Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985)

A young woman named Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is walking through a train station in Berlin where a silent man in a metal half-mask (assistant director and future director of genre fare such as The Church and Cemetery Man Michele Soavi) is handing out free tickets to a film showing at the Metropol Theater. Cheryl asks this Man in Black for an extra ticket for her friend Kathy (A Cat in the Brain's Paola Cozzo). Neither girl has heard of the Metropol, but they go to the film anyway. Other viewers include George (Urbano Barberini, Tarl Cabot in the film versions of John Norman's Gor books) and Ken (Karl Zinny of Bava's Delirium), with whom the two hit it off immediately; Tony (Flight from Paradise's Bobby Rhodes), a black pimp accompanied by his employees Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) and Carmen (Fabiola Toledo of Bava's A Blade in the Dark); Tommy (Guido Baldi) and his girlfriend Hannah (Fiore Argento, eldest daughter of co-screenwriter and producer Dario Argento); and blind man Werner (Ladyhawke's Alex Serra) and his daughter Liz (Sally Day). Rosemary tries on a mask on display in the lobby, which leaves a scratch on her cheek. The film plays: it features a group of young people discovering the tomb of Nostradamus, which contains nothing but a book in Latin and a mask. One of the characters tries on the mask, which scratches him just like Rosemary. True to the prophecy in Nostradamus' book, the mask turns the character into a demon, and mayhem ensues. In the real world, Rosemary discovers her wound is bleeding again and heads to the bathroom, but turns into a hideous, green bile-spewing demon herself. Soon, the filmgoers discover fiction has become horrifying reality.


Lamberto Bava may not have been a brilliant filmmaker on the level of his father Mario, the master of Gothic horror, but he did have genuine talent, and of the three films of his I've seen to date, this would have to be the best, and indeed it's Lamberto's favorite of his own films. The story by Bava, the legendary Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti (writer or co-writer of such masterpieces as the elder Bava's A Bay of Blood and Fulci's The Beyond), and Franco Ferrini (Once Upon a Time in America and Argento's Phenomena) is surprisingly meta (including fakeout end credits!), and thankfully no explanation is given for why the demons of the movie are real other than Werner's claim the theater is cursed. The gore FX by Angelo Mattei and makeup by Sergio Stivaletti are impressive indeed. The characters are not particularly well-developed, but still entertaining, especially the foul-mouthed Tony, who takes charge of the theatergoers in their escape attempts. Unfortunately, he is not as lucky (relatively speaking) as Ken Foree's Peter Washington in Dawn of the Dead. The idea of a blind man going to the movies is pretty hilarious (according to the film's trivia page on IMDB, deliberately so), but since Werner's daughter Liz is there for a romantic tryst, it makes a certain amount of sense. Sadly, Werner suffers an ironic fate. Surprisingly, redheaded usherette Ingrid (Nicoletta Elmi of Argento's Deep Red) at first seems mysterious and sinister, but ultimately turns out to be an innocent victim herself, something not acknowledged. There are some hilarious scenes with a quartet of punks who steal a Ferrari and snort coke through a straw in a can of Coke and stumble upon the theater, which contains posters for Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Look out for a cameo at the end by young Giovanni Frezza, who genre fans will know best as Bob in Fulci's The House by the Cemetery. The soundtrack is utterly '80s: besides excellent work by Claudio Simonetti, it also boasts work by Rick Springfield (this would be my second favorite film with a scene where characters snort coke while listening to his music, the first being Boogie Nights), Mötley Crüe, Pretty Minds, Go West, the Adventures, Billy Idol ("White Wedding"!!!), Accept, and Saxon. A sequel by Bava followed in 1986, and as so often happens in Italian genre cinema a number of unrelated horror films were touted as sequels in other countries. Stivaletti said in 2016 he, Bava, and Argento were talking about a 3-D remake, but two years later there seems to be no forward progress. No worries; this version would be hard to top for sheer fun.