April 27: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.
The first movie in Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy — followed by Powaqqatsiand Naqoyqatsi — this combines Ron Fricke’s cinematography and Philip Glass’s score to create a feeling of zen or restlessness, depending on how it is viewed. There are no words as Reggio said, “…it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.” Instead, the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi is all we know, which means “life out of balance.”
Reggio and Fricke met when the director was working on a media campaign for the Institute for Regional Education and the American Civil Liberties Union. These ads were about how technology controls the world and invades our privacy. The TV spots were so popular people called stations to see when they would air again; it was also successful in that it got ritalin eliminated as a behavior controlling drug in New Mexico schools. Afterward, with just $40,000 left in his budget, Fricke told Reggio that they should make a film.
Shot with a mix of styles and media — 16mm, 35mm made with a 16 mm zoom lens shot onto 35 mm film with a zoom extender, time lapse photography, captured stills in New York’s Time Square with chemicals changing up the results, the New York traffic and congrestion time lapse work of cinematographer Hilary Harris and even images added of the Great Gallery at Horseshoe Canyon by Francis Ford Coppola, who became a champion of the movie — Koyaanisqatsi is about giving you an experience. The director has even said that what the movie is about is up to you. It ends with these three prophecies:
“If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.”
“Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.”
“A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.”
In the Live Journal of Rev. Warlock DRACONIS BLACKTHORNE, he says of this work, “Koyaanisqatsi is certainly a Satanic meditation, which would prove beneficial after any interaction with the herd, a veritable “eye in the sky” – asserts the “larger picture”, as it were.”
The Church of Satan film list says, “Satanic elements include a misanthropic contempt for Humanity, the Command to Look, and The Balance Factor.”
The ultimate rejection of herd mentality lies within this film, as it invites you to create a meaning that only has one owner. You.
Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show or use these links:
Silent Madness (1984): Shot with the ArriVision 3-D camera system, Silent Madness wasn’t just late to the 80’s 3D revival, it was late to the slasher madness too. It was directed by Simon Nuchtern, president of August Films. He brought over plenty of foreign films and had them re-edited for American tastes, like the film that the Findlays shot in Argentina called TheSlaughter, which was released as Snuff. He also brought Karate Kiba to U.S. theaters with a new open and called it The Bodyguard and that’s why we call marijuana chiba, as well as directing New York Nights and Savage Dawn.
You have to love how Wikipedia has the writer of this movie, Bob Zimmerman, linked to Bob Dylan. Nope. This Bob was part of the camera crew for Don’t Go in the House and Nightmare. His co-writer was Bill Milling, who may be better known as an adult director using the names Philip Drexler Jr. (A Scent of Heather) and G.W. Hunter (Heart Throbs), Craig Ashwood (All American Girls), William J. Haddington Jr. (When A Woman Calls), Chiang (The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang), Jim Hunter (Up Up and Away), Luis F. Antonero (Temptations) and Bill or Dexter Eagle (Virgin Snow). Some of the dialogue was written by Nelson DeMille, who would go on to write the book The General’s Daughter. They were all working from a story by Nuchtern.
The Cresthaven Mental Institute is, charitably, a mess. It’s also packed with patients, so they decide to just declare several of the patients cured, which means that Howard Johns (Solly Marx, Honcho from Savage Dawn, the Samurai from Neon Maniacs and plenty of stunt work too) is let go instead of John Howard. Years ago, after peeping on some sorority sisters, they had decided to strip for him — because that’s how we dealt with Me Too moments back then, kind of like giving someone a whole carton of cigarettes to smoke when all they wanted was one, and that’s a bad euphemism and I don’t condone this kind of behavior — and he lost it and killed them all. So to prove that the nature vs. nurture argument is a joke and the seventeen years of treatment did nothing, the very first thing John does when he gets released is kill an aardvarking couple in their van with a hatchet and a sledgehammer.
Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery, who has been the love interest for The Man from Atlantis, Crockett’s ex-wife on Miami Vice and Doogie Howser, M.D.‘s mother) realizes that something smells bad in Denmark — or Cresthaven — and starts looking into this, only to learn that Howard Johns was already dead when the computer snafu happened. She teams up with a reporter and goes undercover as a legacy at the sorority where everything when wrong all those years ago, because she obviously realizes that she’s in a slasher movie and the killer always comes back to the scene of the crime.
There are so many plot threads going on here. There’s also the conspiracy at the mental hospital and the cyborg experiments being done on the patients that goes nowhere. Additionally two killers hired by Dr. Kruger* (Roderick Cook, who shows up in two of Becca’s favorite childhood films, 9 1/2 Weeksand Spellbinder, movies no seven-year-old should be watching and that’s why I love her) are on hand to kill off our protagonists. And there’s the killer coming back to the sorority house.
I’ve gotten this far and forgotten to inform you that Sydney Lassick (sure, he was Mr. Fromm in Carrie, but he’s also in Skatetown U.S.A.; 1941; Alligator; The Unseen and shows up as Mr. Lowry in Lady In White) plays the law in this and the house mother is Viveca Lindfors (The Bell from Hell, Creepshow). And two of the teens — Janes and Paul — are played by Katherine Kamhi and Paul DeAngelo, who we all know better as Meg and Ronnie from Sleepaway Camp.
Shot under the title DarkSunday, with alternate names thrown about like Beautiful Screamers, The Omega Factor” and The Nightkillers, I have really no idea why this is called Silent Madness.
Teens are killed by vice, by steam, by nailgun and by aerobicide, while drills and crowbars and broken mirrors take out some of the antagonists. You’ll wonder, when we knew that toxic masculinity and the health care system were both the biggest issues we’d be facing as a society way back in 1984, why did we just concentrate on making sure the slasher killer was dead instead of working on the root cause? And that’s why we are where we are, except you know, there’s no real Jason Vorhees. Or Howard Johnson. Or John Howard.
*Seeing as how this was really shot in 1983, it’s prescient that the bad guy has that name and works out of a boiler room.
Here’s a drink to go with the movie.
Watermelon Madness
1 1/2 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. Watermelon Pucker
1/4 oz. triple sec
4 oz. cranberry
Really easy. Just pour alcohol together over ice, then top with cranberry juice.
April 27: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.
Banned in Ohio because it was “a sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and an extreme presentation of crime with explicit steps in commission,” the first $500,000 of this movie went to paying off James Cagney’s debts as a movie producer.
In this, he’s Ralph Cotter, who is a mean enough man that he sacrifices his escape partner and then shacks up with the dead man’s sister Holiday (Barbara Payton) and then blackmails her, all because she came up with the plan that got him out of the big house. But you know, it seems like she likes it, because even when he whips her with a wet towel, she embraces him.
It can’t last because as bad as Ralph is, the cops are worse. And when he falls for a wealthy woman named Margaret Dobson (Helena Carter), he casts aside Holiday who just so happens to figure out just who killed her brother.
Cagney was coming off the noir film White Heat, which this gets compared to often. I discovered it not just from the Church of Satan list but because it’s on the marquee in Messiah of Evil when Toni decides to escape reality and go to the movies.
Beyond two women out to play our hero, this also has a church based on Cosmic Consciousness where the priest tells his congregation to bow their heads and not pray.
Director Gordon Douglas also made one of my favorite movies ever, In Like Flint, and Them!
Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show or use these links:
The Toolbox Murders (1977): Not only does this movie excite me because it’s a slasher and a Cameron Mitchell movie, but it’s also a “based on a true story” riff, which is always fascinating.
Los Angeles producer Tony Didio wanted to make a low-budget horror film after seeing how well The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He knew the film’s distributors — uh-oh — and contacted them to see why they were re-releasing the movie again. While he should have realized it never really stopped playing theaters until the advent of home video — and even afterward for some time — he was smart enough to stay clear of working with the, and making and releasing his own slasher.
