Demons [Dèmoni] (1985)

[OrlandoEastwood]

Ok, so I saw Lamberto Bava's Demons for the first time at the horror film festival at my local drive in. This film was the third film in the five film line up. The print was in rough shape and the people who were organizing the film festival told me that this was the one that they were having the hardest time trying to track down. The opening was butchered on the print; it just abruptly starts with "DEMONS" on the screen and then cuts to the some of the credits and then we see the Cheryl seeing the reflection of the man with the mask which is my avatar at the moment.

It played pretty good until the end of the film. The last reel had a bunch of jump cuts where I guess someone ran off with frames of the movie or someone tried to reconstruct it, I don't know, but it kept skipping at the end. Then the film just kinda ends. I want to make a comparison and a fair one would be if you liked From Dusk Till Dawn, you'd like Lamberto Bava's Demons. And a piece of trivia I had read on IMDB is that Michele Soavi who is the guy on my avatar was originally offered to direct From Dusk Till Dawn.

I'm trying to keep it as spoiler free in this little review I am going to tell you; it starts off with our main female character Cheryl who gets a movie ticket from a strange masked man who doesn't say a word at all. Cheryl asks the man if she can have another ticket for her best friend. The two go to the theater where we see all the other attendees. We see a pimp and two of his ladies. One of the ladies fools around with this mask and gets cut by it. They all enter the auditorium and start watching the film.

And the film is oddly about the mask that the woman was playing with. We learn that whoever wears the mask will become a demon and instrument of evil. The woman feels uncomfortable about this and goes to the bathroom where she transforms into a demon and starts unleashing hell upon the attendees. Now, they are all fighting for their lives to escape the theater and to kill the demons.

This is an Italian film where I presume it was shot without sound and dubbed in post because some of the actors and actresses are speaking English like Geretta Geretta and some are clearly not speaking English like the protagonist Urbano Barberini. Given that this is an Italian flick, there's a bunch of unofficial sequels to this series. There is a Demons 2 which Bava did and there's three Demons 3. This is tricky, there's; Demons 3: The Ogre, Demons 3: The Church, and Demons 3: Black Demons. Supposedly Black Demons is the official third film. And there's also a Demons 4: The Sect, Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, and Demons 6: Armageddon.