 | MOVIE #1,190 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.12.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! Like the original, this is simply a fun time at the movies, folks. And also like the first Demons, this is slyly meta, though in a playful and unserious way. It’s almost a proto-Gremlins 2 in how it messes with the idea/function of a sequel (it even has a gremlin in it! which we will definitely get to, hold your damn horses!). Lamberto Bava is of course the son of famed Italian master Mario, one of the architects of the giallo subgenre. But he’s definitely come into his own here, his sixth feature, and while the gore is more toned down, it’s probably a more enjoyable picture overall than Demons 1. |
(sorry about those subtitles lol)
Obviously, when it’s “demon time,” this is far less noticeable with the screams, sound FX and raging synth soundtrack by Simon Boswell, but when it does pop up — mostly in the beginning of the film — it’s an unintentional delight.
In the world of Demons 2, the proceedings of Demons 1 are seen through the lens of a “film within the film” picking up where the plot of that movie left off. This “movie” is playing on the TVs in almost every unit of a high-rise apartment building in Hamburg, where the movie was shot, although setting — like most of the plot details here — is wholly unimportant. (I should note that the original also played with similar elements, though not as overtly as here.) Then, for no apparent reason, one of the demons comes through the TV into this world in a shot that is basically a total rip-off of the famous Videodrome scene…
It’s not even trying to be subtle…
(LEFT: Videodrome, 1983 | RIGHT: Demons, 1986)
Sally (the TV enthusiast above) is the first person to be turned into a demon and — as I mentioned in my review last year — these “demons” function much more like zombies (let’s call them zombons?). The only glaring difference is that ANY exposure to their acid blood drool will turn you into one. In fact, this demon acid blood drool starts ruining the building infrastructure, leaking from the ground zero of Sally’s birthday party. A dog grows a little mutant dog out of its mouth in the first of several showpiece (and original) practical FX work…
Bobby Rhodes, who stole the show as a pimp in the first installment, is back again in a different role. This time he plays the leader of a group of gym rats and bodybuilders who eventually hole up in the building’s parking garage to battle with the zombons. He is fantastic. He finds a shotgun and a belt of ammunition (somewhere?? lol) before getting his dick snagged…
But easily the best sequence here involves a little gremlin that explodes Alien-style out of the belly of a small boy zombon…
This lil fella attacks one of our heroes (pregnant lady) and is extremely hard to kill. She attempts to first slay it with a bath towel…
Then with 80s architecture…
Then by giving it a manicure…
Before eventually just pouring a large bottle of hydrochloric acid on it, which she thankfully had just lying around…
BUT it’s still not dead. Luckily, our other hero (her husband) finally kills it with an umbrella…
The scene in the parking lot descends into utter chaos with all the 80s chicks in their spandex and cars magically leaping over other cars and randomly exploding and so so so many zombons and a scared little Asia Argento (in her first screen role at age 10). This is such a delirious romp…
(Sadly we never learn the fate of little Asia lol.)
This whole film is a trip, eschewing any and all exposition in favor of action and, yet, it still sort of registers as smart, winking at the audience that it’s in on the joke. Sure, there are too many characters (a problem that plagued Demons 1 as well) and the moments in between the demon stuff in the first half is kind of stale, but these are very minor complaints. Our heroes escape the building by rappelling down its side (lol) but the OG zombon Sally ziplines after them (LOL)...
They eventually make it into a TV studio next door where pregnant lady delivers her baby very quickly and way too cleanly before Sally takes one more go at it before getting slayed for good? “Not so fast.” —Lee Corso. She appears comically on a TV screen and so the dude smashes up the television, naturally…
You see, there's real evil in entertainment folks and to defeat it you literally have to smash your TV? Yes, exactly that. Sure. It’s fine. I love these stupid movies so much. Kiss. Freeze frame. The End…
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,189 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,191 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,189 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,191 ⫸
Demons 2 (Italian: Dèmoni 2) is a 1986 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento. It is a sequel to Bava's 1985 film Demons and stars David Knight, Nancy Brilli, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, as well as Argento's youngest daughter, Asia Argento, in her debut film performance at age 10. In the film, demons invade the real world through a television broadcast, turning the residents of an apartment building into bloodthirsty monsters. It was released on October 6, 1986.
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