s simply about fear as an emotion and nothing else. You are indeed concerned with whether or not Cheryl is going to make it out of the underground alive and in one piece. The director also manages to inject the supernatural elements in quickly and precisely via the masked dude’s reflection in the train’s window and a bit of teleportation to the top of the escalator as he hands Cheryl her complimentary pass to the movie playing that afternoon, and adds another for Cheryl’s friend. Bava deserves high praise for his movie within a movie approach that helped lay the groundwork for what you are about to see and which also primes the audience for an all-out assault via gore. We know the demons are summoned via the mask, someone will put it on and get a cut which will later turn into pestilent demon goodness, and that there’s going to be hell to pay. We sort of have a demon invasion going on ala Romero’s zombie work which I thought was a pretty interesting approach. Notably Bava, Argento, and Ferrini never spend a single moment explaining why the demonic prom night is going down; they are way too busy concocting outlandish scenes to go all Hammer Horror on us. What we get is a sort of fiction intercut with reality before the two become one and all hell breaks loose. Now I for one don’t need any explanation for that going down and simply watched mesmerised as we descended into total mayhem. At one stage of the film we have an early victim of demonic wrath trying to get help, she somehow ends up behind the movie screen and if someone could explain all those red curtains then that would be cool. The victim pushes against the screen trying to get through, as seems to happen in quite a number of horror flicks – must be some sort of horror victim Jungian archetype or something. Anyways, and stop interrupting, the fictional movie at the same time is showing a demonically possessed dude trying to cut his way into a tent to get at the nominal scream queen cowering inside. Canvas on canvas I was thinking. As the onscreen villain manages to get his victim, our real life victim succumbs to demonic possession. Now just how arty is that? – I could watch this sort of stuff till the cows come home. There’s a number of scenes within Demons that really should be added to horror’s icon list. Primarily there’s the ventilation shaft scene, where we are informed firstly that those talon scratching sounds are coming from behind the couple, and then in front of them, before we get an attack from a completely different angle to the one that Bava was seemingly building towards. Excellent stuff and must have been a seat jumper back in 1985. Add in the deus ex machina helicopter, which though pretty absurd still managed to somehow work in Bava’s vision of Night of the Living Dead. And top it off with some motorbike samurai carnage. Visually Bava is coming at you with a big red smile on his dial. Bava keeps this baby rocking throughout and never allows the movie to slow, except for the weird injection of some requisite 1980s punk rockers who are naturally outlaws, the chains give it away kids. I’m not entirely sure why the hell this deviation from the main flow of things went down, except perhaps to get the demon infection out beyond the confines of the cinema. Yep, if you think the whole flick is about getting out of the cinema in one piece, and preferable without a demonic head cold, then you are in for a shock when we find the whole city is going down quicker than a South African referee’s reputation. There’s nowhere to run to and gosh Bava is having a lot of fun with the whole concept. The version of Demons I watched was dubbed from an Italian print so I’m not entirely sure if anyone is proving they deserved a cast listing. Notables include Bobby Rhodes (Tony) as a take-charge pimp who gets some absolutely hilarious lines due to maybe something being lost in translation. He makes more mistakes than a basket full of Duane Jones clones, but Rhodes looks to be having a whole bunch of fun in this movie. Urbano Babenni (George) sort of looks like a Hollywood action figure and goes all bicep boy as the movie progresses. And Natasha Hovey (Cheryl) gives great scream queen, though she does tend to get slightly irritating as the movie moves along. Special mention of Enrica Maria Scrivano (Nina) who managed to throw on a screwed up yet memorable minor character who was working for mine. Not a lot to report on the T&A stakes; Scrivano shows some nipple in one implausible and overly drawn out scene and that’s all she wrote. Got to love a 1980s soundtrack. Claudio Simonetti threw on a score that ranged from playful during the first third of the movie to downright eerie during the later stages. An interesting interpretation that kept me entertained. We also get a whole bunch of rock numbers with Go West strangely included, didn’t know punk rockers, Sheena or otherwise, were into the band. Live and learn I would call. I jumped on Bava’s roller coaster and thrilled to every move that Demons sent hurtling in my direction. The Director threw some outrageous camera angles, filtered goodness, and eccentric editing in my direction and I was lapping it up. If you ever want to see some giallo structure scenes in a horror setting then this is this movie to check out. I’ve already got the sequels on my review list and will snarl like a junk yard dog till I get to see them. For trivia buffs, a poster for Argento’s giallo masterpiece 4 Flies on Grey Velvet is visible in the lobby of the theatre. I had hoped to drop in some box office figures here but none are available. Demons is however a cult classic so there’s some loving out there for the movie. To date there have been two sequels. Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns (1986) and Demons 3: The Ogre (1988) a T.V. telemovie *shudder*. Full recommendation on Bava’s artistically inclined Demons to those who like them some old school 1980s horror. The Director isn’t letting you off the hook here, and besides some apparent padding (what was with the motorbike thing again?) notches up some classic scenes that will stay with you long after the film is over. Allow Bava to possess your evening, Demons is a must not miss movie, and I don’t say that about a lot of them.
ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Bava Junior delivers a rocking demonic outing.
|