Supposedly based on a series of killings in either Michigan or Minnesota that were ritualistic and sex-based, this has famously been cited as one of Stephen King’s favorite movies.
If Pieces can say that “it’s exactly what you think it is,” The Toolbox Murders takes things even further into what I refer to as the pornography of violence, treating each kill as another scene in a gradually escalating orgy of evisceration. That said, the film then goes from slasher to character study in the final act, totally changing everything up on the viewer.
As for Mitchell, he’s completely off the rails in this and I loved every minute of his performance. And this being 1977, of course there’s an incest angle, because the 70’s were just greasy and sweaty and gross.
Vance Kingsley, Mitchell’s role in this, tries to rise above all the sin by using every tool in his, well, toolbox to perforate, slash and decimate every sinner he meets before being killed for love, which then uses scissors to escape into the night. There’s even a square up card at the end for a “this really happened*” shocker.
Wesly Eure loved being in this, relishing the opportunity to do something subversive after being the goody Will Marshall on Land of the Lost. I wonder how Pamela Ferdin felt, as she is better known for being the voice of Lucy on Peanuts (though she is also in the original The Beguiled).
Director Dennis Donnelly would go on to direct plenty of TV, including one of The Amazing Spider-Man episodes in the 70’s, along with Supertrain, Hart to Hart and The A-Team. That makes sense, as this really does look like a TV movie, unless you take into account all the nudity, sex and gore. And speaking of carnal knowledge, that’s adult actress Kelly Nichols playing Dee Dee, the woman who gets nail gunned in the tub (she was still working in the field doing makeup as Marianne Walters, the name she used for this film, as late as 2015).
Despite a 1986 sequel never happening, in a strange twist Tobe Hooper would direct the remake to this in 2004, which was followed by an official sequel in 2015 and an unofficial one, Coffin Baby, in 2013 that used footage from a scrapped sequel. That movie was tied up in legal wrangling, but has since been released. They all have a more supernatural element than the down-to-earth feel of the original.
April 27: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.
Howard Smith started his career as a journalist and is best known for his column “Scenes,” which ran weekly for twenty years and became known for its cutting-edge coverage of the emerging counterculture. Not only did he report on the Stonewall Riots, he was inside the building as it happened. He also produced and directed, along with Sarah Kernochan, one of my favorite documentaries ever, Marjoe.
This is a movie of clips, mostly concerning inventors trying to be the one that changes the world. And it’s also about stunt people who challenged that world, like John Ciampa, who was known as the Human Fly, the Flying Phantom and the Brooklyn Tarzan. He was an early parkour athlete before anyone even knew what that was and he was used by Paramount to publicize their Tarzan movies. In this film, you can see him enjoy dinner with his family before he climbs trees, leaps across buildings and even uses a drainpipe to scale a building.
You’ve seen the photo of Frank “Cannonball” Richards, but do you know his name? Gizmo shows more of him, a man who twice a day was shot in the stomach with a hundred pound cannonball.
Narrated by Milt Moss and written by Kathleen Cox, Nicholas Hollander (who would go on to write Animaniacs) and Clark Whelton, this film ends with this: “Maybe there are three kinds of people in this world, those who make it, those who don’t, and those who criminate in this movie. They believe in the impossible, and they try to make it chorus in. Because in the heart, when you want to trade in life, you find the mountain, in the failure of triumph. Because in the heart, people see air and I know, if you have the thing to go, reason hard to see, the corona star, the spirit, the mountain, and man’s Rex afore. Or to say it another way, man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
Most of the newsreel footage in this movie had no dialogue. A lip reader was hired to determine what they said and actors dubbed in the dialogue. Two of the songs, “Let It Go” and “Somewhere” were written by J. Stephen Soles and his wife at the time, P.J. Totally.
How is this a Satanic film? Anton LaVey loved ballyhoo, which this is full of, and strange inventions, such as the automatons of Dr. Cecil Nixon, a dentist who created Isis, Galatea and more creations that he kept in his San Francisco mansion, The House of a Thousand Mysteries.
