This video will walk you through The Demons, an Italian horror film set in Berlin in the 1980s. In the mid-1980s, people were already noticing Italian horror titles flooding the market, as directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento were taking the globe by storm with their Giallo films.
Urbano Barberini and Natasha Hovey feature in Demons, a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Lamberto Bava and starring Urbano Barberini. Demons is, at its core, a zombie film, of which there was a slew of them created in Italy throughout the 1980s; nevertheless, it may also be said to be about malevolent presences.
Such films were known for their over-the-top effects, gore, sexuality, and tension, as well as tales that pushed the imagination to its limits. It was difficult to foresee what would happen next because we were met with insane murders and swarms of zombies, jungles swarming with vicious cannibals and so many twisted nightmares of memorable occurrences.
Its plot revolves around two female university students who, along with a group of other people, are given free tickets to a mystery movie screening, where they quickly become trapped in the theater with a swarm of hungry demons. The film had a strong opening weekend box office and earned mixed reviews from critics. The picture gained a cult following over time.
It was difficult to foresee what would happen next when we were confronted with insane killers and swarms of zombies, jungles swarming with vicious cannibals and so many twisted nightmares of memorable occurrences. In 1985, Mario Bava’s son Lamberto Bava cooperated on Demons alongside writer Dardano Sacchetti and Dario Argento, who helped with the storyline and production.
The horror film from the 1980s uses B-movie special effects. However, many of the actual effects are well-staged and deliciously covered in corn syrup gore. One scene, in particular, makes fantastic use of low-budget practical effects like manipulating fingernails and teeth.
The plot is simple, albeit a touch reductive in its departure from the metatextual bent of the beginning. The concept of the character’s state is mirrored in the film they are watching is a brilliant observation of the nature of audience pleasure in the horror genre.
Setting the scene quickly, the film makes a bold and mostly successful attempt to portray Berlin as a gothic city, combining it with modern-day pink-haired punks packed along the train, giving the film a contemporary feel.
In the mid-1980s, Lamberto Bava’s Demons resurrected this tradition with a grisly touch and a sense of humor that rapidly attracted lovers; it is now one of the most popular, and its simple storyline makes it no less enjoyable.
THEIR EVIL BECOMES AN ORGY OF BLOODSHED – DEMONS (1985)
The film opens with Cheryl on the Berlin train, looking prim and proper in her sensible sweater, surrounded by fashionable young punks and New Romantics looking forward to a fun night out. When she gets off, she’s pursued by a masked stranger, leading us to fear that, as in many a current thriller, we’re in for murder, but instead the stranger offers her a ticket to a special cinema showing – a ticket, it would appear, to a more interesting existence.
A masked stranger gives Cheryl, a university student, two complimentary tickets to a movie, at a remote and freshly rebuilt neighborhood theatre. Cheryl persuades Kathy- her friend to accompany her to the theatre, where they are encountered by George and Ken, two college lads. “
You don’t believe it’ll be a horror film, do you?” Cheryl inquires of her friend Kathy about the nameless film they are about to attend. It is, yet in a perplexing piece of meta-cinema, the actions represented on screen spill into the theatre area. A blind man and his daughter, a married couple, a lover and girlfriend, and Tony and his two prostitutes are among those who attend the movie.
Rosemary, one of the prostitutes who were there, slashes her face with a strange mask on exhibit in the foyer. The movie that was being presented is a violent film, an unsettling horror-thriller about four adolescents who unearth an old tomb and dig up the grave of Nostradamus, also a fortune teller.
When the kids open Nostradamus’ coffin, they discover no corpse but an ancient book and a mask that looks exactly like the weird mask in the lobby. When one of the film’s protagonists puts on the mask and gets scratched by it, like Rosemary was by its doppelganger, he goes evil and kills his friends.
Rosemary walks to the washroom because she is unwell, and she turns into a vicious, demon identical to the one in the movie and is red-eyed. Rosemary assaults her companion Carmen, who subsequently changes into a monster in front of the audience. The people who are still uninfected rush to whatever exit they can locate, only to discover that all of them have been blocked, making their escape impossible.
She undergoes the same change with each person she strikes, attacking others in turn. Cheryl and George must spend the rest of the night fending them off after discovering that all of the exits from the cinema have been closed.
Despite their attempts to cover themselves on the balcony, the demons strike and infect several of them. When four gangsters break into that building through a rear entry, one of the demons flees into the city; the punks are soon converted into demons also.
