As the slasher craze finally ran out of steam near the end of the 80s, some wondered what would fill the void left by various hulking masked maniacs reducing horny teens to their constituent parts when the answer was starring them in the face all along – frickin’ monsters, dude!
Movies like Day Of The Dead, The Monster Squad, The Lost Boys, Waxwork and The Blob had been slowly on the increase and even Jason Voorhees had had a metaphysical glow-up after basically becoming a lightning-charged Frankenstein/zombie during his sixth installment. However, somewhere in this flood of beasties and creatures lay a little cult movie by the name of Night Of The Demons that saw a bunch of booze-sucking party-going teens suddenly have their Halloween night ruined as demons enter them with far more disturbing results than merely having a drunken one night stand. But does this mix of blood, booze and boobs hold up after all this time? Stretch that, did it hold up then?
It’s Halloween night and a disparate group of rowdy teens who would never all be friends in real life, decide to skip the usual slew of parties and instead choose to hold a drunken, horny, knees-up at the dilapidated Hill House, a mortuary that’s rumoured to be haunted by evil spirits. While this obviously ranks in the list of stupid movie decisions that’s up there with wandering off to investigate a strange noise or choosing to poke a freshly fallen meteor with a stick, everyone seems in high spirits – or at least I think they are and the majority of the group spend most of their time being casually hideous to one another.
As the even progresses, teen outcast Angela and her epically slutty friend Suzanne suggest that they all double down on their idiocy and perform a ritual involving an old mirror that they’ve found. However, when virginal June, horny boyfriend Jay, slobbish Stooge, preppy couple Max and Frannie, June’s ex-boyfriend Sal and token 80s black character Rodger, go along with this act, they actually manage to summon a demon which first possesses Suzanne, and then Angela who start displaying some odd traits that are instantly missed by the more hornier members of the group.
But as the night progresses, things turn into a extravagantly permed nightmare as one by one, each teen is killed, only be resurrected as yet another murderous puppet by the evil force. As this battle for survival claims victim after victim (usually lured to their death by their overactive loins), the survivors realise that if they’re going to last the night, they’re going to actually outlast the night, as sunlight may prove to be their only salvation from a slathering horde of monsters who weren’t particularly that pleasant when they were alive.
A painfully obvious rip off of The Evil Dead (with bit and pieces cribbed from Lamberto Bava’s Demons), director Kevin (Witchboard) Tenney isn’t exactly blessed with the same gifts of cinematic chutzpah as Sam Raimi, but he’s certainly trying, dammit – and it’s this palpable desire to entertain is what makes Night Of The Demons such an easy, breezy, throwaway watch. There’s a sense that now that the 80s are a good forty years in our rearview mirror, certain, less polished horror movies are being embraced as goofy, comedy relics to be laughed at by drunk film students, however, when it comes to Night Of The Demons, I feel the joke’s on them as this was probably always the way it was supposed to be watched.
The first gargantuan hint is with the performances that are so cartoonish and exaggerated, they feel less like the actors are accurately trying to portray kids than they are a bunch of young adults who all behave like they have some significant, shared, learning disability. Every line reading is mercilessly milked to the end of its life with the emphasis of certain words massively exaggerated to drive the point home. Plus, this is one of those scripts where everyone is a massive asshole and every retort to an honest question is either a sneer or outright abuse. Take the burly example of Stooge, who is obviously trying to go all in to be the boisterous John Belushi-In-Animal House character, but he oversells it so much the character never feels less than one syllable away from being a walking hate crime who repeatedly screams “BITCH” at every female who won’t fuck him. Although, admittedly, he gets points for bellowing the impressively obnoxious line: “Eat a bowl of fuck, I’m here to party!”. Elsewhere, the rest of the cast are typical high school stereotypes with legendary scream queen Linnea Quigley being an obvious standout thanks to repeated glimpses of her naughty bits – in fact, the movie even introduces her butt first as she flashes her underwear in order for Angela to shoplift.
So the question remains, if Night Of The Demons is not much more than an Evil Dead ripoff (complete with a demon’s POV whizzing through the house), with infantile performances, why does the film have such a following? Step forward special effects master Steve Johnson, who helps the film achieve a handful of incredibly strange and fucked-up moments where it elevates itself above the usual deck and almost manages to touch the kick-ass insanity of the likes of Re-Animator, Return Of The Living Dead and, yes, Evil Dead II.
There’s the cool demon makeups that reduce the more attractive members of the cast into snarling beasts with mouths that resemble a ripped out fireplace, there’s a spectacular eye gouging, but most memorable is a tripped out moment when a possesed Quigley decides that the best place to store her lipstick is inside her breast; so she inserts, it via the nipple, only for her boob to magically heal and all without the benifit of CGI. While this method of makeup storage didn’t catch on with female clubbers, it shows just how savvy Tenney’s movie actually is and he further drives this point home by thankfully flipping expectations and actually having the black character survive all the way to the end credits – I mean, he does it while crying and screaming the whole way, but it’s got to count for something, dammit.
While I’ve never held it in as high regard as some of the other titles I’ve mentioned during this review, I have to give props to Night Of The Demons for managing to break (or at least crack) the mold slightly while simultaneously being overwhelming derivative.
A card carrying horror classic? No. A throwaway, Halloween, goof-off that’s endearingly enjoyable and contains more cheese than a UFO sized pizza? Night Of The Demons certainly tries to give it as much treat as it does trick.
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