Classic Movie Review 'Demons' is Cinema as an Infection of the Masses

Demons

Directed by Lamberto Bava

Written by Franco Ferrini, Lamberto Bava, Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti

Starring Urbano Barberini, Natasha Hovey

Release Date October 4th, 1985

Published March 26th, 1985

Demons is a shockingly good and utterly silly horror movie from the great Italian tradition of badly dubbed horror movies. Directed by Lamberto Bava, with inspiration and script doctoring from Dario Argento, the film is a meta take on the passive consumption of horror movies and the insidious nature of our constant search for palliatives to keep us distracted from real life problems. It’s that and it’s a very silly movie where a guy on a motorcycle kills Zombie/Demons with a samurai sword.

The premise in Demons centers on Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) , a college student who decides to blow off class so that she can go to a free movie screening. This comes after a bizarre scene where Cheryl is menaced in the subway by a man in a metal Phantom of the Opera mask. This man stalks and terrifies Cheryl for several minutes only to finally track her down and invite her to a free movie screening at a formerly closed theater called The Metrograph. Recovering quickly from this strange encounter, Cheryl takes two invitations and invites her best friend and classmate Hannah (Fiore Argento) to skip class and join her.

At the movie theater, Cheryl and Hannah meet George (Urbano Barberini) and Ken (Karl Zinny) who offer to watch the movie with the ladies, in case the movie is too scary. Hannah’s not interested but Cheryl takes an immediate liking to George. Also in the crowd are a disparate group including a blind man and his caretaker, a pimp and two of his ladies of the night, and an angry married couple constantly on the verge of a fight. Outside the theater, a group of cocaine fiends, wonderfully named Ripper, Baby Pig, Hot Dog and Nina, are sniffing cocaine and growing curious about this newly opened movie theater.

Just before the movie, one of the ladies of the night is playing with a prop mask from the movie which cuts her face. As the crowd is seated to watch the movie, a zombie slasher flick that I didn’t catch the name of, the lady of the night grows increasingly ill. The mask, it seems, is infected with a Demon/zombie curse that explodes from the cut on this woman’s face. She becomes a flesh eating monster and begins to infect others at the theater beginning with her fellow lady of the night, their pimp, and dozens of others. Yes, not many will make it out alive and weirdly, among the long time survivors are our main characters, Cheryl, Hannah, George, and Ken. Who could have predicted that?

I’m poking a little fun at Demons but I must say, for 1985, the practical demon/zombie effects are really impressive. The film is gory and gross and the oozing green wounds and bloody red cuts are wonderfully gruesome. A scene late in the movie where a demon emerges from the back of one of our main characters is impressively executed considering the lack of CGI. And I could say that about a lot of Demons, the gruesome, bloody, violence and gore is incredibly well realized. The makeup is truly a standout aspect of Demons. Sergio Stivaletti, a regular collaborator of Dario Argento, was responsible for the special makeup effects and he did an incredible job.

There is also praise available for Claudio Simonetti, another Argento collaborator, who handled the music for the movie. The film uses a lot of heavy metal and Simonetti marries the soundtrack tunes with his own heavy metal compositions to keep the energy and excitement of Demons on high. The soundtrack features big names like Billy Idol, Motley Crue and Rick Springfield. U.K Heavy metal icons Saxon are also on the soundtrack though not Argento’s favorite metal band, Goblin, whose work would have been a good fit for Demons. Oh well.

So, there is a lot that is good about Demons but it is the silly stuff that makes the film a really fun watch. Notably, the awful dubbing. It’s an Italian production and it has been dubbed with comically under-performed English voices. The inappropriate voicework adds a surreal comic element to Demons that elevates the film to the realm of so bad it’s great. This is a work of midnight movie genius. The fact that the film culminates with a motorcycle-samurai sword zombie massacre is the cherry on top of a pure sugar rush of a horror cult classic. Demons is the classic on the March 26th episode the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts

Find my archive of more than 24 years and more than 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Also join me on BlueSky, linked here. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip. Thanks!