Only George and Cheryl are uninfected in the theatre. They ride across the theatre, slashing down several demons, with the use of a motorcycle from the foyer, they escape the auditorium. When a chopper crashes through the roof, George kills virtually all of them. With the use of a grappling hook, they ascend the roof, when they are accosted by the mystery, the man they encountered at the subway. They murder him by hitting his skull on an exposed piece of rebar.
Then the two of them walk down to the street, where they learn that the demonic illness has spread in and out of Berlin. Cheryl (who was infected in the theatre) transforms into a demon as they drive out of town to safety. Then, they are pursued by a swarm of demons before being rescued by a vehicle full of armed survivors. But before she can do anything to George, a shotgun kills her. As Cheryl’s body falls into the road, George (the film’s solitary survivor) and the survivalists escape the town and land into an uncertain future.
Bava was surrounded by horror, thanks to his father, Mario, who took him to film sets as a youngster. By 1985, he’d already had a few reasonably successful pictures under his belt, but Demons was his big break, establishing his brand in English-language markets and introducing him to new audiences. Its ketchup-like blood effects may appear crude today, but they created quite an impact at the time.
Importantly, throughout the film, the filmmaker treats the incredible components of the plot with total confidence, making it simpler for the spectator to accept them and focus on the action. The limited places provided by the setting appear to inspire rather than hinder him, and despite the thin concept, he manages to keep the viewer’s interest throughout.
This film contains several hidden allusions, making it a must-see for Giallo lovers. What truly distinguishes it, though, is its sense of comedy, with dark humor and even slapstick livening up what could otherwise be a gloomy circumstance.
The suspense builds towards the climax and is progressively widened by a feeling of existential terror reminiscent of George Romero’s finest work. Meanwhile, Bava has a lot of fun with the era’s fashion and fripperies, mocking the expectations created by American cinema.
Demons is a fantastic journey that is superficially funny but has a lot more gloom beneath the surface.
WHY SHOULD YOU WATCH DEMONS
Lamberto Bava is one of the few directors who can get away with making a horror picture with the special effects, suspense, and mayhem so beautifully portrayed and wonderfully produced that the plot becomes completely meaningless. The make-up is fantastic for a low-budget film from the 1980s, and these monsters seem extremely terrifying as if transposed from our worst nightmares and anxieties.
The beady eyes, sharp fangs, lengthy claws, and utterly nasty growls are just a few of the features that make this film worth seeing. The sight of the humans who become these creatures is mind-boggling, as all essence of their being and soul melts away in a sea of blood and ripped skin as they take on the monsters. This film also stands out in the genre because it has one of the most intriguing locations ever seen in a horror film: a traditional cinema theatre.
One that looks and feels like vintage movie theatres from the 1950s, and, like the mall in “Dawn of the Dead,” it takes on a life of its own. The narrative is sparse, but it goes somewhat like this: a group of individuals is given invites to a screening of “Demons” at a new local West Berlin movie theatre.
As a result, the film is filled with a lot of narratives, but it’s the finest and most flawlessly entertaining sort, and it’s not even ineffectual such as horror. Some of the amazing plots of the movie occur when Tom and Hannah are getting away through an air vent since he can hear an evil spirit scratching behind Hannah, so he let her move before him, and afterward, there’s a horrendous second that feels significantly longer than it does while he also leisurely processes why he out of nowhere hears the scratching in front presently; it’s a really agitating in a film that is generally content to go for big gestures.5
The music to this film is also worth checking out. We are given lots of images of punks with wild hair and outfits, as well as introduced to some sleazy looking folks sniffing cocaine out of a Coke can while driving about seeking kicks, due to the fact that the film is set in the mid-eighties and takes place in a populous metropolis. Several songs appear to start playing throughout these moments, and we learn that they are by Billy Idol, Motley Crue, Rick Springfield, and Saxon, among others.
We can almost overlook the rather crazy dubbing that appears to be the only option accessible to American audiences, thanks to the amazing music score and wild special effects. Lamberto Bava, on the other hand, never seems to be concerned with creating anything other than an experience that is a sensory explosion of very powerful gore effects.
All of the characters and settings in “Demons” appear to be imported. The conversation is in colloquial American and corresponds to the lip motions, although it sounds dubbed.
Demons are, in general, what people mean when they say things like “That’s so metal!” and there’s an only in the ’80s feel to all the running around and watching people get ripped in half by demons and watching demons get chopped in pieces by a man riding a motorcycle and wielding a samurai sword hardly a spoiler, it’s clearly in the wings from the moment we see that lobby display.