April 27: Until You Call on the Dark — Pick a movie from the approved movies list of the Church of Satan. Here’s the list.
James Shelby Downard once said, “Never allow anyone the luxury of assuming that because the dead and deadening scenery of the American city-of-dreadful-night is so utterly devoid of mystery, so thoroughly flat-footed, sterile and infantile, so burdened with the illusory gloss of “baseball-hot dogs-apple-pie-and-Chevrolet” that it is somehow outside the psycho-sexual domain. The eternal pagan psychodrama is escalated under these “modern” conditions precisely because sorcery is not what 20th century man can accept as real.”
I’d like to think that Downard saw this movie, shook his head a bit and thought, “Well, they got some of it right.”
The Church of Satan film list says of Blue Velvet, “This neo-noir film by David Lynch is meant to be felt and experienced more than understood, Blue Velvet is about the hidden and unknown. It’s both terrifying and erotic simultaneously. The innocent outlook on life is stripped away to stark reality where predator and prey intermingle.
The Satanic qualities presented are the exploration of the darker side of Human Nature, Lust, Fetishism, the Dominant and the Submissive, the Law of the Forbidden, Self Preservation, and Justice.”
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) has come home to Lumberton, North Carolina — a town that has a radio station with the call letters WOOD and seems so normal that something has to be wrong — a place named after lumber on the Lumber River. He’s home because his father has had a seizure and on the way home from the hospital, Jeffrey finds a severed ear. He does what any normal boy would do: he takes it to a cop, Detective John Williams (George Dickerson). This allows him to meet the perfect girl next door, the man’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). She might always have the perfect boyfriend, football player Mike Shaw (Ken Stovitz), but Jeffrey is able to get into Sandy’s world by being dangerous and investigating someone connected to that ear: lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini, who would appear in the perhaps just as strange Tough Guys Don’t Dance after this). He sneaks into her apartment appearing to be an exterminator, except she catches him and easily overpowers him thanks to her feminine power. As she’s on the verge of assaulting him, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) arrives, sending Jeffrey into a closet and Dorothy to the floor as Frank alternatively cries, screams, huffs gas and beats her into a submissive sexual state.
Yeah, this isn’t working out like Jeffrey planned.
Jeffrey still sees things like either a child or a character in a detective novel, giving people names like the well-dressed man or the Yellow Man. He becomes obsessed with Dorothy while still courting Sandy. He thinks he can save Dorothy’s husband and son Don and Don, but once he gives in to Dorothy’s pleas to hit her while they lie in bed, he’s lost. He’s in over his head. His fantasies that he’d write to True Detective — instead of Penthouse Forum — are consuming. Deadly, too. This isn’t some kind of jerk off dream that barely comes true. This is violent and bloody fucking that winds up with you trapped in a car with maniacs like Booth, visiting suave lounge singers like Ben (Dean Stockwell) and wondering if everyone in the world is against you and probably being right. It’s the kind of fantasy that gets you kissed all over by a lunatic and waking up almost dead in a field far from home.
Normal humanity didn’t react well to this movie. For example, the agency representing Rossellini immediately dropped her as a client after the test screenings and the nuns at the school that she went to in Rome called to say they were praying for her.
Hopper wasn’t cast originally, as Frank was written for Michael Ironside. The Last Movie director called Lynch and screamed, “I’ve got to play Frank! I am Frank!” Lynch also wanted Frank to inhale helium, but Hopper wanted it to be amyl nitrate. Lynch said that Hopper told him, “David, I know what’s in these different canisters.” And I said, “Thank God, Dennis, that you know that!” And he named all the gases!”
In Satan Speaks, Anton LaVey wrote about songs like “Telstar” and “Yes, We Have No Bananas” as Satanic songs.
“The word ‘occult’ simply means hidden or secret,” he says. “Go to the record store, to the corner where no one else is, where everything is dusty and nobody ever goes. Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” is mystical music, dramatic, Gothic, satanically programmed music. But it’s not occult music. “Yes, We Have No Bananas” would be an occult tune.
