Creeptober Night 23: Demons (1985)
They will make cemeteries their cathedrals, and the cities will be your tombs.
The past three days of Creeptober have been filled with spooky hauntings and heavy drama, and now I need to watch something bloody and violent. That’s just how my horror-brain works sometimes. This is how I recalibrate. So for tonight’s film I’m picking one of my favorite trashy gore movies. Tonight we watch Demons (1985).
Reacting to Demons
Demons was directed by Lamberto Bava, the son of legendary Italian director Mario Bava. This is easily the most fun movie Lamberto has directed, followed fairly closely by the sequel, Demons 2 (1986). I’ve seen a few of the other films he’s directed, and I’m not the biggest fan of those. Other than his two Demons movies, the Lamberto Bava movie I’ve rewatched the most times is Devil Fish (1984), and that’s just because it was the subject of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Don’t mistake what I’ve written so far as me saying that Lamberto Bava is a bad director. I don’t think that. What I do think is that he has a knack for directing schlock, and I mean that as a compliment. I love trashy horror movies, and I do believe there is an art to making movies like that incredibly entertaining in a way that isn’t necessarily “so bad it’s good.” That can play a factor, as does a person’s individual tastes, but I genuinely think Demons is a good movie, mostly because of how honestly it approaches its trashier elements.
There’s a bunch of weirdness happening in Demons. Few plot points are explained, characters are barely developed, and it feels like any idea the writers had was thrown in without much thought given to how much sense it makes. Like, it feels as if one of the writers (four writers are credited) thought it would be fun to have a climactic showdown with the hero on a motorcycle slashing demons with a sword, so they reverse engineered the entire movie to have all of the required elements in place regardless of logic. I mean, why is there a dummy on a working motorcycle, carrying a sword and a demon mask, sitting in the lobby of a movie theater? This is one of those films where the audience shouldn’t ask “why,” and should instead resign themselves to “why not.”
Why not have the exits cemented closed when the demons start spreading? Why not have the entire group start tearing down their own barricades when they just assume the noises they hear aren’t the rampaging demons they’re hiding from? Why not have the movie playing in the theater somehow be connected to the chrome mask in the lobby with no explanation? Why not have a helicopter crash through the roof? I could go on, but you get the picture. Stuff just happens in this movie, and I think it’s great.
Without the gore effects though, I wouldn’t enjoy Demons nearly as much. The slow transformations from human into demon near the beginning of the movie are great. Cheesy and great. And of course I love the freely flowing blood whenever someone is attacked. The demons crawling out of Kathy’s back though, that’s the pinnacle of the film for me. Why is this one demon formed in a way different to all the others? Why Kathy? Why not!
I also really enjoy the ending. It’s a nicely bleak moment when Cheryl and George escape, only to find that the outside world is also infested with demons. One thing I love is how it feels like Cheryl and George have been in the Motropol for days, because the people they meet already seem like hardened survivors who know more about the demonic apocalypse than the only two survivors who actually witnessed it from the beginning. Also, this entire ending is possible only because the quartet of punks were introduced about halfway through the movie. Despite being given a plot thread parallel to the chaos of the movie theater, the punks’ only purpose is to open a door and accidentally let a demon out. They do absolutely nothing else of importance in the movie.
To be fair though, most characters in Demons are just there to be torn apart. That’s why it’s fun. That’s why Demons is a good movie, because it gives the audience (i.e. me and people like me) exactly what they want: gross demons and bloody violence. Sometimes that’s all you need.
