Demons

Screening Doom

Demons
aka Dèmoni
Italy 1985
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Mild spoilers I guess... but it’s not that kind of film.

It’s been a while since I first saw Demons, which was one of the first Italian horror movies I saw when I was catching up on Dario Argento’s gialli (and his very occasional foray into horror with films like Suspiria, reviewed here and Inferno, reviewed here). I remember I purchased this when all the international barriers were dropped at the dawn of the ‘DVD age’, and acquiring it bundled together with the sequel along with two other Argento double features on the US Region Anchor Bay releases. Not that this film is directed by Argento but, he did produce it in a very ‘hands on’ fashion (from what I’ve been able to find out) and also co-wrote the final screenplay version. The film was partially shot in Berlin but it’s interesting that, in Germany the films were released back to front... so Demons 2 was released as Demons and it was followed by this first movie, released over there as Demons 2. Which is strange but I remember loving this one a couple of decades ago and thought I’d revisit it on the latest of Arrow’s double bill Blu Ray releases of the movie, which has even more extras on it than their previous release.

The film is actually directed by Lamberto Bava, whose father was the great Mario Bava and, while you may say that the bright, coloured stylistic lightning could be seen as an Argento signature on the production, it’s more than likely inherited from the very strong lighting schemes used by Lamberto’s father, who Argento was also heavily influenced by.

The film starts off with Claudio Simonetti’s addictive Demons theme, which also incorporates elements of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and D Minor (if I’m not mistaken) and Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King as part of the driven synthesiser melody, playing on the soundtrack as one of the lead characters, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey), is given a couple of free cinema preview tickets after a train ride, before meeting up with her friend Cathy (Paola Cozzo). There’s a nice replica of said ‘golden ticket’ in the latest Arrow box. Incidentally, the guy in the mask who gives her the ticket is played by future director Michelle Soavi and, there are actually three masks in this film which help drive the plot. One on his face, the one in the Metropol cinema where Cheryl, Cathy and a load of other customers converge to see the new horror film preview (and which, importantly, one of the customers cuts her cheek on) and the one in the ‘movie within a movie), where one of the characters on screen also cuts their face on a mask and subsequently turns into a demon. Something which also happens to the audience member who cut her cheek, as she’s examining the cut in the bathroom. Then, we find that the scratches and bites of the demon infects other people and turns them into demons (much like the bite of a zombie in a zombie movie, which the demons in this film are just another iteration of really, except they obviously move a heck of a lot faster).

When the second victim, trying to tend to the scratches on her neck from her friend, stumbles behind the screen, a sequence is playing in the movie where a demon is trying to cut through a white sheet and, of course, victim number two promptly rips and stumbles through from the other side of the screen at the precise moment the on screen demon tears through. Panic soon ensues as the surviving customers, who aren’t able to get out of the cinema which has bizarrely walled itself up (at least, that’s the way it appears from the inside) attempt to fight off the demons and then attempt to escape the auditorium somehow. It’s a simple enough plot and the film did huge business when it was released, prompting one true sequel and a fair few others which were retitled as Demons sequels in various territories (and which were not actually connected to the Demons films in any way... although I heard very recently that the original director is currently working on some kind of reboot of this one).

And there’s lots of things worth noting about the film. Such as a whole host of posters in the cinema lobby, for films like the Giorgio Moroder recut of Metropolis (if I’m remembering it right, the timing would be around then for that version of the film), the Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu and even one of Dario Argento’s classics, Four Flies On Grey Velvet (which I reviewed here). Also in this and a fair few other scenes, we have the smartly dressed cinema usher played by none other than Nicoletta Elmi, who played the nasty little girl in Argento’s Deep Red (reviewed here) as well as child appearances in other famous gialli like A Bay Of Blood and Who Saw Her Die? The film also features one of Argento’s daughters, Fiore, in a small role (his other very young daughter, Asia, would have a lead child role in the sequel).

Another nice little joke is that there is a gang of thugs driving around outside in the city and one of them is sniffing cocaine through a straw from a Coca Cola can. So it’s definitely ‘the real thing’ but I can’t imagine Coca Cola being that happy with that particular piece of product placement.

Demons is a nice enough, entertaining film and it has some cool photography plus a certain ‘teen horror’ vibe to it. However, now I look back at it, I can’t help but feel that the photography is harmed quite a lot by the rapidity of the editing. It feels really choppy and some of the cuts back and forth are quite jarring now, it seems to me. Also, this time around, I was noticing a lot of the long shots and closer takes just weren’t matching all that well.

The choppiness isn’t helped much by the gang of thugs riding around the city who do finally make their way in to the cinema but, well, they needn’t have bothered, it seems to me. Their only real purpose in the narrrative seems to be to drive around in the car so we can cut back to them with a different pop song by the likes of Billy Idol or Motley Crue playing on the soundtrack, so the record company can make a killing on the tie in album. But the songs sound atrocious most of the time and don’t help the film. I’ve had at least two versions of the soundtrack over the years but none of the ones I own have ever featured the songs... just Claudio Simonetti’s brilliant score.

Bits of the film work but bits really don’t, such as Urbano Barberini ridiculously riding a motorbike over the cinema seat backs and somehow still staying upright (they must have built a hidden ramp to do this... which is a cheat as far as I’m concerned because there’s no way, surely, you could do this in real life) and the bizarre non-sequiter of a helicopter crashing through the roof of the cinema and providing a convenient escape route for the two surviving (up to that point) characters.

So, yeah, mixed feeling on this one. Demons is not quite the film I remember but it does have a certain something in that the gore effects are all practical effects and the photography is great. I’d still recommend it to certain ‘horror friends’ but I had less of a good time with it now than I did 20 odd years ago. It will be interesting visiting the sequel soon as I remember being very disappointed in that one from the outset... what’s the betting that I like it more than the first one now? I shall soon see, I guess.