It’s occult because when you put that record on the turntable, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that there is not another person in the entire world who is listening to that record at that time. If there’s anything, any frequency, any power that exists anywhere in this cosmos, in this universe, you’re gonna stand out like a beacon! It truly makes you elite.”
Lynch understands that by using Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” — he almost used “Song to the Siren” by This Mortal Coil, a song that was first played on the last episode of The Monkees by its writer Tom Buckley — in Blue Velvet. Orbison has always seemed like an alien to me, perhaps because of his look, his voice or because he voided the verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus structure. His songs feel like being in, well, a dream.
Frank finds great magic in the words “candy-colored clown” and it feels like Ben is about to break down when he sings “In dreams, you’re mine all of the time. We’re together in dreams, in dreams.” A lot of Roy Orbison made me feel like that when I was a child, like future nostalgia, the same feeling that made me listen to breakup songs over and over crying before I had ever had my heart broken, as if I were saving up for a time when I would finally be unrequited.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
At the height of sheer Q-Anon craziness — I think probably when a shaman in red, white and blue facepaint led an army of people into government buildings, and people defecated on the walls, maybe — people were grasping for straws and pearls and wondering, “How could this happen?”
I’m here to tell you that this has always been here.
In the 1980s, high school me was the same as old me. I was always in black, with long hair, and I only cared about music, movies and studying weird things. As such, I was brought into the Core Group, a team of teachers led by an occult expert cop who studied which students could be worshipping Satan. This group was led by my godmother.
The Satanic Panic wasn’t started by Michelle Remembers, but it felt like it was. The union of Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife, but we’ll get to that) Michelle Smith. In the mid-70s, while treating Michelle for depression due to a miscarriage, she confessed to him that she knew that something horrible had happened to her and could not recall what it was. Using hypnosis, Michelle was soon screaming for 25 minutes non-stop and speaking in the voice she had as a child. 14 months and 600 hours later, a conspiracy was found: Michelle’s mother and other citizens in Victoria were members of a worldwide Church of Satan.
At one point, Michelle was part of a ritual that lasted 81 days that Satan himself showed up for, and during that time, she was tortured, raped, witnessed others get killed and was covered with the blood of murdered babies until St. Michael the Archangel, Mary and Jesus appeared, healing all of her scars and blocking all of her memories of the years of Satanic desecration of her body and soul.
None of these stories were challenged, even a decade after, when Michelle and Laurel Rose Willson, who wrote Satan’s Underground about being a breeder for Satanists and having two of her children killed in snuff films, were on Oprah Winfrey and at no moment did Oprah challenge either of them, in 1989. The year, I was repeatedly questioned and challenged and told that I was giving my soul to Satan.
I was a white kid from a small town, and in no way have I ever dealt with racism, sexism, transism or any isms in any other way again. This experience, however, showed me a small, tiny glimpse into what it’s like to know you’re right and everyone is sure you’re wrong based on no facts at all.
By the 80s, Pazder was an occult expert, consulting in the McMartin preschool trial and appearing on a 20/20 segment called “The Devil Worshippers” that stoked the flames of the Satanic Panic. That report claimed that movies like The Godsend, The Incubus, Amityville II: The Possession, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Exorcist, The Omen and Omen 2 allowed people to visualize and be inspired by the devil. This aired in prime time on ABC, a major cable network. They also refer to The Satanic Witch as a book filled with evil rites. And then, of course, heavy metal. As Anton LaVey was in his era of not speaking to the media, this also has footage taken from Satanis.
As part of the Cult Crime Impact Network, Pazder got into business working with police groups and consulting on Satanic ritual abuse, while lawyers used his book while doing cases, and social workers used Michelle Remembers as their training manual.
According to NPR host Ari Shapiro, “One reason these fictions were so appealing was that they gave people a sense of purpose. They had a mission – to defend the innocent.”
