Demons 6 (1988)
The venerable Demons series of movies reaches the much sought-after milestone of numero six with this entry in a series of movies that are related only in that they are all really awful movies from Italian gore directors. I think it's safe to assume that your reaction to a Demons 6 movie is the same as mine was when I hungrily plunked my $25 down to Midnight Video for this wholly "unofficial" DVD-R release: uh, so I guess this means that somewhere in the eighties there was a Demons 3, 4, and 5?
I think all of us remember the high profile Demons and its sequel, the inexplicably named Demons 2. They were lensed by Lamberto Bava and probably qualify as his signature films, though when you have such things as A Blade In The Dark and Delirium on your resume, you're probably glad just to have a signature film that doesn't involve horror director Michele Soavi playing a killer in drag (coincidentally, Soavi is listed in the credits as being in Demons 6, but probably not so coincidentally, I couldn't figure out just who he was in this movie).
I had put off watching this movie for awhile and not just because my eagle eye had spotted the phrase "directed by Luigi Cozzi" on the back of the DVD box. Luigi and I had a previous run in with the movie Contamination and I hadn't felt like I was really at a hundred percent yet from that one and was purposely avoiding him in favor of easier showdowns with folks like Hercules, Goliath, and Maciste.
The other reason I kept forgetting to watch this was that I really had no desire to try and sort out this whole Demons series. I had seen the first two years ago on video, but what about all those movies between parts 2 and 6? What was their story? Who would speak for them?
Believe it or not, I've got a pretty good mouth on me and if someone is going to smarten us all up on these stupid spaghetti demon invasions, it may as well be from someone you can trust, so here goes. Once upon a time, The Church, a Michele Soavi bit of Sominex that is readily available on DVD from Anchor Bay, was going to be called Demons 3. That was before Lamberto Bava stepped in to "save the day" with Demons III: The Ogre.
Demons 4 was eventually released as The Sect and is available on a PAL DVD under what I presume to be the Italian title, La Setta. Soavi was once again the perpetrator of this one. Soavi gets a break with the thing called Demons 5. Of course, before you go and get all giddy with the idea that some fresh blood has plopped into the director's chair, you should know that Lamberto Bava was hauled out of the retirement home for this one (called either Demons 5: The Devil's Veil or Black Sabbath, but certainly not the same Black Sabbath that Lammie's much more talented father Mario made twenty years before). I don't know anything about this one, except that it was a made-for-cable movie, which I guess pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
There was a movie that Umberto Lenzi made called Demoni 3 which is
not related to any of these other unrelated films. You can see that one on DVD under the title Black Demons. As far as Demons 6 goes, for some reason Midnight Video insisted on calling it Demons 6: Armagedon, which I am refusing to use because of their pathetic non-use of a spell checking
program.
The movie is also called The Black Cat, and the first part of the film features that tired Italian horror movie gimmick of the story involving the filming of a tired Italian horror movie, this time entitled The Black Cat. I am assuming that neither the in-movie film, The Black Cat as well as the Demons 6 alternate title, The Black Cat, has anything to do with the earlier and just as awful Lucio Fulci movie called The Black Cat. And yes, all of this will be on the final exam, but it will be a take home test, so try not to get too worked up.
Having thus far avoided delving into this olid (I was going to use the word "nidorous" but my crack linguistics team informed me that it actually meant something like "the smell of cooked meat" as opposed to merely stinky, so I opted for "olid" which clearly doesn't get enough play these days anyway) combination of stock Italian gore movie cliches, embarrassingly out of place sci-fi elements and references to other Italian horror movies and directors by name, let's jump on in and see what Luigi has stewed up for us this go round.
Most of your usual standards are present: your ugly Italian leading lady, your scurvy looking lead guy who might have had a really light beard, but since I couldn't ever glance in his direction due to his questionable manhood, I couldn't rightly say one way or the other, your late eighties fashions (nuff said, right?), the amateurish multicolored lighting that is supposed to pass for atmosphere (give it up, just accept the fact that Mario Bava was the only one who knew how to properly use colored lighting in these types of films and move on), and of course the gloriously inane heavy metal soundtrack.
Now, normally once one of these movies goes dark, I don't exactly take notes on the closing credits. In fact, I'm usually asleep in a completely different room. This time though I hung around to the very end so I knew to whom to credit all the megahits featured in this movie that I swear were really catchy, but can't remember for some reason.
