Demons (1985)

I’ve just seen my first Lamberto Bava movie, Demons (Dèmoni). And I sincerely hope it will be my last Lamberto Bava movie. A moderately interesting idea (a haunted movie theatre), but executed in a profoundly uninteresting manner. If you can’t scare your audience, and you can’t create an atmosphere of dread, then just nauseate them, that seems to be Lamberto’s motto. Throw lots of pointless and disgusting gore at them, and maybe they won’t notice how dull your movie is. Demons is so bad it makes George Romero’s movies look good! There is real horror here, though, mostly provided by the 80s hairstyles and the 80s music. I have to admit my bias here – I really detest zombie movies on the whole (with a handful of notable exceptions such as Jean Rollin’s The Living Dead Girl), and I detest gore films. If you love zombie movies and you love gore you might find something to like in this movie. Lamberto seems to me to lack any of his father Mario’s visual flair, and even a screenplay co-written by Dario Argento doesn’t inject any interest into proceedings. A pity Argento didn’t direct this one himself – it’s the kind of idea that he could probably have done great things with.