This is what’s happening today. It’s why trans people are grooming children, why Democrats are eating babies, andwhy elections are being seen as conspiracies. Because the truth — the idea that things happen randomly for no reason — is less frightening than Satanism or Q-Anon.
Man, did I digress?
In Satan Wants You, filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams explore the history of Michelle Remembers and what most people don’t know, such as how Pazder and Smith left their families to be together and how the book was debunked. It would be one thing if their sessions led to a book and some press, but it would be another if they kicked off an entire movement.
The directors have stated: ““This is the first time that Michelle’s sister, Larry’s ex-wife, and Larry’s daughter have gone on the record to tell their side of this story. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to combine all these stories together to reveal the true origins of the Satanic Panic and show how they connect to the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracies of today.”
This movie must be seen, even if we’ve entered a time when feelings matter more than facts. But did facts ever matter?
This film also found an anonymous source sending Michelle’s actual tapes, which have never been heard until now.
I don’t discount that she went through some trauma. Yet, how many lives were destroyed along the way?
The sad fact is that no one has learned anything. That same refrain of “protecting the children” exists today. And yes, that’s a noble endeavor. But as someone who grew up in a town of 7,500 people that had more than one Catholic priest abusing children in the last fifteen years of my life, Often, the abuser is someone the abuser has known and trusts.
Just like a worldwide Satanic network — paging Maury Terry and The Family, a book that lost a court case to the Process Church over false claims — and a public ritual lasting 81 days seems complicated to swallow, so do all the claims of the far right today.
Back when I was a kid getting grilled over my slasher movie magazines and love of Danzig, I figured, “Well, someday soon, all of these close-minded people will die off, and we can get past racism, and we can learn how to be more open-minded together.” But now, everyone is close-minded. No one seemingly wants to learn. And this movie is a great teaching tool — it’s a must-see, an intense documentary worthy of rewatching — because it happened before, and yes, it’s going on all over again. The message may have shifted, but it’s still the message.
They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs. With that line, you know that what you’re about to watch better be the most mind-blowing horror film possible. Good news — Demons is all of that and then some, the kind of movie that has everything that I watch movies for.
I can’t be silent or still while it runs, growing more excited by every moment. It is the perfect synthesis of 1980’s gore and heavy metal, presented with no characterization or character growth whatsoever. It’s also the most awesome movie you will ever watch.
This is an all-star film, if you consider Italian 80’s horror creators to be all-stars. There’s Lamberto Bava directing and doing special effects, Dario Argento producing, a script written by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini (Once Upon a Time in America, Phenomena) and Dardano Sacchetti (every single Italian horror film that was ever awesome…a short list includes A Bay of Blood, Shock, The Beyond, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Blastfighter, Hands of Steeland so many more), and assistant directing and acting from Michele Soavi.
The movie starts on the Berlin subway, where Cheryl is pursued by a silver masked man (Soavi) who hands her tickets to see a movie at the Metropol. She brings along her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo from A Cat in the Brain and Demonia) and they soon meet two boys, George (Urbano Barberini, Gor, Opera) and Ken.
The masked man has brought all manner of folks to the theater: a blind man and his daughter and some interesting couples, including a boyfriend and girlfriend, an older married one and Tony the pimp and his girls, one of whom is Shocking Dark‘s Geretta Giancarlo. As they wait for the movie to begin, a steel mask in the lobby scratches her.
The movie that unspools — a slasher about teenagers who disturb the final resting place of Nostradamus — also has that very same steel mask. When it touches anyone in the movie, they turn murderous. At the very same time, one of the prostitutes scratches herself in the bathroom and her face erupts into pus and reveals a demon. From here on out, the movie becomes one long action sequence, as the other prostitute transforms into a demon in front of the entire audience.
Meanwhile, four punks do cocaine in a Coke can and break in, releasing a demon into the city as the rest of the movie audience attempt to escape and are killed one by one. Only George and Cheryl survive, as our hero uses a sword and motorcycle to attack the demons before a helicopter crashes through the roof. But then the masked man attacks them!