Like the relentless metal soundtrack, which works well here; or the extreme and mostly believable gore; or the strange finale, which isn’t “unpredictable” in the traditional sense, but certainly took me off-track. The film zigzags in enough places and somewhere it’s exaggerated, in terms of emotions – perhaps Bava is just taking cover behind daringness to try not to need to make a reasonable film, yet Demons is bold enough that he’ll pull off it.
So, basically, it’s a zombie movie premise with a lot more bizarre zombies.
THE MYSTERIOUS MASKED MAN & DEMONS
These demons scratch you, and before you know it, your eyes have transformed into fireballs, your nails into talons, your teeth into fangs, filthy substances have bubbled out, and all you want to do is scratch someone else. At this rate, as you might imagine, it’s not long before the two surviving young folks are much outnumbered by the demons and only manage to escape with the help of a Deus ex helicopter.
The tagline, “They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs screams of pure evil delight. While the demonic plague actually spread seemed to borrow heavily from the concept of zombie outbreaks, with simple bites and scratches causing the transformation, the biggest difference was that becoming a demon would not cause you to rot and wander aimlessly, but rather transform you into a terrifying, brutal monster with razor-sharp nails.
The demons were nasty, crafty, and unrelenting, and their contagion was so pervasive that death seemed inescapable. We had a wide range of prey, including young lovers, college ladies skipping class, an elderly couple celebrating their anniversary, and even some city punks up to no good. So start the demonic flesh-ripping frenzy.
The transition from human to demon or zombie appears to be a difficult process, with fingernails splitting apart to make way for the demons’ claw-like black claws, and teeth falling out one by one to be replaced by sharp, pointed fangs. The VHS in this film is both beautiful and corny, but I admire the effort to illustrate the process rather than simply going from human to demon. The overall effect of the make-up is rather frightening, and one demon in particular, which can be found on some of the film’s earlier VHS covers, may give you nightmares.
Not to mention the fact that decapitation is a far more complicated procedure than most people believe. . Although the film is 35 years old, it displays no indications of depreciation. Sure, the clothing and music are out of date, but the film is frozen in time, near perfection, and feels like something out of a nightmare.
Bava immerses us in full darkness and horror with no hope in sight, from the theatre to the subways. At times, the picture this guy portrays is magnificent, with a society that is quickly driven into madness at the hands of these bloodthirsty ghouls.
What you sit down to see is literally mankind being ripped to bits by these godless monsters, and you have no control over it. The movie within a movie becomes the ultimate gag for a depiction of the apocalypse, and by the final act, where we’re treated to a surprise twist and shock during the closing credits, it becomes painfully clear that everyone who has survived is doomed to fall at the claws of these beings, and there is simply no hope.
The film is a trip into lunacy and turmoil that can be silly fun. Some of the visuals are rather frightening, and there’s enough blood and shredded flesh to satisfy the gore-hounds. This is a fantastic party film that you must watch with friends, you will not be bored. When you’re not laughing, you’ll be clutching to your seat, pulling for the characters, and when you’re not hanging to your seat, I promise you’ll be reconsidering ever seeing a horror film in a cinema again. Bava’s horror picture is a cinematic classic in its own right.
THE BEST PART ABOUT- THE DEMON
The best part about the movie is, that there’s no hour-long build-up, no time squandered on dull character development, and no complicated narrative developments. And, of course, this isn’t an Italian horror film if rationality isn’t thrown out the window. How does the film enslave its audience? Where did the supernatural power originate from, and why is it restricted to the Metropol’s walls? Why is it necessary for someone to be bitten or scratched in order to be possessed by a demon? Who cares if you don’t know!
Demons have arrived to have a good time. And there will be a celebration! Sure, some viewers may be turned off by the paper-thin characters, shallow narrative, lack of build-up, and lack of explanations, but such viewers are missing the point: Demons are all about having fun.
That’s all there is to it. Rosario Prestopino and Sergio Stivaletti’s makeup effects are a huge draw here, as they help produce some spectacular imagery like a demon infant erupting from a character’s back or a possessed Carmen’s tongue flapping about outside her mouth like a specific part of a horse’s anatomy. And, while we’re on the subject of aesthetics, Demons has one of the best: a swarm of demons mounting a stairway against a backdrop of smoky blue light.
If you haven’t watched Demons, you are certainly missing out on one of the most under-appreciated horror films of the 1980s. It’s one of those films that, after you’ve seen it, you’ll wonder why you weren’t told about it sooner. Bava understands exactly what his audience wants to see, and he doesn’t waste any time in giving it, all while keeping a frenzied, high-energy tempo and vibe. Watch it right now.