Halloween is almost upon us!  The leaves are turning brown, K-Mart is displaying their cheaply made but very expensive slutty nurse costumes, and the pumpkins are creeping their way out onto the porches.  Yes, that feeling is in the air.  You can smell it.  And this smell has put me in the mood to watch some cheesy B Movies from the 1980s.

I looked online and read descriptions of maybe a hundred different movies before finally deciding on Night of the Demons.  With a mix of blood, boobs, and 80s dance breaks, it looked to be a great film.

Director Kevin Tenney directed this baby back in 1988, and it’s just one of the many great films on his resume.  His other flicks include Witchboard, Pinnocchio’s Revenge, and Brain Dead (not to be confused with Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead).  Witchboard is actually in my queue to watch so it will be interesting to compare these movies and note his progression as a director.

Night of the Demons actually starts off with a pretty impressive animated title sequence, considering the year it was produced and its budget.  But unfortunately, after this five minute colorful sequence of names, the film goes downhill — fast.

The movie kicks into gear by introducing us to Old Man…Jones?  He’s the local grumpy geezer who sits on his porch and yells at kids for driving too fast.  We catch him walking back from the grocery store with some treats for the trick-or-treaters: candy, apples, and razor blades.  Razor blades, Old Man Jones?  Come on these kids aren’t old enough to shave.  But on a serious note, everyone in town is a huge asshole to this old guy for some reason so he decides to get his revenge by sabotaging apples and killing innocent children.  Personally I think he should have injected strychnine into the apples instead, but whatever.

“Whassa matta, you didn’t hear what I said, bozo?” Just when I thought the colorful jargon of the ’60s was about to die, here comes along a too-cool-for-school greaser to restore my faith back into humanity.  This guy, whose name I can’t remember (let’s just call him Johnny, pictured top), is a man who plays by nobody’s rules, not even his own.  He totally digs the hot blonde chick, the protagonist of the movie, whose name I can’t remember either (we’ll call her Michelle).  He’s a troublemaker for sure, and bribes Michelle’s brother into telling him wher ethe hopping Halloween Party is going to be held.

Of course, the Halloween party is being held at Hull House, an abandoned haunted house sitting far away from town on a giant hill with lightning.

Other characters include the token black guy, Roger, the token dumb ass, Stooge, and the token slut, Slutgirl (all pictured on the bottom).  Her name isn’t actually Slutgirl.

And below in the gloriously posted Youtube video is Michelle, the bodacious babe, the hottie heroine.   The clip below features some fine acting from her and her brother.

The dialogue does not improve.  At all.  If you look at this chart I made, you will see the actors’ lines pretty much remain consistently bad for the entire movie.

Eventually all these colorful characters get together and make their way to the Hull House.  Apparently the house used to be an old funeral home, and old coffins are scattered all throughout the rooms.  The teenagers break in and explore for a little bit, and the creaking of their footsteps disturbs the demons sleeping in the basement.  Ruh-oh!  The bad thing about this part of the movie is that as they wander around it literally takes twenty-minutes for something to happen.  A very huge pacing issue.  I was bored out of my skull.

Oh well.  Now it’s time to PARTY.

And what a great freaking party it is!  The budget for the movie didn’t allow any room for use of copyrighted songs, but it did allow for the director’s roommate’s friend’s band to pop in a few singles.  The whole gang jumps around to some song that sounds like a cheap Disney knock-off of a Kids Bop album for adults.  You understand me?  The dance scene was totally ’80s, and lasted for ten minutes.  So great.

I will also make note here that the actual score to Night of the Demons consists of only synthesizers and keyboards.  For those who don’t know, the presence of synthesizers and keyboards usually means the movie will rock shit.  The cheaper the soundtrack, the better the movie.

So now we’re forty minutes into the movie, and no one has died.  And none of the girls have gotten naked.  The producers should have done a little more research on their target audience.

The conflict finally begins to come around when the weird Gothic chick in the group finds a mirror and decides it’s a good idea to use it to summon demons.  BAD IDEA.  They are in a house FILLED with demons.  This will not turn out good.  Hopefully the demon summoning will cause one of the girl’s clothes to disappear.

The teenagers do their demon chant, and the invisible king demon flies around the room and posessed the body of Slutgirl.  Slutgirl, being the slut that she is, decides the best way to spread the demon’s presence from person to person is through kissing.  The viewer:  Hell yeah!  Finally some action.  At forty-three minutes and fifteen seconds, we get some girl-on-girl make out action.  Maybe this movie isn’t so bad after all?

Right around the forty-five minute mark is when I sort of get fuzzy about the plot elements.  All I remember is the Gothic chick tries to seduce Johnny with a ten minute erotic ’80s dance, and the Slutgirl tricks stooge into having sex with her.  The Slutgirl-Stooge sex scene is a key scene in the movie because the boobs are finally revealed.  Also the mis-en-scene is astounding.

At fifty-five minutes, the first blood is shed.  I think I can go ahead and call that the world record for a B Horror Movie.  Why would director Kevin Tenney wait that long to kill off one of his stupid characters?  I had blueballs, that’s for sure.  When I watch a B Movie, I expect a death in the first five minutes.

When the killing does start however, Night of the Demons gets good.  It gets almost too good.

Yes, those two people got their shit destroyed by a demon WHILE having sex in a coffin.  The bad taste is delicious.  This sex scene upped the boob tally to four, AND the guy got his arm chopped off.  Now that’s what I call rough sex, hur hur hur.  I do not condone sex in a casket.

Eventually Michelle, our brave little blonde, and Roger the black guy are the only people left who aren’t demons.  It is a fight to stay alive, and in their panic they try to escape by running to the basement.  It’s obviously the most logical place to go to when trying to run away from something that is trying to kill you.

Backed into a corner, Michelle and Roger get a little creative with their self-defense.

The flamethrower is a weapon of total destruction.  However, because demons are born and bread in Hell, the land of fire, hot flames don’t really effect them.   It does by Michelle and Roger some time though, and they are able to run past the demons and back up to the first floor of the house.  It is here they make their final daring escape.  It is the best climactic sequence ever featured in a motion picture.

Perhaps breaking a window should have been the first course of action to take.  It seems more logical than a makeshift flamethrower.  Meh, it’s easy to criticize them, but I’m sure if I had been in their position I would have freaked out and lost my common sense as well.

After escaping through the window, they scale a brick wall (the most inadvertently hilarious scene in the movie), and escape to safety.  With all of their friends dead, will Roger and Michelle be able to return to normal city life?  Who knows.

And just when you thin the movie is over, we cut back to Old Man Jones, the day after Halloween.  His loving wife has made him a nice warm apple pie for breakfast…only she accidentally used the apples with RAZORS IN THEM.  His throat is slit open from the inside and it is a thoroughly awesome sequence all around.

Jack’s Take:

Night of the Demons had several pacing problems throughout the movie.  It was terribly boring and at times I wished I was doing something else with my time.  There were no boobs until 52 minutes, and there was no blood until 55 minutes.  However, the dialogue was great and always entertaining.

C+