Review of Demons

Demons (1985)
6/10
Both awful and amazing
15 August 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Demons is one of those movies that is so bad that is might just be the greatest thing ever created. It has so many problems, but does that matter? No, of course not. You don't watch a movie like demons if your looking for high art. You watch a movie like demons for a fun and stupid time.

So, the basic plot of Demons is that a masked man hands out a bunch of tickets for a movie and a bunch of people turn up to this old, dilapidated cinema. This is the body count and believe me, there will be a lot of bodies.

Our cast includes a bickering couple, a blind man who is for some reason going to the cinema and a pimp, who may just be the greatest character in the history of cinema. There's also a woman who dresses like a leprechaun. I don't really know why she's in the movie.

On the way in, a woman gets scratched by a sharp object and gets turned into a demon. I have to admit, though most of the acting in this movie is pretty shocking, the first woman who turns into a demon actually gives a really good performance. She's genuinely quite scary.

Then, everyone dies. This couple having an affair gets strangled. The blind guy gets his eyes gouged out. Some poor woman gets scalped. Needless to say, the gore factor is really cranked up at this point. Sadly, it is at around this point that we lose the pimp.

There is also a strange tonal shift in the form of a side plot where we follow a bunch of punks driving round the city. They eventually enter the cinema and let all the demons out, but this whole section still seems strange and a bit out of place.

The punks enter the cinema, releasing all the demons, before being killed themselves. It is also around this point that the leprechaun woman randomly dies, so I guess that's sad.

The remaining survivors are killed off until only two remain. This is when we get one of the most glorious movie scenes I have ever had the pleasure to witness. One of our survivors, a buff jock, grabs a samurai sword, climbs onto a motorbike and minces all the demons. It's amazing and I will never be able to fully do it justice.

The pair of survivors escape through the roof and are confronted by the masked guy from the start, who gets killed almost immediately. Just when the duo thinks the worst is behind them, they realise that the demons are now everywhere and everyone is going to die. Then the movie's lead, a young woman whom we have been following from the start gets brutally killed and the movie ends.

So that's Demons. Nothing that happens makes any sense, but I don't really care. One thing that always got me about this movie was the villain's plan. What was he trying to do? So, he invites a bunch of people to this cinema to turn them all into demons. Fine. But, his plan relies solely on the fact that someone will be idiotic enough to scratch themselves on the sharp object in the foyer. Also, what was the point of trapping the visitors in the cinema? Surely, if his ultimate goal was to release demons everywhere, it would make more sense to allow the guests to leave, so that the demons would also be able to escape. Trapping the visitors actually prevented the demons from escaping so he was actually contaaiming the outbreak. Anyway, this rant has gone on for way too long so I'm going to end it here. Demons is terrible, but you should definitely watch it anyway.
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