Spooky Season Reviews: Demoni (Demons)

Demons, or Demoni, if you want to use the original Italian title, Dario Argento's 1985 cult classic about a movie theater overrun by murderous ghouls, is an extremely gory, gruesome, fun (if you like that sort of thing), and still surprisingly effective horror picture, which, the last time I watched it, Ronald Reagan was still president. And yet, so many years later, while watching it again, I was struck by how much I remembered, from quotes I still use ("Nobody touch nothin'" and "Smash everything! Smash everything!") to some of the key moments, all of which are a testament to the film's enduring appeal. Combine that with a few gross-out moments I'd forgotten, along with a hilarious climax, watching Demons (something I decided to do after writing a previous post) was a worthy addition to my Spooky Season watch list. Is it a "good" movie, though? That is both relative ... and complicated.

In Demons, a group of people is given flyers to attend a free movie premiere at a recently reopened theater. These flyers are handed out in public places so the assembled audience represents a cross section of society. The movie they're there to watch, a horror film (naturally), ends up mirroring the plot of Demons itself (how meta and before its time!): a young person puts on a strange, evil looking (and kinda cool) mask, which, after taking it off, they discover it scratched them, turning them into a murderous ... well, what are they? I struggle to call them demons, they're not quite zombies, they're just green slime-spewing, ravenous monsters whose scratch or bite turns their victims into more green slime-spewing, ravenous monsters. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that it's all some kind of setup (the guy passing out the tickets is a disfigured mute wearing half a demon mask, after all) and they are locked in the theater as the demon contagion spreads, eventually - GULP - getting outside into the wide world.

There are still creepy, effective moments in Demons. Before the monsters arrive and the splatter starts, there are some genuinely spooky moments in the train station and movie theater. Once the demons arrive via a scratch from the aforementioned mask on the face of one of the guests, the movie turns into something of a slaughter fest, which is typical of Argento. Some of the massacre scenes make you uncomfortably laugh out loud, while others just make you cringe. The movie, in that regard, is not for the squeamish. The plot is basic and the characters are fairly flat, the most interesting of which are a blind dude and a pimp. If that sounds like the beginning to a bad bar joke, it's not.

Like most good or even decent "survival" horror, for lack of a better way of putting it, Demons works because it starts with the ordinary: people are going to a free movie and hey, who doesn't need a break every now and then? And yet, if you really think about it, isn't there something a little spooky about going to the movies? Being surrounded by all those strangers in the dark with only two exits to flee from if the shit hits the fan? Take it from somebody who has been in a movie theater during a power outage. Your local Cineplex can turn into a House of Horrors pretty quickly.

As you would expect, the vast majority of the characters meet an extremely gruesome demise and the climax is a hilarious battle royale involving a samurai sword and a motorcycle that somehow, in the ensuing years, I had forgotten.

Demons is not Shakespeare, nor is it particularly thought-provoking horror, but if you're in the mood for a gory roller coaster ride in a darkened movie theater, check it out.