Demons 2 (1986)
Those of you who were sitting through Demons 6 and wondering when it was that the whole Demons franchise went down the crapper only have to try and sit through the wretched Demons 2 to realize that it all started its horrifyingly fast downward spiral with its very first movie. You see, as you attempt to make heads or tails of what is transpiring in this mess, the one thing you'll be able to figure out is that it's pretty much the same movie as the first Demons movie, but much, much worse. In fact, you'll start cataloging what's wrong with Demons 2 and come to the conclusion that all those things were wrong with Demons as well.
That may appear to put into question our judgment that Demons was director Lamberto Bava's masterpiece. To that I can only say, have a look at the guy's credits. Point out a movie on there that he directed that's better than Demons. A Blade In The Dark? I don't think Michele Soavi in a woman's wig killing people is going to cut it. Delirium? Well, it does sport a little bit of George Eastman (2019: After The Fall Of New York, Bronx Warriors, The New Barbarians), but why should Lamberto get credit for George? Besides, George's glorified cameo can't compensate for the bulk of the dismal giallo that makes up the non-George portions. Monster Shark? Being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 is never a good route to "masterpiece" status.
It all comes down one of those immutable rules of the universe: anytime you're making a list, something's going to have to be at the bottom of it and something is going to have to be at the top of it. Good and bad are relative within that list. I might have dropped out of eighth grade science, but I'm still smart enough to recognize Sir Isaac Einstein's Theory of Relativity when I see it. If I had known how much real world application all that stuff would have had, I might have not skipped it go smoke pot with the easy girls out behind the shop class. Or I would have at least taken the time when shaking down nerds for lunch money to also steal their class notes.
When we last saw the demons, they had begun their plot to take over the world by overrunning a free showing of a cheesy Italian horror movie at one of the local theaters in Berlin. The movie ended with the city beset by all sorts of demons-related violence and the survivors of the movie theater assault were headed off in a jeep to find safety in the country. It would be safe to assume then, that Demons 2 would turn it up a notch and depict the epic clash between man and demon as they battled for control of the entire world, right? Uh, no, but would you settle for a bunch of demons overrunning an apartment building? What if I told you that the apartment building had a weight room?
Obviously, Lamberto is content to merely remake instead of expand upon the original Demons. That's kind of disappointing, since the prospect of a demon war involving specially trained marines or at least a band of scrappy survivors hunting demons down at least sounds cool. But on the positive side of things, this remake will give Lamberto a chance to ditch the parts of the first movie that didn't work (the story, the characters) and enhance the parts that didn't fail badly (the gore, the heavy metal music). Somehow he gets it twisted around and manages to do all the above with less aptitude than before, proving the old axiom that an Italian horror movie is only that particular director's worst movie ever until he finishes his next one.
The explanation for the existence of the demons and their arrival in our world has never been this series strongest point. The first movie involved everyone watching a movie where the demons were brought back to life by some dopey teens who were messing around with a mask they found in Nostradamus' tomb. The same mask was also present in the movie theater and a person got infected when they put it on and it cut them. That doesn't make any sense, but it's relatively easy to recount. Demons 2 though achieves the impressive feat of being even stupider in that regard and manages to be a bit tougher to report on.
As near as I could tell, there was a documentary on TV about a bunch of dopey teens entering the Forbidden Zone where the demons were contained. And how were they contained? Well, there was this big wall with razor wire on top of it and no one could possibly get in or out except for the dopey teens who threw a rope over the wall and climbed up on top of it. Good thing the demons weren't that crafty, huh?
These folks look around and appear to be in the area of the movie theater from the first movie. They're looking for some souvenirs and find the claw of a demon. They also find a dead demon and somehow or other one of the morons bleeds on it, causing it to wake up. After the demon comes alive and kills these idiots, it starts running at the camera so that it's coming straight at your television. Then it comes right through one chick's television and into her room and turns her into a demon! And during her birthday party no less! These are truly the forces of darkness, are they not?
As if that wasn't bad enough, Sally (the birthday girl) had already spent part of the party locked in her room upset because she didn't like how her outfit looked. Being that it was 1986, I doubt that she would get any argument from us. Your hair and makeup also sucked if you want to know. Actually, in hindsight, turning into a demon was probably the best life choice you could have ever hoped to make.
Sally and her birthday party are all located in the super modern high rise apartment building known as The Tower. Among it's many high tech features is that once there's a demon invasion detected, the entire building goes into lockdown so that no one can escape. Not so good for the tenants, but the rest of the city probably thinks it's pretty sweet selling point. All the doors and elevators are shut down. The windows are double paned and bullet proof. And apparently no one bothers to try and come into The Tower during any of this and finds that it's in lockdown and contacts the authorities.
Since we're in an apartment building that means Lamberto is free to follow a number of different people in their efforts to fight off the demons. You've got the party goers. You've got a pregnant broad. You've got her husband trapped in an elevator with a call girl. You've got a little kid. You've got a woman with a pet dog. And you've got all the weightlifters!
Demonstrating a complete lack of understanding when it comes to what to keep from the first movie compared to what to ditch, Lamberto gives us Bobby Rhodes again! Bobby played the black guy in the pimp suit in the first movie who shouts and cusses a lot and has a hoochie on each arm. Now Bobby is playing the black guy in the tank top who runs the weight room and shouts and cusses a lot. I guess it could have been worse - Lamberto could have brought back any of the white Eurotrash actors from the first go round.
The demons periodically attack these people with the expected gore shots of people getting clawed and demons losing their baby teeth so that their demon teeth can come in. But Lamberto isn't content to rehash the old demon encounters of the past. He decides to have the little boy turn into a demon and harass the pregnant lady. Even better (and by better, I mean dumber) is when a baby demon comes out of this kid's back and runs amok in the woman's apartment. Um, it's great that you could get Sergio Stivaletti or whomever to build you a little demon puppet, but it doesn't look like much beyond, uh, a puppet, when it's on screen.
And if I was sitting there a bit aghast at the scene where the woman traps the puppet in her hide-a-bed, then I was pretty much petrified when after it clawed it's way out (the woman even tried to clip its claws with some garden shears!) of the bed, her boyfriend saved the day by stabbing it with an umbrella! I was a bit disappointed that Lamberto didn't bring it all the way home and have the guy open up the umbrella once he impaled the demon puppet with it, but I guess that's what qualifies as over-the-top in Lamberto's demonverse.
The dog that turns into a demon is likewise just as horrid, but is there any point in going into that fido fiasco? Suffice it to say that the movie was worse in every respect compared to the original Demons. It took longer for the demon action to actually get going. The apartment building setting is worse than the movie theater since all the action is split up into different parts of the building and only seems to involve the same twenty tenants. Where are the rest of the occupants of this mammoth structure?
Though the first one had the action taking place in different parts of the movie theater, there was an overall sense of claustrophobia since we all know how big movie theaters are and how they're generally constructed (i.e. we know where the projection room is in relation to the balcony). This apartment building stuff seemed to just move from elevator to weight room to parking garage to roof without any real flow.
The characters take longer to die in this one, so they are more annoying and even worse, there's a set of characters that are traveling to the apartment building, but never even make it because of a car wreck! What was the point of that? Throw in the fact that the gore is just stuff we've seen before in the first movie, combined with the awful addition of the puppet and the dog, as well as the abysmal musical selections for this one (The Smiths? Dead Can't Dance? Who are these losers? What happened to Motley Crue?) and you've got a movie that Rick Springfield couldn't even be persuaded to get involved with.