DEMONS (1986)

ITALIAN GORE-FEST WITH GRISLY VIOLENCE THAT`S NEVER SUBTLE

Sun-Sentinel - September 23, 1986

Author: BILL KELLEY, Entertainment Writer

Pity the poor fool who attends a showing of Demons thinking it will be a routine, supernatural horror thriller. The only routine ingredient in this stomach-churning Italian gore-fest -- unrated to avoid an "X" for its explicit mayhem -- is that B-movie staple, the sub-par dubbing of its European cast`s dialogue.

Demons is the latest low-budget extravaganza from director Lamberto Bava, son of the late Mario Bava (Black Sabbath). Bava Sr. single-handedly launched the giallo cycle of vividly brutal -- if elegantly photographed and staged -- Italian horror movies of the `60s.

Lamberto has inherited his father`s flair for the audacious, but, alas, not much of his talent. He has lately collaborated with Dario Argento (Suspiria), the poor man`s Mario Bava of the `70s.

Bava Jr. and Argento are the principal writers of Demons, and their screenplay`s springboard is the most original thing about it: Patrons in a cavernous urban movie theater the Metropol, (exteriors filmed in West Berlin), which is operated by demonic cultists, are turned into monsters on a night that fulfills a prophecy of Nostradamus.

In the ways the victims are infected (initially by images from the screen itself), transformed into demons and then made indestructible, the movie owes much to Night of the Living Dead (`68) and its grisly descendants. Buffs will trace the twist ending to several earlier Italian horror movies, including Michael Reeves` The She-Beast (`67).

Bava and Argento have no use for the more subtle, refined styles of suggestive horror . They believe less is too little and more is never enough.

Demons is unabashedly, clinically brutal -- within an hour, the screen is awash in glistening blood, putrescence and viscera.

Not only does Bava`s camera not flinch; it savors each opportunity for excess. The bloodletting is accompanied by a noisy sound track of songs by Motley Crue and other heavy metal rock bands.

Since Demons intermittently exhibits a darkly humorous streak -- for example, the hero of its first hour is a pimp who slipped into the theater with two hookers -- the film has a certain antic charm. That eccentric quality is enhanced by the movie`s freewheeling grotesqueness.

Be sure you know what you`re getting into, however -- Demons is anything but a conventional (or even coherent) foray into contemporary horror . It`s strictly a feast for eyes that aren`t easily scorched by outrageous violence.

MOVIE REVIEW

1/2 star Demons

Italian horror film about patrons in a movie theater who are attacked by monsters as a centuries-old prophecy is fulfilled.

Credits: With Natasha Hovey. Directed by Lamberto Bava. Written by Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava.

Unrated. Graphic violence including disemberment, drug abuse, profanity
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Movie Review- `Demon's is hard-core gore in Berlin

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - September 23, 1986

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Scott Cain reviews the film "Demons."

"Demons," a monster movie set in Berlin, is suitable only for the most insatiable gore freaks.

Both director Lamberto Bava and producer Dario Argento dote on festering flesh and hideous bodily fluids. There are no maggots in "Demons," but otherwise the two moviemakers trot out their full bag of unsightly tricks.

It's useless to complain about characterization in a movie like this, but "Demons" is particularly aggravating. As the film opens, Cheryl, the heroine, is riding the subway and seems frightened of every shadow. A fellow who looks only slightly more wholesome than "The Phantom of the Opera" offers Cheryl a ticket to a movie at the Metropol theater and she takes it. In fact, she chases him down the street to ask for a ticket for a girlfriend.

That night, Cheryl and Kathy join perhaps 50 other people, including one blind man, at a showing of a slasher movie. In the slasher movie, a fellow nicks his face with a mask found inside Nostradamus' tomb and turns into a zombie. Watching in dismay in the auditorium is a young woman who nicked her face on an identical mask in the Metropol's lobby. Panicky, she retires to the restroom and begins foaming at the mouth.

Soon, the Metropol audience realizes that something is amiss, but all the exits are locked. (The front of the building has perhaps 50 windows and it's not clear why the windows are unavailable to the trapped moviegoers).

No explanation, either, why the survivors - who barricade themselves in the balcony - are unable to hear what's taking place on the main floor just a few feet below them.

