Demons (1985)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: The Terminator gives out free movie passes and the movie makes people turn into demons, which is some kind of allegory (alleGORY!) for accepting handouts and not paying your own way.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Some chick on the subway is seeing visions of the Terminator.
• So the entire setup is two ladies get free passes to a movie at Metropol, among a host of other people. The movie within a movie sucks, but the audience is mesmerized.
• A blind guy’s helper is describing the entire movie to him in excruciating detail. What an awful job.
• So the plot gets going when a hooker who looks like Rick James puts on a devil mask for a few seconds and it cuts her face and eventually makes her a demon and she kills then makes more demons. Got it? Good.
• How many movie theaters have a huge open room behind the screen? Just Gremlins and this.
• The movie they’re watching seems slightly more interesting. I’d rather be watching that.
• There’s a pimp who’s fucking taking charge. And I’m not just calling him that for fun, he’s unquestionably a pimp. You hardly ever see heroic pimps in movies these days.
  
  

  He did have a dwarf in his stable, but she kept coming up short.

  
  

• Ripping out a blind man’s eyes is just overkill.
• There’s a lot of great metal tunes interspersed with prog synth. Jarring.
• No one can escape the theater because somehow the demonic forces have concreted up all the exits. Where did they get such concrete?
  
• So there’s this redhead wearing a dress that makes her look like a Christmas elf and at the beginning she was taking the mysterious tickets for the mysterious movie at the mysterious theater and acting all mysterious so you assume she’s evil and in on the demon scheme but now that the shit is going down she’s running scared like everyone else.
• There’s really nothing to this movie. People become demons and people who aren’t demons become demons and then they’re killed by the few people who aren’t.
• So everyone thinks if they stop the movie from being projected the demonic happenings will stop happening. So they get to they projection booth and it’s all automated, so our heroine (whatever her name is) says, “Then no one’s EVER been in here!!” Uh, what? Does she think the movie reel loaded itself onto the projector?
• There are some punks driving aimlessly and snorting coke out of a Coke can. And on their car stereo is the lamest music in this or any other movie, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be punks.
• This pimp is a fucking amazing character. I wish he could be the sole survivor, but he’s black, and that’s a rarity I’ve only seen in Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Demons, which at least had Linnea Quigley in it.
• So everyone is ripping out the theater seats to make a demon barricade. Are these seats held in place by like one nail? Even the most spindly of Italians and Germans is tearing them out like She-Hulk.
• It’s hard to tell if the blind guy who got his eyes ripped out is a demon or not.
• They find a secret room behind a wall that leads to nowhere and nothing. What was the point of that?
• Haha! These assholes thought they heard help coming, so they tore open the barricade and the demons popped up and tore them up. That’s pretty funny.
• So those cokehead punks just appeared to become more demons? Weren’t there enough demons already? We had to waste 15 minutes with the punks to go back to the same thing?
• A true demon demon (not just a human turned demon) just came out of a girl’s back, just like The Manitou!
  
  

  This is a scary gif and not for the spineless.

  
  

• The display motorcycle in the lobby is full of gas and the display katana is sharp as shit. Why are they even in there? The demon mask was on it before, but why? What was the demonic plan here?
• So the main guy rides the motorcycle over the rows of seats. There’s just no way that’s possible. But he’s some amazing action hero all of a sudden, so he rides around with the main girl on the back slicing all the demons up with the katana while metal music blares. It’s not quite as cool as it sounds because he’s a dud of a character. If it was the pimp doing that it would have been an A+.
• For some reason a helicopter crashes through the roof. I truly don’t get it. They use the R.O.T.O.R.s to kill a couple more demons because that happened in Dawn of the Dead.
• George must be majoring in MacGyver at university.
• Oh the Terminator from before is on the roof. Now I realize the metal under his face is the silver demon mask. So I guess this is all his doing, and he’s just been hanging on the roof this whole time? Ponderous.
  
  

  “Come with me if you want to… aw shit.”

  
  

• All of West Berlin is affected!! That’s what happens when you don’t embrace communist ideals.
• George and Cheryl fortunately run into a survivalist family who gives them a ride. But didn’t this apocalypse just happen an hour ago? They’re headed to the country because the “saw some lights in the sky.” You mean stars?
• Cheryl demons out in a nice fake out ending. The boy shoots her dead, but then wouldn’t they also be concerned with George turning? Maybe that’s addressed in Demons 2: Pimp Payback.

Scare Level: The movie relies mostly jump scares and gore but also has some nice suspense. I suppose if you’re the easily-scared-by-movies type then you’ll probably be watching through your gnarled fingers a bit.

Gore Level: There is some fine ’80s gore on display here. Blood and goop spray out of every orifice. And it happens in the movie I watched, too.

Nudity Level: Just a tad bit of tit from the female punk before her boyfriend cuts her boob, for some reason.

Best Line: Cheryl: “I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s the movie that’s making this happen!”
Tony the Pimp: “She’s right. She put on that mask and scratched herself, get it? Because of that scratch, she became a demon. An instrument of evil, like they said in the damn movie, you heard it. We got to stop it I tell you, we got to stop the movie!”

You can always count on a pimp for exposition. ALWAYS!

Best Scene: The motorcycle mayhem scene defies all laws of physics and common sense, but it’s still one of the most enjoyable killing hordes of demons scenes you’re apt to see.

Worst Scene: Pretty much anything involving the group of punks. They could have been an interesting bunch of characters but their subplot just turns out to be a confusing waste of time. Let’s just forget them and instead focus on this kickass Accept song from the soundtrack:

Level of Hell: This is the first movie I’ve watched this month that didn’t make me want to grow demon teeth and then use my old teeth to scrape my eyeballs out.

Overall: A pretty enjoyable horror romp but one that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. There are a lot of fun moments, but also a lot of wasted time. The concept is great, but the overall execution is flawed and way more convoluted than it needs to be. But we are dealing with Argento(ish) here, after all. If you like horror action with humans trapped by a horde of monsters and having to do battle, you should like this, but it doesn’t really reach any sort of classic status in that department. Although it did get me thinking, now that the zombie genre has been completely and totally fucked out, we should turn back to demon movies. They share many of the same characteristics as zombies but are usually strong, can jump high, have claws, talk shit, etc. So petition your congresspimp and demand that they bring back demon action horror today!

Score: 6.76 Take-Charge Pimps (out of 10)