It’s Halloween. This year’s 31 Days of Gore closes with an Italo-horror trilogy.
Demons (1985)
Several people mysteriously receive tickets to an untitled movie. Shortly before showtime, one of the attendees finds a mask in the lobby and tries it on, goofing around for her friends. Somehow, the mask cuts her cheek. Such wounds are rarely minor, especially in films co-written by Dario Argento and director Lamberto Bava.
Later, one of the characters in the movie-within-the-movie finds a suspiciously familiar mask and cuts his cheek. It’s not long before he turns into a demon, much to the disgust of the squeamish audience. Meanwhile, the woman who cut her cheek “in real life” wanders off to the theater’s bathroom where she begins to transform into a demon as well. Some time later, a friend comes to check on her and ends up brutally murdered. Then, as the saying goes: all hell breaks loose.
The women’s boyfriend (or a pimp… probably a pimp) doesn’t seem too heartbroken when he discovers his companions have been turned into demons. In fact, he’s the first person to announce, “We’ve gotta get outta here!” Heartless? Maybe, but it’s sensible and he’s the best character in the entire movie. Played by Bobby Rhodes, he’s like a black Hugo Stiglitz, kicking and switchblading his way through every problem that comes his way.
When the survivors become trapped on the balcony level, Rhodes commands them to rip up the seats and use them as barricades. When they find dead bodies among them, which can turn into demons at any second, he makes his impromptu army toss them over the side immediately. Someone says some nonsense about “respecting the dead,” but Rhodes isn’t having it. He’s too experienced, too crafty to get himself killed over boring bullshit.
In too many horror films, characters make one boneheaded decision after another. In Demons, there are a few characters who’d be perfectly willing to fulfill that role, but there’s always another character, like Rhodes, who’s willing to step up, slap ’em across the face, and keep the pace exhilarating. Agency as rare as this is always entertaining.
The camera never cuts away from the good stuff, there are plenty of killings (and victims) to go around, and music by Billy Idol, Go West, and Mötley Crüe gives it all a fun yet aggressive energy. The climax is splatter-filled and frantic, and the glowing eyes of the demons are used to wonderful effect. Gems like this are why so many horror fans (myself included) would sit through one shitty rental after another.
Major spoilers for the first film follow….
Demons 2 (1986)
I hoped Demons 2 would pick up where the original left off. The sword-wielding survivor of the first film was just becoming interesting when the credits rolled. Last time we saw him, he’d slayed a theater full of demons with the help of the unlikely appearance of a helicopter. Although Demons 2 technically takes place after the events of the first film, it’s little more than a beat-for-beat redo.
What worked well for Evil Dead 2 doesn’t work as well here. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasant surprise that Lamberto Bava cast familiar faces, particularly Bobby Rhodes who stole the original picture for me. Although his new character lasts a little longer this time, Rhodes isn’t quite as fun or energetic as he was the last time we saw him. Why they didn’t just make him the main character of either film beats the shit out of me. Were they afraid of too much awesomeness?
This time Bava trades the movie theater setting for a high-rise apartment building. Everyone who lives there seems to be watching the same horror film on television. A narrator informs us the events of the first film “convinced the world that demons can exist.” That’s an intriguing premise that ultimately has no bearing on this film whatsoever. They could have at least told us how the outbreak of demons was stopped, but that’s never answered.
The original film managed to introduce its large cast of victims in the first twenty or thirty minutes. This one takes over forty. The characters are a little dumber, the glowing eyes of the demons aren’t as effective, and—for reasons incomprehensible to me—the demons are as scared of fire as Frankenstein’s monster, even though they presumably come from hell. The biggest sin is it’s just not nearly as fun.
It’s almost a great horror movie when you consider it on its own merit, but it’s impossible not to long for the original.
No more spoilers from here on out.
The Church (1989)
So now the pedigree of the series becomes a little more complicated. Lamberto Bava went on to direct The Ogre, which Italian distributors tried to pass off as a sequel to Demons 2 even though it certainly wasn’t. Meanwhile, Umberto Lenzi made an unofficial entry to the series called Black Demons. I don’t know who the hell is enforcing Italian copyright law, but my guess is nobody because filmmakers there have been making unofficial sequels for decades.
Dario Argento, on the other hand, intended to produce an official Demons 3, but that movie morphed into The Church, starring Dario’s daughter, Asia Argento. Although it shares similarities with the first two films, the tone of The Church is such a radical departure, there’s no point in comparing them at all.
That’s not a bad thing. Demons 2 disappoints because it hits so many of the same notes as the original. The Church succeeds because it takes the original premise (that demons can spread like a viral outbreak) and scraps almost everything else, including the movie-within-a-movie angle. The Church unfolds at a much slower movie than its predecessors, but the atmosphere, enhanced by Philip Glass and Goblin music, keeps it captivating.
Teutonic Knights massacre a village of cursed people, bury them in a mass grave, and build a church to cover it up. The church’s architect installed secret features straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, which will activate only if the seal to the tomb is someday broken. Fast forward to modern times and even the clergymen are unaware of what took place there so many years ago. It won’t be long until they find out.
Par for the course, there’s some stilted dialogue and nonsensical WTF moments. The leading woman, pursued by a grotesque demon in her own home, calls the cops, dives through a window, runs across her yard, and finds herself trapped in a flannel blanket. Naturally, you assume she ran through a clothesline, but it turns out the cops—who she called twenty seconds ago—have already shown up to throw a blanket over her head for being hysterical. In America, you couldn’t get that kind of response time even if you lived inside a police station.
I’m not one to grade an Italian horror film on logic as flaws like that are simply inherent with their dreamlike filmmaking sensibilities. Everything else—and I do mean everything—is pure perfection. The Church is one of the most flavorful horror films ever made. I know I said it can’t be compared to the original, but I like it a lot more. In fact, it’s the best movie of the thirty I reviewed this month. Watch it now and watch it often.
That’s all for 31 Days of Gore this year, but don’t wait eleven months to come back!
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