Review: Demons 2 (1986)

Demons 2 (1986)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Demons is probably one of the best pieces of gory grindhouse ever, and mostly because it ended with a bang.  The hero Samurai-Sword fought demon zombies to the sound of 80s rock, before having to kill his new girlfriend, on the back of a jeep, while escaping an overrun city.  What better sequel setup could you ask for?  Demons 2 could feature a whole world overrun by demons and a few select survivors trying to live through the last hours of an apocalypse.  That’s not what Demons 2 does though. 

Demons 2 follows the “give’em more of the same!” tradition of sequels. While the first movie was a bunch of people stuck in a movie theater, being threatened by a demon zombie plague, the second one features a group of people stuck in a large apartment building.  The events of the first Demons are slightly referenced in yet another ‘movie-within-a movie’ narrative device.   This time they push the angle, that these monsters come from the film you're watching, in a much bigger way.  Even as far as to show the first major demon coming out of the TV to attack an unsuspecting viewer.

Wait so… what?  Oh, screw it… whatever I didn’t come here for this to make sense.

If you’ve read my review of the first movie, you know I’m in love with it.  Everything from the goofy acting, the crazy pimps, and demon puss pimples, fills me with glee like a 9-year-old boy.   That love floods over to this sequel as well, but only a little bit.   Demons 2 takes the building blocks of the first and tries to do the same thing, but with just a little extra. It sadly misses its mark.  We spent just too much time making back-story for characters we know are going to die.  We have subplot after subplot in different locations in the building.  They all have their so-bad-its-funny sort of charm, there’s just too many though.    We have body builders fighting demons, a house party turned into ground zero, a pregnant couple, an old lady with a dog, and a child left home alone. 

Luckily Tony the Pimp is back too… but with a different name and an obsession for fitness.

Sure, we get the more of the great creature effects, like the demon baby, but we also have the horrible demon dog, which starts with promise and eventually just turns into a dog with a mask on.  It’s all still gory fun, but it's not as much gory fun.  If you liked the first one, you’ll stand to get a kick out of this, but it doesn’t have nearly the same amount of heart.  I will give it credit for killing both the dog and the kid; two characters you always just assume will live.

           

Then there’s the whole meta-plot ‘movie within a movie’ stuff.  It’s ultimately pointless and hard to follow. So, was the first movie just a movie IN this movie, and they are watching the sequel while we’re watching them in a sequel?  Is the movie from the first Demons in any way related to the movie in the second Demons?  Are the events in the movies within the movies, real life? Is this like The Ring where if you watch the movies, you die like in the movies? Why the hell would you show this movie on TV? What about the mask in the first one? Why is demon blood acidic now? Those questions alone made my brain explode a little bit.  We’re not supposed to worry about that stuff in a cheese-ball gore fest like this. My best advice is to just turn off all of your brain, every brain cell, you just need to destroy it. 

Still, it’s a decent movie to watch at 3 in the morning, when you come home intoxicated, but it’s not good for much else.  Basically, if you like Demons, you’ll at least get a kick out of Demons 2.  If you didn’t like Demons, you should just step back and leave it be. 

Now, just don’t get me started on the rest of this franchise's supposed sequels.

Jesus… I can’t… I just won’t. 

- Will Woolery

Review: The Last Man on Earth (1964)

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Directors: Ubaldo Ragona (as Ubaldo B. Ragona), Sidney Salkow (uncredited)

“Do you dare imagine what it would be like to be the last man on Earth... or the last woman? Alive among the lifeless... alone among the crawling creatures of evil that make the night hideous with their inhuman craving?!” That's what the poster for this film wanted to know. Do we dare?

Sure, why not?

Before Will Smith made it clear that he was Legend and Charlton Heston was the Omega Man, Vincent Price told us that he was The Last Man on Earth. And with good reason, too. In a world populated with vampires, who better to represent the human race than that silvery-voiced master of suspense and horror?

If you saw either of those later filmed versions of Richard Matheson's tale, you'll know what the score is:

Four years in the future, a plague wipes out society, except those infected don't stay dead for long. They return as creatures of the night, ready to feast on any remaining survivors – which will then infect those they attack and increase their numbers. The last survivor of mankind, Dr. Robert Morgan, spends his nights locked up in his home, sleeping in fear that he'll be discovered. By day he collects supplies vital to his survival, killing any weakened vampires he finds and searching for a cure to the plague.

