Rating: B
Dir: Kevin Tenney
Star: Cathy Podewell, Alvin Alexis, Amelia Kinkade, Linnea Quigley
Man, this is one great parody of eighties horror films. It basically takes all the tropes of the genre, and dials them up to eleven. Obnoxious teenagers? Check. Ill-considered decisions? Check. Gratuitous nudity? Check. Splattery practical special effects? C-H-E-C to the K. Wait, what? It actually is an eighties horror movie? Well, never mind. Because it’s still a simple blast of fun, from a more innocent time – before horror felt a need to be “elevated”, or obliged to offer its opinion on social matters (glares pointedly at The First Omen). This has the straightforward air of a story told around a camp-fire, with no purpose other than to entertain and lightly terrify the listening audience.
In this, Demons feels like it has a fair bit in common with The Return of the Living Dead, and not just the presence of Quigley as a sexpot. I sense the budget here was smaller, but it has the same sense of being fast, loose and out of control. It also makes good use of music: in particular, Bauhaus’s Stigmata Martyr, in probably the best use of the band outside of their appearance at the start of The Hunger. It takes place on Halloween night, at a party being thrown in a deserted mansion by all-round creepy girl Angela (Kinkade) and her best friend Suzanne (Quigley). As one of her less Goth classmates explains, “Who do you know that’ll give a better party? It’s like Christmas to her!”
Naturally, things do not go as planned. The property has had a bad reputation since before the white man arrived, and for good reason. A demon, trapped in the basement of the house, escapes and enjoys an all-you-can-possess buffet of teenage souls. It does take its own time in reaching that point, and most of the kids are the kind for whom being torn apart by demons feels too good for them. “I can’t wait for them all to die,” said Chris during these early stages, with emphatic passion. There are a couple of exceptions: Judy (Podewell) is the prototypical nice girl, in her “Alice in Wonderland” costume, and black guy Rodger confounds most expectations by not dying first and behaving sensibly.
Once things get cracking, however, it’s a joy to behold, with a slew of impressive work from Steve Johnson, who’d go on to be married to Quigley for a couple of years. The bit everyone who has seen the film remembers – and even those who haven’t have often heard of it – has the possessed Suzanne ripping open her top, and pushing a lipstick into her breast via the nipple. 36 years later, it’s still a genuinely WTF? moment, brilliantly conceived and executed. We also get eye-squishing, impalements, neck-snappings and impromptu use of a crematorium gas-pipe as a flamethrower. While there’s rarely any doubt about who will survive, it remains straightforward, entertaining and does exactly what you would expect a film with its title to do.