Move Review: Night of the Demons (1988)

Look at the fucking box art. Look at it, I say!

A million years ago there were these things called video stores, and you would wander up and down the aisles going, "I dunno, what do YOU wanna watch?" and very often you'd wind up picking a film because of the picture on the box. See, this was before you could watch trailers online or even read a damn review unless you had one of those huge movie guides by Leonard Maltin.

Night of the Demons had a box designed to scare the everloving poop out of you. The random capitalization of 'You'll' somehow just adds to it - they care not for grammar, they're throwing  A HELL OF A PARTY, bitches!




The movie follows a pretty standard 80s plot - bunch of stupid teenagers break into an abandoned building - an old funeral home built on cursed ground in this case - and all hell breaks loose. Night of the Demons manages to stand out, though, mostly for the fact that it's pretty weird.

The characters are, by and large, unlikable. Our blonde heroine Judy is about as exciting as wallpaper paste, with her only defining feature being that her little brother is hilarious and she has terrible taste in boyfriends. Boyfriend 1 appears to have moved to suburbia from New Jersey. Boyfriend 2 is a yuppie dickhole who initially seems the better choice but proves himself to be way worse.

Angela, the girl throwing the party, is the school's resident goth weirdo. I like the cut of her jib. Her best friend is the one and only Linea Quigley, who just wants to party with the boys. Rounding out the cast are Cool Black Dude Dressed as a Pirate, other blonde, Asian Girl, Amusing Exposition Guy, and Stooge. Stooge is 'a fat pig.' He has the most creative curses, and so I like him. ("Eat a bowl of fucks!" is going into my regular rotation.)

Angela decides they should do something spooky during her party at the abandoned funeral parlour (hey, I'd do it too) and so they have a 'past life seance' which involves staring into a mirror. Other Blonde sees a bony dragon puppet and freaks out. Linea Quigley gets possessed, so she starts acting a bit weird. She frenches Angela, passing on the evil too. The kids all split up to make out, or in the case of the Pirate and Other Blonde, to fuck off. ...Other Blonde vanishes. Nobody cares.

Possessed!Angela does a dance routine to Bauhaus. It's my favourite thing.

Boyfriend 1 is having none of this. Stooge is. Boyfriend one goes off and finds Linea Quigley being even weirder, and he wisely leaves her. Then occurs a scene which is fucking random as shit, made all the more so by the fact nobody observes it.

Linea Quigley draws all over herself with horrible pink lipstick, and then shoves the tube into her nipple. Her nipple eats her lipstick. NOBODY SEES THIS. This makes it somehow more glorious.

There's lots of running around and shit after that, with Linea Quigley and Angela killing everyone off. The deceased then turn into demons too, of course, and eventually only Judy and the Pirate are left. They realise they have to cross the underground stream that encircles the property, as bad spirits can't cross running water. (Amusing Exposition Guy mentioned this bit of folklore earlier before he went to fuck Asian Girl in a coffin.)

They manage to cling a wall - Pirate has to save Judy's useless ass - and the demons melt when the sun comes up and turn into Dragon Puppet.

Now, that's really the end, but there's one thing that must be mentioned: the wrap-around story. See, in the VERY beginning of the movie, we see an old man grumbling about damn kids today... and putting razor blades into apples. Awesome.

Then at the end we see him again, eating pie his wife made for breakfast. Turns out she used the apple he had and OH MY GOD THE RAZORBLADES ARE IN THE PIIIIIE!

These scenes have jack all to do with the movie. But they're there. I love them.

Night of the Demons is not a good movie, exactly - the acting sucks, although the insults are amazing. It is, however, vastly entertaining. I give it two mopey Peter Murphy thumbs up.