Demons (The Last Drive-In)

Onscreen Title:  "Demoni"
Film Year:  1985
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Lamberto Bava
Starring:  Urbano Barbarini, Natasha Hovey

The Movie

Kano from Mortal Kombat hands out free tickets to a movie screening, to which several citizens respond enthusiastically.  They attend a screening of a new horror movie about a group of teens that discover a mask that turns the wearer into a demon, who then kills everyone.  While at the screening, a prostitute puts on the identical mask on display and turns into a demon herself, then turning other patrons into demons and wrecking havoc.

It's easy to have low expectations for this film since it's directed by Lamberto Bava, who directed the lackluster and clunky Devil Fish.  Demons is almost an entirely different breed of horror movie, one that most might have suspected Bava was incapable of based on his previous film.  The film is stylish and energetic, full of piss and vinegar and relates an unapologetic need to just be as nasty as possible.  In that aspect, the film is about as successful as you could hope for, spewing blood and vomit a mile a minute, to a point that even Evil Dead would be envious.

If Demons has one thing going against it then it's that it grows noisier and more incoherent the longer it goes on.  The movie chooses to be vague as to what exactly is happening, though there seem to be implications made without really addressing the bigger picture.  One could argue this is realistic of being trapped in a situation far bigger than one's self, but there comes a point where the movie pretty much admits to the audience that it's not telling a story but just throwing gore at the screen.  The only context the film has is "Demons kill people," which is fine for the gorehound, though building a movie on this simple premise is a flawed notion.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it.  The crazy romp of nothing but death and destruction fed the creature feature fan inside of me.  There is not a lot of meat on Demons bones, but it will feed the right audience member.

The Drive-In

Joe Bob has a lot of pent-up info dumps about Italian cinema, and you get to hear a lot of it.  On the subject of the film, he talks a bit about how it was really just a group of six Italian guys coming up with gross ideas and making a movie.  He says it's not a Lamberto Bava film, as stated in the credits, nor a Mario Argento film, which most like to lump it as.  He decides to give the most credit to one of the four screenwriters, Dardano Sacchetti, who came of with the concept of the movie and Joe Bob refers to as a "one-man script machine."  Joe Bob refers to the filmmaking process as "slapping credits all over the place."

What he's really doing is using Demons as an example of some of the countries biggest genre movie quirks.  At one point he rants about Italy's unofficial sequel complex, and uses Demons' many own adopted sequels as a prime example, of which there are many.  Joe Bob's explanation for all of this:  "Because they're Italian!"  Considering this is far from the only example of this, it's hard to argue with him.

Demons was apparently banned from American television and edited to remove a scene where cocaine is spilled from a Coke can (get it) and cleaned off of a woman's breast, because that's obviously the most offensive thing about the movie.  Methinks Joe Bob is thankful for this new streaming show because it finally allows him to show movies that he couldn't show before for bullshit reasons.  Maybe Demons is a poster boy for this aspect, though he claims it's best enjoyed if you don't think too hard about it (I agree).  Of course, he might have just shown it because it set him up for a rant about (of all things) Donald Trump and The Handmaid's Tale.  Whatever the reason it's shown, this is worth a watch.

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