I’m not going to ruin the rest of the movie, only to say that even the credits offer no safety in the world of Demons. And oh yeah — Giovanni Frezza (Bob from House by the Cemetery) shows up!
This is but the first of a series of movies with the title Demons. I can’t do justice to the twists and turns of how that all works. Instead, I turn to the master, Joe Bob Briggs.
Demons is ridiculous. Pure goop and gore mixed with power chords, samurai swords, punk rockers and even a Billy Idol song which had to blow the budget. It also looks gorgeous — filled with practical effects, gorgeous film stock and amazing colors, no doubt the influence of Bava’s father. The scene where the yellow-eyed demons emerge from the blue blackness is everything horror movies should be.
This doesn’t just have my highest recommendation. It earns my scorn if you haven’t seen it yet!
Want to know way too much about this movie and everything connected to it?
I just discovered Becky, a movie that shocked me with its depth and ferocity. I had no clue how you could make a sequel to that film, but after watching this, I feel satisfied.
Filmmakers Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote were approached to write and direct this sequel by producer J.D. Lifshitz with only three weeks to write the script. Luckily, star Lulu Wilson had thought a lot about her character and wanted it to be more mature. I was worried that the previous team who made the first movie wasn’t involved, but co-writer Nick Morris and directors Jonathan Milot and Cary Murnion were the executive producers.
Years later from the first movie, Becky is working at a diner and living with an older black woman named Elena after living with different foster families. Her only constant is her beloved dog Diego. One day, while waiting on three Noble Men in town to meet with their cell leader (a nearly unrecognizable Sean William Scott) as they plan on an uprising during an appearance of Senator Hernandez (Gabriella Piazza). They act like you’d expect them to act and treat her as you’d expect them to treat her. She pours hot coffee in one’s lap and he decides to get revenge by finding out where she lives, killing Elena ad stealing Diego.
As you can imagine, Becky continues to be as efficient as a slasher maniac in her intensity, except this time the film takes breaks where she explains things, much like an Edgar Wright film. Woe be to the men — and one woman — of this racist terrorist cell, including Twig (Courtney Gains), DJ (Aaron Dalla Villa) and Sean (writer Angel).
Does that magic key from the first film get explained? Kind of. Are the bad guys so dumb that they explain their entire plans to her after tying her up? Of course. But is it also incredibly cathartic to have a female heroine chop an ultra MAGA guy to bits after he tells her his son’s name is Adolph? Most definitely.
Honestly, this sets up a sequel that I can’t wait to see. They could make a hundred of these movies and I’ll watch every single one.
This movie is part of the Calgary Underground Film Festival, which for twenty years has been dedicated to elevating Calgary’s cultural landscape with the best in international independent cinema. Recently, CUFF was named one of the Best Horror Festivals in the World, 2022 by Dread Central, and one of the World’s 50 Best Genre Festivals and one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. CUFF continues to attract audiences with its programming of films that engage audiences and defy convention.
It’s running from now until April 30 and you can see the entire schedule here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
Directed and written by Alexandra Spieth, Stag is about Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick) and her attempts to reconnect with her former best friend Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos) during a bachelorette party at a seemingly haunted campground.
What drove these friends apart? Why does Jenny have such difficulty connecting with anyone? Why are the religious beliefs of sisters Constance (Katie Wieland) and Casey (Stephanie Hogan) just so strange? Is this what it’s really like when women get together?
We can all feel for Jenny. Her only anchor in this unfamiliar territory is Mandy. There’s something unspoken that drove them in two directions yet there’s still some love between them. Yet as everyone else’s motivations are so unclear at best and malevolent at worst, it makes me glad that I skipped that bachelor party weekend I was supposed to go to last month.
What the film misses in proper lighting and color balance — the outside footage nearly washes out the movie at times — it makes up for it in writing and acting. A better budget would have done wonders, but let’s just forget that. Let’s concentrate on a movie that takes a great elevator speech — “What if Bridesmaids and Midsommer had mimosas?” — and delivers something special.
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