Demons (1985)

Tagline: They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs.

Curiosity: Another Scott gem. They oughta just slap his face on horror DVDs. Plus, it was produced and co-written by Dario Argento, and that guy knows how to make scary movies.

Plot: Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is on her way to meet a friend when she gets scared of a disfigured man who is passing out tickets to a free movie screening. This is because she is afraid of the handicapped and the ugly. Since you don’t really get to learn anything else about her character, that’s the lasting impression: cute, but also bigoted. But she bravely overcomes her fear of the crippled by taking her friend to the movie. They even meet some cute boys there.

Then shit gets fucked.

In the movie Cheryl is watching, a group of people comes across a mask that turns people into murderous demons (or dèmoni if you’re Italian). Another audience member, Rosemary (Geretta Geretta), tried on the exact same mask, wounding her face. One thing leads to another, yaddayaddayadda, and she turns into a green slime-oozing demon! I know, right? What’s more, the concertgoers are trapped with her! And every time she breaks someone’s skin – bites, scratches, doesn’t matter – he and/or she becomes a demon too. Things really get crazy when some coke-addled Billy Idol fans, led by Unnecessarily Angry Stallone Clone, set the demons loose on the rest of Italy.

Thoughts: Jesus Christ got-damn this is a brilliant movie. I tend to hate movies where the monster doesn’t make sense/has no weaknesses – there’s no tension when nothing matters – but Demons is that rare exception, so stupid-awesome that you just have to roll with its every whim. That means delighting in its impromptu motorcycle sword fight. And demons shooting out of people’s chests. And the coolest pimp you’ve ever seen. At times, it feels as if it was written by a disturbed 13-year-old, but the effects look so gosh dang cool that my inner 13-year-old is all like, “Radical!” Like in this scene:

Yeah, that happened.

Reflection: Those Billy Idol fans snort their coke from a coke can, which is genius. What’s so suspicious about drinking soda nasally?