Note: This is the fourth of five reviews chronicling the masterpieces of Italian horror movies. The preceding reviews covered Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond.
What do you do when your father is the reigning king of horror movies in your native country? Do you sit around and lament fate for burdening you with a famous father? Or do you get over it and take advantage of a good situation? In the case of Lamberto Bava, son of infamous terror maven, Mario, you suck up your pride and do what daddy does best: direct nightmarish epics.
Lamberto was the first of the “third generation” of Italian horror icons. He cut his teeth as his father’s personal assistant, then later learned the business by working as an assistant director. By the time he was in his early thirties, Lamberto was acting as his father’s 2nd unit director on the 1977 film Shock. A few years later, Lamberto began working for legendary director Dario Argento, and in 1979, Bava directed his debut feature, Macabre. Despite the relative success of his early films (most notably A Blade in the Dark in 1983), it wasn’t until he made Demons in 1985 that Bava carved out a niche in the horror world he could rightfully claim his own.
Truly blasted by some horror fans, heralded by others, Demons is the definition of a polarizing horror film. Campy in some parts, horrific in others, brutally graphic, poorly dubbed and dubiously acted, Demons represents everything that the third generation of Italian horror films embodied.
The plot, as with any good Italian horror film, is sketchy at best: A group of people are confined within the walls of a Berlin movie theater. While watching a horror film about demons, the patrons soon start turning into demons themselves. And that’s it. With the plot out of the way, the film is allowed to move on to what it does best–create complete chaos.
Demons may very well be the single greatest trapped-in-a-place-with-no-exit film ever produced by the country of Italy. Set to a propulsive soundtrack chock full of 80’s metal, Demons is paced relentlessly, which is good, because the dialogue–what little of it there is–leaves a lot to be desired. This is popcorn cinema at its finest. There’s no room for character development, no elegant mise en scene, no brilliant method acting. And yet it’s mildly distracting to realize that all of the terror of Demons is experienced by the audience of a horror film.
So what is it that Bava is saying? As the audience of a horror film, are we implicated in the carnage by simply finding it entertaining? Does it really matter? The answer is no. Bava could care less about having anything to say. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the entire movie existed as an excuse to film the scene with the dude on the dirt-bike–riding up and down the aisles of the movie theatre, wielding a chainsaw, hacking off the heads of innumberable demons with heavy metal blaring on the soundtrack. That’s what Demons is all about. Senseless gore, senseless violence, heavy metal. And honestly, would you rather have it any other way?
