Let's take a trip back, all the way back to the 1980's. An era where horror films stepped over into camp, where gratuitous nudity and over the top gore was king. An era where acting was bad and the killers were the heroes. It is with that in mind that we take that trip and watch a moderately successful horror film called Night of the Demons. It was successful enough to spawn two sequels, but not really successful enough to enter the consciousness of the popular community like the Nightmare and Friday films. Anyway, on with the show.
I first saw this about seven years ago when I was working at a video rental store. I was watching anything and everything I could get my hands on, and one of my targets was the horror section. I remember something on the cover which was great marketing, it said something to the effect of "Freddy and Jason were too scared to come." That just grabbed my eye, plus it had Linnea Quigley from Return of the Living Dead, figured how could I go wrong? Anyway I went home and popped it in, and was simultaneously entertained and disappointed. On one hand, it was goofy, had gratuitous nudity, some decent gore, and an entertaining new bad girl. But on the other hand it had a non-existent plot, really bad dialog, and felt awfully dated.
The story, such as it is, concerns a group of teens skipping the school dance in order to go to a party hosted by the school weirdo, Angela. On top of that, the party is being held at an abandoned mortuary, which holds a secret about people having been brutally murdered. Before long, actually too long if you ask me, the kids are holding a seance during which a demon appears in the mirror and soon enough they are doing what any group of randy kids would do in a mortuary, they split up to explore and have sex. A short time later things start happening to them, and they start getting killed off. Amelia becomes the demon we know her to be and leads the charge. In addition to this there are other possessions and various bizarre happenings, such as a trick with lipstick you are unlikely to see duplicated.
For some reason I still like this movie despite it making absolutely no sense, except as a showcase in makeup effects and 80's style. The story and any type of explanation is truly non-existent, but it makes no difference once the killing starts. A big problem is that it takes way too long for it to get going, we are nearly halfway through a 90 minute movie before anyone gets killed. In my mind that is too long to wait, a movie like this needs to pick up from the get go.
The directing is OK, makes effective use of a corny setting. The writing is awful, bad dialogue, bad exposition, bad plot, and to top it off bad acting to deliver it! I really have no idea why I enjoy this, but I did.
Video. It is presented in an anamorphically enhanced ratio of 1.85:1 which is it's original aspect. It looks good for 80's low budget horror, the blacks are deep and colors good, there is a loss of some detail in the dark scenes, but it is the best that I had expected of it.
Audio. Presented in Ultra Stereo. It sounds good, a 5.1 remix may have sounded good for this, but it would betray it's roots. The stereo presentation is fine for and sounds good, it does not have a wide dynamic range, but it does the job.
Extras. For an old catalog title,we get a couple of nice extras.
-Commentary. Features director Kevin Tenney, Executive Producer Walter Josten, and Producer Jeff Geoffray. I sampled some bits and pieces of the track, it was OK, but they seemed to be too much in awe of how great their work was here. Eh.
-My Demon Nights. An interview with co-star and 80's scream queen Linnea Quigley. This is an interesting interview with how she got to be in the movie and others of the time and her horror history.
-Promo Reel. This was my favorite extra, an old 4 minute video promoting the movie for retailers comparing it to other releases and it's theatrical performance.
-Theatrical and Video trailers. Two trailers are included, they are in decent shape too.
-TV Spots. Closing out the extras are a couple of television commercials.
Bottomline. Not a good movie by any stretch, but a fun reminder of what it was like to be a horror film in the 1980's. I'd recommend for a night of beer and pizza.
Mildly Recommended.
Also at Blogcritics.org.
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