When, at long last, some moviegoers escape from the theater, they find that Berlin is in flames. This smashes the previous impression that the event at the Metropol was unique.

You wonder why Italians went to Berlin to make "Demons." Is this revenge for Hitler's treatment of Mussolini? Old wounds heal slowly in Europe. The slime, ooze and gook in "Demons" make you long for the "divine decadence" that Fraulein Sally Bowles found in the Berlin of "Cabaret."

"Demons." A horror movie. Not rated, but probably would qualify for an X because of violence
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DEMONS' GOES FOR THE GROSS - BOTH AT BOX OFFICE AND ON SCREEN

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - September 12, 1986

One evening, a group of diverse people walking in a lonely Berlin subway are handed invitations to a free screening of a new horror movie in a rather spooky downtown theater.

In the lobby before the show, one of these people, a black hooker, picks up a movie prop on display (a silver mask, just like the one worn by the villain in the movie-within-the-movie), tries it on and cuts her cheek on it.

Moments later, she feels ill, goes to the restroom and promptly transforms into ''a demon - an instrument of evil,'' with red eyes, long fangs and a propensity for slobbering green slime.

When her friend comes to check on her, she gets bitten for her trouble, and she too is transformed into a demon. The two of them are soon crawling around the dark auditorium biting movie patrons and turning them into monsters.

Before long, the theater audience seems to be evenly divided between normal movie fans and monsters, the normals barricading themselves in the balcony (the doors having been inexplicably cemented shut) and the demons attacking them, ripping open their necks, gouging out their eyes, scalping them, chewing off their body parts and generally vomiting gore, exploding with pus and popping ''Alien''- like out of bodies.

This is pretty much how it goes in ''Demons,'' a new English-language, made-in-Germany, Italian horror movie that, according to its press notes, was one of the top-grossing films in Italy last year and has been called ''one of the 10 best horror films of the last decade'' by Fangora magazine (well, not exactly Time or Newsweek, but they don't review this kind of movie).

Directed by someone named Lamberto Bava, the movie tries hard to break the threshold in cinema special-effects gore, since almost every second of screen time is devoted to something totally repulsive. And ''Demons'' more or less outgrosses (and is even more boring and repetitious than) its obvious model, the George Romero zombie movie.


Memo: MOVIE REVIEW * Demons, directed by Lamberto Bava, produced by Dario Argento. Cast: Urbano Barberini, Natasha Bava, Paola Cozza, Karl Zinny. Ascot Entertainment. Several theaters. Unrated. By William Arnold P-I Film Critic
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FILM: GIVING CUTTING UP A NEW MEANING

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - June 25, 1986

Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

Demons is a Purple Rose of Cairo for the dimwitted and bloodthirsty.

Considering that Demons chronicles the literally stomach-churning metamorphosis of moviehouse patrons who turn zombie while watching a horror picture, I made a mistake buying a frankfurter on the way in. Both the movie and its movie-within-the-movie are slice-and-dicers that marinate their characters in blood before pureeing and liquefying.

Shot on location in Berlin, this movie might better be dubbed Night of the Dying Dread. A group of Berliners, mostly teenaged and pert, are given complimentary tickets to a chic new moviehouse, the Metropol, where it's hard to tell the difference between punk-rocker patrons and zombie predators. Something in the movie they're seeing reduces many in the audience into drooling, frothing, fanged and taloned vampires requiring buckets of blood for sustenance. And guess where they get it? Not the ideal place for a first date.

Directed by Lamberto Bava, son of Mario, the schlockmeister who made the not uninteresting Hatchet for a Honeymoon (1970), Demons is the movie equivalent of a fingernail on a blackboard.

Demons is effective in two ways. It makes even the hard-core gore fan too timid to put her feet on the floor (for fear a moviehouse vampire will gnaw at them). And it makes the loathsome Toxic Avenger look comparatively innocent.

Armpit-deep in blood and entrails, escaping zombies by the skin of his teeth, one patron announces to no one in particular, "This is the last complimentary ticket I'll ever accept." Wish I could say that. This piece of movie sadism cost me $4.50.

Parents take note: Though it carries a disclaimer about its graphic scenes, Demons is unrated. If I were in charge of the MPAA, I'd give it something beyond X.