Of course, since he's immune, he has somewhere to start regarding his research. That isn't the problem; the real issue is if he can survive against overwhelming odds and keep his sanity long enough to get the job done. He gets a dog as a companion, which goes tragically wrong, and then finds another survivor. Or is she? She's showing some of the symptoms of being a vampire but doesn't attack him.

As the mystery deepens for Doctor Morgan, he discovers that he isn't as alone as he first thought, but the alternative to being a vampire may not be all that he'd hoped. What remains of the human race and the dark side of survival is revealed. It's a gloomy future ahead...

There are some flaws with this film, one of the biggest being the vampires. They may be everywhere, but they don't seem that threatening. They're slow, sluggish and despite all the clichés (sharp teeth, problems with garlic and mirrors and being killed by a stake through the heart) they act more like zombies. Old movie zombies. Which means they just groan and wander around banging on doors in a futile manner, as opposed to chasing Brad Pitt at a breakneck speed.

It gets off to a slow start too, with a drawn-out backstory. Just when you think it's about to pick up it slows down again, before racing to a panic-stricken final act which needed just a little more explanation. Then there's the original idea of our hero becoming a legend of this post-apocalyptic world... but doesn't.

Those faults aside, it's still a good film. It may lack the high-budget gloss and depth of the later versions, but it's a fantastic early model of the survival horror genre that inspired others. The deck is stacked against Morgan right from the start, and it's easy to understand why he's become unraveled. The solitude is impossible to deal with, a cure seems hopeless, and even a simple trip to the shops or getting petrol for his car is a mission.

Vincent Price is in top form, giving a great performance and seemingly becoming more unhinged as it goes. The ending is as dark and disturbing as the beginning and shows a more realistic portrayal of the end of the world than many in this genre. There's something more psychologically disturbing about being slowly stalked than being over-run by racing hordes, and on that level this film delivers. A slightly quicker pace would have been good, but it works regardless.

Of course, it's a classic. But why? It may not be the best and it certainly isn't the oldest. Yet the impact and influence of it make it a film that can't be denied. It's one of those that set the standard, and while the bar may have been surpassed by others, it's still a benchmark that most struggle to achieve. 

- Rick Austin

Review: Zombie Lake (1981)

Zombie Lake (1981)
Director: J.A. Laser / Eurociné

Description from Netflix:
During World War II, a group of villagers ambushed and defeated a band of German soldiers and threw their bodies in the nearby lake.  Now, the Nazis have returned as angry zombies, preying on unsuspecting teen swimmers and skinny-dippers.

My thoughts:
The above description should tell you just about all you need to know.  Especially the part about skinny-dippers.  Oh man...for a lake as filthy as this one, it's amazing how many skinny-dippers there are.  Young women find their way to the lake and immediately think, "I need to take off all my clothes and get in there as soon as possible."  And they do.

While all this gratuitous nudity was going on (I'll estimate that 30% of this movie was naked ladies), there was a backstory about one of the Nazis and his daughter.  While he was stationed in this town, he knocked up a resident.  He was then killed, because he was a Nazi, and that's what you do to Nazis.  So, on top of killing nude co-eds, he also wanted to reunite with his daughter.  Because even though he was a zombie, he still held his memories he had while living (like Colin or Bub).

Needless to say, it was a terrible story.  They writers decided it really wasn't worth their time to flesh out any of the characters or their motivations or anything.  Am I asking too much of a softcore-zombie-porn?  Probably.

There were a lot of laughable parts of this movie (on top of the obvious nudity, which I feel has been covered pretty well).  The make-up was atrocious.  Like, visibly-rubbing-off-during-scenes bad.

Most of the zombies walked around like regular people, if a little slower.  But this joker thought he was Karloff or something.  Seriously.  No other zombie moved like this.

To say this was a terrible movie would be about the best review I could give it.  At times, it was borderline unwatchable.  Honestly, I felt a little uncomfortable watching it at times (that had less to do with the nudity and more to do with the fact that it felt like it was made by a Nazi sympathizer).  The handful of laughs didn't make up for the rest of it.

If you're looking for a good Nazi zombie movie (and who isn't?), I highly recommend you go with Dead Snow.

Zombies: they seemed to be pretty standard zombies.  No super-strength or anything like that.  Regular gunshots didn't seem to stop them (although I can't vouch for headshots, because I'm not sure any of them were actually shot in the head).  However, the thing that separated these zombies from your Romero zombies was the fact that fire killed them.  Anyone who knows zombies knows you should never set one on fire: it won't kill them, and now you have a flaming zombie to contend with.  But it seemed to work for these guys.

- Dusty 'D' Evely