I do recall a rather inappropriate acoustic ballad thrown in during some pointless scene where Caroline Munro (not really moving up the career ladder since At The Earth's Core) was taking a bubble bath while the anonymous ugly star was freaking out because some evil witch had stolen her kid or she was having nightmares or her fridge had quit working (that's a rather impressive plot line - the whole "haunted fridge" scene, complete with phantom fridge repairman and disappearing repair bill!).
Anyway, it turns out the bulk of these tunes were provided by
something called Bang Tango, but there were about three songs provided by a
little outfit called White Lion! While a song entitled "When The MonsterHunter Cries" would not have been out of
place in such a film as this, none of White Lion's classics appear on this one.
If you are a White Lion fan and have any info on whether these guys need donations or something, please advise and I'm sure the MonsterHunter community will respond appropriately. If you're a Bang Tango fan, please don't bother to write and continue to stay in the closet. Thank you for your cooperation.
But what about Bang Tango's appearances on the soundtracks of such movies as Black Rosesand Wishmaster? The only soundtrack your little band appeared on that impresses me is the Richard Grieco epic, If Looks Could Kill. I guess TV's Booker saw something in you that no one else did, and back in the day I was squarely on the Grieco side of the Depp-Grieco civil war that fractured this nation for four months back in 1988.
The funniest thing about all this is when I was checking out what appears to be some semi-official Bang Tango website and they list their discography, they note their appearance on the Youth Gone Wild - Heavy Metal Hits Of The 80's Vol. 3 CD and complain about the "cheesy company" their little bad is in on this compilation disc, but then go on to claim that their presence on this CD gives them "some recognition as being one of the 80's premier rock groups."
I actually have this CD and can say that though I listen to some of the songs religiously (especially the tracks by Bulletboys and Helix), I have never listened to Bang Tango's cut (that's an insider term for "song". Sometimes I forget that not everyone is in the Biz). Girlschool by Britny Fox is another classic on the disc, now that I think about it. Oh, and you know who else appears on the CD with Demons 6 veteran Bang Tango? Yep, Demons 6 veteran White Lion! Just think of it as an "unofficial soundtrack" featuring songs not actually in the movie.
The movie itself (Wait a minute! Was there a movie involved in all this?) is
forgettable bilge about an old dead witch named Levana who is simultaneously
being reincarnated and having a movie made about her. I was never sure if
these events were related or just that bizarre confluence of events known as
life, but Levana is irked that some ugly girl is going to be playing her in the
movie and tries to drive this actress crazy or something with visions of a
broken down refrigerator.
Even though she is being terrorized by a witch, she also has a fairy named Sybil on her side. This fairy doesn't do nothing except periodically appear in a TV or mirror and tell this woman stuff like "I'm sure your husband doesn't really find you that ugly" and "just because he's over at Caroline Munro's house in the middle of the night, doesn't mean that he isn't thinking about your ugly ass when he's pumping hers". Nothing like some positive affirmations to build self worth I always say.
I liked the part in this movie when the director and writer for this movie about Levana explain that even though Dario Argento made a movie about this subject matter (Suspiria), they were going to do a different take on it. The guy playing the director (Ugly Girl's hubby) even gave Suspiria a thumbs up! Uh, if you're in a sucky movie, you probably shouldn't go around talking about a better-regarded movie that was already made about whatever your movie is about. The rest of the movie, I was eyeing the Suspiria 3 disc collector's edition and wishing that I was watching that instead.
You're probably wondering why that would be. Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because one of Levana's big tricks is to puke green slop all over Ugly Girl's face. It could be the scene where Ugly Girl hears a lot of honking outside her house and comes downstairs to see what all the racket is, only to have someone drive a car right through her wall into her living room with the driver exiting the vehicle all bloodied and belching out some vital clue before croaking from the knife sticking out of his back. (Was I suppose to think he was parked outside honking, got impatient and crashed his car into the house?)
Or it could be when Ugly Girl is battling Levana at the end of the movie and Levana is shooting her with laser beams from her eyes and fingers and Ugly Girl suddenly announces that she has just acquired the power to control time itself? Nah, it was probably the very last scene where they froze on her baby's face while it was just looking like a cute little slobbering baby, except for the glowing red eyes superimposed on his face, complete with a demonically-deep voice, presumably emanating from the kid, intoning all these vague threats of a Demons 7. Hey, I'll bet Mark Knight and the rest of Bang Tango are available!