Demon Lover Diary

MOVIE #1,039 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.28.23 This is often cited as a proto-American Movie, and I get that, but it’s funny how things get sorted in the cultural pecking order (like why isn’t American Movie more recognized as an enhanced version of this, or is it dumb to equate the two just because they’re both “making of” documentaries of low-budget midwestern horror flicks?); I’ve often stated that American Movie is my favorite/most likely the best doc ever made, so while I get the clear comparisons, there was a lot of ground for Demon Lover Diary to make up in my heart and mind. Which is to say, I liked this but it’s not on that level. The actual finished product of the movie being chronicled here (albeit in almost unwatchable poor quality), The Demon Lover (1976) is floating around on YouTube as is a much better quality trailer…

… and the one takeaway from both of these is that it doesn’t at all feel like the same movie Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines were working on. Sure, it looks cheap and bad, but there’s just a shit ton more happening visually that we never get to see in Demon Lover Diary. And to that end, yes, it did feel like directors Donald G. Jackson and Jerry Younkins (and much of the local cast/crew) were being made of fun (in a way, for example, Mark Borchardt clearly is not).

The novelty of seeing all the behind-the-scenes bullshit is really the only reason the doc is more notorious than the feature it’s documenting. How many countless DIY productions — especially circa 1970s — could have been better served via this fly-on-the-wall testament? The reality is simply it was hard to come across one camera, let alone two.

I am much more intrigued by DeMott/Kreines’ 1983 feature doc, Seventeen — for what it’s worth.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
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The film chronicles filmmaker Joel DeMott, significant other/film partner Jeff Kreines and filmmaker Mark Rance as they head to Michigan to make a low budget horror film. It was released on January 1, 1980.