Like Y.

For "Yucko."

DEMONS *

Produced by Dario Argento, directed by Lamberto Bava, written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini and Dardano Sacchetti, photography by GianLorenzo Battaglia, music by Claudio Simonetti, distributed by Ascot Entertainment Group.

Running time: 1 hour, 26 mins.

Urbano Barberini - Moviehouse patron

Natasha Hovey - Moviehouse patron

Karl Zinny - Moviehouse patron

Fiore Argento - Moviehouse patron

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (violence, drugs, sexual abuse, gore)
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'DEMONS': AN ITALIAN HORROR

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 23, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"Demons" ("Demoni"). A thriller starring Natasha Hovey and Urbano Barberini. Directed by Lamberto Bava from a screenplay by Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti, Franco Ferrini and Bava. Photographed by Gianlorenzo Battalia. Edited by Pietro Bozza. Music by Claudio Simonetti. Running time: 85 minutes. An Ascot release. In area theaters.

It was inevitable, I suppose.

"Demons" ("Demoni"), the Italian horror movie directed by Lamberto Bava, the protege of Dario Argento ("The Bird with the Crystal Plummage"), is the ultimate sick joke on its audience. This is a movie where horror -film fans deserve much worse than they get.

This anti-movie is about a theater that entraps its patrons, turning them into ranting, panting zombie-like beasts. Everything that happens in the movie-within-the-movie happens off-screen as well. Moviegoers turn crazy - and turn on each other.

With plenty of creepy music and variations of murder, no cheap shot is overlooked. Our main concern is supposed to be with young couple Cheryl and George (Natasha Hovey and Urbano Barberini) and their increasingly inane attempts to exit.

Parental guide: Not rated. Gory.
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`Demons' has lots of gore in store

Houston Chronicle - June 18, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

The credits tell you where "Demons" is coming from, at least geographically.

Lamberto Bava is the director. Dario Argento is the producer. You guessed it - it's an Italian movie, shot in Rome as it turns out.

As for where the film is coming from stylistically, its newspaper ads tell a lot.

"It may be one of the best horror films of the last decade!" proclaims a critic's printed quote. But the source of the rave is even more revealing: Fangoria Magazine.

Fangoria is the bible of fright fans who thrive on gore. Lots of gore. Gore and more gore. Ridiculously ostentatious gore. Mind-boggling, stomachwrenching, gut-churning gore. Special-effects gross-outs as art.

And that is what you'll find in "Demons" - so much so that Signore Argento didn't even bother to submit his film to the Motion Picture Association of America for its ratings review.

Why bother? What he has here is a clear-cut case of X-styled excesses. Getting the MPAA to confirm that fact would only force the film out of theaters that refuse to book any X-rated material.

Instead, Argento has placed a disclaimer on his film, warning that it contains scenes "which are considered shocking!" No one under 17 is admitted, the same policy as for X-rated product.

So you've been warned. Those not greedy for gore should steer clear. This film about an audience trapped in a theater where demons on the screen become marauding demons in the flesh is not one for sensitive tastes.

But what about the fans - the horror -film aesthetes - the faithful Fangoria readers? Will they delight in this fright?

Some will, others won't. I'm not accusing the horror audience of homogeneity. But those who do like it are more likely to embrace the film for familiarity than originality.

"Demons" is formularized to death. It rips off so many movies that it's hard to know where to start. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

The film's " horror movie within a horror movie" motif has been used countless times. Its heavies are nightmarishly transformed humans with bright contact lenses, hideous claws and green bile oozing from their mouths "(The Exorcist, Abby, The Evil Dead)." These demons devour humans and contaminate their victims, who in turn become demons "(Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead)." And there's a post-apocalyptic thrust by the survivors at the end that's straight out of MadMax and the like.

Need I go on?

Even its makers may admit that the plot is predictable and the acting stinks. But so what? "Demons" doesn't try to achieve horror via mood or suggestion, but with a simpler, more direct approach - shock. And "Demons" has shocks, lots and lots of them. It's as subtle as an earthquake.

Yes, but what about those marvelous special effects? Did you see the bloody transformation scenes? And the way the nail pierced the guy's skull? "Bellissimo!"