Demons 2 (1986)

Dir: Lamberto Bava

Sally (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) throws a party at her trendy apartment. She plays The Smiths all night, moans about how hideous her dress looks and threatens to throw her guests out at the slightest hint of a disagreement. Amazingly, she still has an awful lot of friends despite being such a massive drag. This is handy, as they make good victims for some random demons who pop out of a TV that's showing a film about events from the first film, which was in itself a film within a film. Bzzt. Whu-whu-what? If you can deal with the brain-warping lack of logic or reason, there are some gooey rubbery FX treats to be found here but not a lot else. Despite having almost identical characters/structure/plot, "Demons 2" just isn't a patch on the first film. It's a moodier affair, with far more subdued lighting, a lot less gore and goth hits from the 80s in place of the original's rowdier heavy metal. This could be more effective perhaps if the film wasn't so silly but the mix of ANY restraint whatsoever with such a ludicrous plot is ill-advised and much lowers the fun level. It's worth a look for one or two very cool scenes (one of a demon boy giving birth (!?) to a winged demon child is just jaw-dropping) but not a classic like the first. **1/2

Demons (1985)

Dir: Lamberto Bava

"Demons" may not make perfect sense, I'll warn you. A group of people get trapped in a cinema that's playing a B-Movie about the apocalyptic prophecies of Nostradamus. There's a mask in both the movie and the foyer of the cinema that turns its wearers into demons and, before you know it, bug-eyed monsters dribbling green goo are running rampant and ripping the cinemagoers limb from limb. The place itself is kind of Escher-esque in its baffling, ever-changing layout. Time and space bends way beyond reality and the climactic scenes are absolutely bonkers but I just don't care. I can't think of any other film that celebrates excess in such an exhilarating manner. The pace never lets up - it's a non-stop parade of phenomenal gore effects, bucketloads of fluids I can't even begin to identify, weird-ass creatures, eye-popping red and blue lighting, blistering heavy metal and absurdly OTT action heroics. No matter how many times I watch it, I still find myself cheering, whooping and laughing along. My pulse quickens, I lose my breath, I get all weak at the knees from the excitement. Admittedly part of this could be the rare appearance of a grown-up and suddenly breathtaking Nicoletta Elmi but mostly it's just that "Demons" is the ultimate, no-nonsense distillation of everything that makes horror movies so thrilling and fun. Who knows? Maybe it's too daft for modern audiences. Maybe you had to be there but this is what I grew up on and, for me, it hasn't aged a day. Perfecto! ****

Beyond Dream's Door (1988)

Dir: Jay Woelfel

A student named Ben Dobbs (Nick Baldasare) experiences bizarre nightmares and finds that the lines between the dream world and reality are blurring in this micro-budget, Lovecraft-influenced, experimental horror. He hallucinates giant red monsters, armless janitors, creepy kids with plasticine eyes and topless girls with amazing 80s hair but what does it all mean? Who knows? Director Woelfel clearly has talent and ambition in abundance. The film is superbly shot, considering the money they obviously didn't have, and there are some great ideas here, but they over-reach beyond the script's ability to present them coherently. Granted, the film's nightmares-within-nightmares structure was always going to equal a degree of abstraction but the total lack of characterisation is probably the main sticking point for me. It's very tough to engage in a plot like this when no one has a personality (especially tough given some of the ropey acting) and without that connection, there's not enough to propel the plot forward at a satisfactory pace. It's a shame because some of the imagery is fantastic and a lot of love and hard work has clearly gone into making the best film they could, given a lot of limitations. **

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Dir: Victor Salva

I never saw this one at the time but, watching it now, it hasn't really aged that well. Justin Long and Gina Phillips play a brother and sister driving home from college along a barren highway. In true Duel style, they're pursued by a creepy old truck and a deadly cat and mouse game is thrown down. The cat, however, soon turns out to have some unexpected claws... There are some things to enjoy about this modern-day creature feature - a couple of really nasty gore scenes and high production values in particular - but it's just too thin a plot (monster-chases-kids...endlessly) to work for 90 minutes. It probably would've made a nice 45 minute Masters of Horror episode but, as it stands, there are some very odd, laboured attempts to stretch things out and it's hard to maintain a sense of threat for such a long time without getting to the implausible "they're still not dead!?" stage. *1/2

Howl of the Devil (1987)

