The venerable Demons series of movies reaches the much sought-after milestone of number six with this entry. I think it’s safe to assume that your reaction to a Demons 6 movie is the same as mine was: I guess this means that somewhere in the 1980s there was a Demons 3, Demons 4, and Demons 5?
All of us remember Lamberto Bava‘s Demons and its sequel, Demons 2. After those two movies though, sorting this series out gets a bit tricky.
Once upon a time, The Church, was going to be called Demons 3. That was before Lamberto Bava stepped in to “save the day” with Demons III: The Ogre.
Demons 4 was eventually released as The Sect and was directed by Michael Soavi who also made The Church. Lamberto Bava came back for Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil, a loose remake of his father’s Black Sabbath. And Luigi Cozzi‘s Demons 6 had nothing to do with any of these movies!
Regardless of how it is or isn’t connected to its predecessors, the true Italian horror fan should have no concerns.
Most of the usual tropes are present: an ugly Italian leading lady, a scurvy looking lead guy who might have had a really light beard, late eighties fashions, the amateurish multicolored lighting that is supposed to pass for atmosphere (give it up, just accept the fact that Mario Bava was the only one who could get this right), and of course the gloriously inane heavy metal soundtrack.
The film itself is forgettable bilge about an old dead witch named Levana who is simultaneously being reincarnated and having a movie made about her.
I was never sure if these events were related or just that bizarre confluence of circumstances known as life, but Levana is irked that the ugly actress Anne is going to be playing her in the movie and tries to drive this actress crazy or something with visions of a broken down refrigerator.
Even though Anne is being terrorized by a witch, she also has a fairy named Sybil on her side.
This fairy doesn’t do anything except periodically appear in a TV or mirror and tell this woman stuff like “I’m sure your husband doesn’t really find you that ugly” and “just because he’s over at super hottie Nora’s house in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean that he isn’t thinking about your ugly ass when he’s pumping hers”. Nothing like some positive affirmations to build self worth I always say.
The director and writer for this movie within a movie about Levana explain that even though Dario Argento made a movie about this subject matter (Suspiria), they were going to do a different take on it. The director (Anne’s husband) even gave Suspiria a thumbs up!
Really, if you’re in a regular old sucky horror movie, you probably shouldn’t go around talking about a better-regarded horror movie which was about the same thing as your own movie is about!
Demons 6 isn’t just a regular old sucky horror movie though! It’s an extraordinarily out of this world sucky horror movie! How do we know that? Is it because one of Levana’s big tricks is to puke green slop all over Anne’s face?
Or could it be the scene where Anne hears a lot of honking outside her house followed by someone driving a car through her wall into her living room with the driver exiting the vehicle all bloodied and belching out some vital clue before croaking from the knife sticking out of his back?
But maybe it’s when Anne is battling Levana at the end of the movie and Levana is shooting her with laser beams from her eyes and fingers and Anne suddenly announces that she has just acquired the power to control time itself?
Nah, it had to be the very last scene where the film froze on her child’s face while it was just looking like a cute little slobbering baby, except for the glowing red eyes superimposed on his face! And the baby even had a evil voice intoning all these vague threats of a Demons 7! This kid is scarier than even that brat in The Omen! Truly horrific for all the wrong reasons!
© 2015 MonsterHunter
While it Doesn’t reach the gonzo Looney levels of The Visitor, it holds its own in the Cray Cray department. What you get when you have the director of Starcrash attempt to do Argento. Hilarity ensues.