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

The Breed (2006)

Dir: Nicholas Mastandrea

Wes Craven "presents" this directorial debut for Nicholas Mastandrea about a group of five kids who go to a remote island to party and, you guessed it, end up getting stalked and killed by a pack of huge, angry dogs that make Cujo look like the Andrex puppy. While there's nothing new whatsoever in this concept and it's clumsily handled on occasion, I found "The Breed" to be a painlessly entertaining 90 minutes. You get one or two great nailbiting moments of suspense, lots of fun footage of big dogs going mental and the female leads (Michelle Rodriguez and Taryn Manning from "Lost" and "CSI" respectively) scarcely put on anything more substantial than a bikini, so the film clearly knows and plays to its audience. That said, I'd personally have enjoyed it, even if it were boiled down to 90 minutes of the awesome dogs running around like mad things so my review may be a bit biased. Cat lovers can stick with "The Uncanny" instead. Losers. **1/2