Dir: Paul Naschy

Paul Naschy (who also writes, produces and directs this) plays a pair of brothers, Alex and Hector Doriani. Alex is a B-Movie horror actor. Hector is a serious thespian. They hate each other but when Alex dies, his son Adrian (played by Naschy's own son) is placed into Hector's care. Hector beats the boy, abuses the servants and has a habit of abducting and drugging prostitutes for his weird sex games, so Adrian (understandably) retreats into a world of fantasy based on the characters played by his late father. This turbo-paced movie plays a little like an overheated, X-rated Spanish soap opera on fast-forward but with the mind-boggling bonus of Paul Naschy playing no fewer than 12 roles. Besides Alex and Hector, he is also Rasputin, Quasimodo, Bluebeard, Frankenstein's Monster, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera, Mr Hyde, his own wolfman creation Waldermar Daninsky (in one of the film's rare moments of poignancy), a mummy/zombie and, ultimately, Satan. On one hand "Howl of the Devil" is a glorious mess; a feverish kaleidoscope of misogynistic shouting, gratuitous nudity and ever-increasing absurdity. On the other, taken as part of Naschy's oeuvre, it's a heartfelt love letter to the artform he mastered and a furious lashing-out at the audience who rejected his genius. There's even political allegory in there; a disparaging of both tyrannical government (bear in mind Naschy's career began under General Franco's regime) and the Catholic church. What's weirdest is that, if you take out the fact that no one would/could ever behave like any of these characters do, the story - within its own universe - actually makes sense and has a really good twist. This kind of intensely personal cinema is rarely so entertaining as it is here and "Howl of the Devil" has the added bonus of watching Naschy - for perhaps the only time - completely off leash and wildly indulging every B-Movie fantasy he's ever had. For those who appreciate his genius, this is stuff that will really raise the goosebumps. Why this has never had a proper DVD release is beyond me. ***1/2

Monsters (2009)

Dir: Gareth Edwards

Set sometime in the near-future, a NASA probe containing alien creature samples has crashed over Mexico. These creatures are giant, dangerous squid-like beasties who can't be controlled and, as a result, parts of Mexico are sealed off as Infected Zones. A photographer is assigned to get his boss's daughter home from Mexico and the film follows their journey through said Infected Zones back to the US border. Monsters is a bizarre, low-key film and one that doesn't always work. Too much of the film is spent on filming our heroes walking through bleak locations in silence when it could be spent on character development and the pace drops almost unbearably in the middle. However, it is all impeccably shot and directed, the story is unusual enough to resonate and the unexpected ending comes from out of nowhere and is - most shocking of all - really rather beautiful. **1/2

Splatter Beach (2007)

Dir: John Polonia / Mark Polonia

El Cheapo Z-Movie from the guys who brought you "Splatter Farm". This one is a fairly bland "Humanoids From The Deep" rip-off that, to my immense disappointment, contains little splatter and barely even a beach. Shot at perhaps the greyest, most miserable looking lakeside I've ever seen, this mercifully short (70 minutes) no-brainer manages to have a double-figure body count and yet not one real special effect. Instead, a guy in a $2 Halloween suit glues some twigs to his back and runs around shaking people by the shoulders until they dribble red paint all down their tops. Sometimes, they superimpose extra versions of the suited dude into the shot so it looks like there are three or four of him. I guess it's meant as a homage to the early straight-to-video shockers and some of the dialogue is endearingly goofball but really... this is bad and (even worse) boring stuff. There's a surf-punk band, a beach party and Misty Mundae - some of my favourite things - and it's still all about as dull as the scenery. EL BOMBA!

Children of the Corn 3 : Urban Harvest (1995)

Dir: James D.R. Hickox

Two country boys - creepy little jerk Eli and loveable lummox Joshua - get fostered by a nice middle-class family in Chicago and bring with them the unspeakable horrors of Gatlin, which you may remember from the original Stephen King story. There's not much else to connect it, mind. All Hell breaks loose, quite literally, in this one and it all goes completely batshit in the final reel, veering into the realms of zombie scarecrows and gigantic slime monsters. But these things? I like! A threequel that's actually the best in the series, "Urban Harvest" is a solid supernatural horror with a strong script, some mad ideas, a tremendous amount of gore and wicked prosthetics courtesy of Screaming Mad George. If you only watch one "Children of the Corn" movie, make it this one, basically. ***