Night of the Demons

    French literary critic Nino Frank is often credited with coining the term ‘film noir’ in 1946 to describe a number of American crime films which he saw as having a number of characteristics in common. 1946 is significant because it was the first year after the Nazi occupation of France and so the country had been flooded with American cultural products. Having them all come in at once instead of over several years allowed patterns and similarities to jump out where they might have otherwise been missed by simply watching them over the years during which they were produced.

    Whether he originated the term or not (there is some dispute) he certainly brought it to prominence and also tied it to the French literary imprint Série Noire and its related genre of crime fiction referred to as roman noir. Often the books published as these ‘black books,’ whether they were translated American or native French works, were the basis for the movies making up this newly identified genre of film.

    Once identified and codified classic film noir gave rise to the neo-noir of the Cold War era where the ‘rules’ of what made a movie a noir film began to be examined and deconstructed (I’d argue reaching its peak with ‘Kiss Me Deadly’) which in turn influenced the French New Wave, which in turn influenced the American independent film scene of the 1970’s, and on and on it went splintering into a hundred different directions and having unforeseen knock-on effects. If you’ve ever wandered into the Film section of a book store this is what all those books are ultimately about.

    As you can see genre works can often quickly generate a kind of feedback loop where, once a body of work is identified as part of a genre or a sub-genre, they are deconstructed or re-contextualized and, in essence, become their own genre of introspection, art about art. This might sound incredibly solipsistic, an artistic medium disappearing up into itself, but for a practical example imagine having never seen an action film before and then watching ‘John Wick,’ or having never seen a Western before watching the Coen Brother’s version of ‘True Grit.’ Or for that matter watching a Hallmark Channel original Christmas movie without understanding what the actual function of that movie is supposed to be. Genres come with their own inbuilt expectations that can be either fulfilled or thwarted as another tool the artist can use.

Pffffft.

    All of which is to say that ‘Night of the Demons’ makes no sense as a piece of anything, much less art, without understanding it in the context of 80’s horror movies. It arguably could not have existed at any other time or place than 1980’s America. Not to say that this is a deconstruction of the form or that it’s doing anything clever with genre tropes, because it certainly isn’t. This is not so much a movie as a very short checklist of boxes to tick in order to fulfill the technical requirements of what was generally understood to be a horror movie at the time of filming. This would be the smallest building block possible to use in the construction of an idea of whatever the “80’s horror” genre means. This is also arguably the first time I’ve felt personally insulted by a movie, directly attacked for being the kind of person who would voluntarily sit through this 90 minutes of ostensible entertainment. The only reason I’m not as mad at this as I was at ‘Ghoulies’ is that I got the sense the makers of ‘Ghoulies’ thought they were actually making something that people might be impressed by. I get no such sense from ‘Night of the Demons.’

    Technicals out of the way first: released in 1988, directed by Kevin S. Tenney and written by Joe Augustyn, neither of whom went on to do anything of note. Of the actors the only ones of any interest are Cathy Podewell, who was on ‘Dallas’ for several years, and Linnea Quigley, often referred to as a ‘scream queen’ by fans of the horror genre. It did modest business, spawned some direct-to-video sequels, and has something of a cult following for reasons I am not privy to.

    The entire plot of the movie is as such: unpleasant teens gather at an abandoned mortuary to have a Halloween Party. Demons alternately kill and infect the teens until two are left who escape. Everything else of note: there is swearing and nudity and in one scene they play ‘Stigmata Martyr’ by Bauhaus which is a good song. There is nothing else of even moderate import.

    This movie is like a bowling ball covered in grease, there’s no good way to get a handle on it. In a certain sense it perfectly is what it is, an hour and a half of unpleasant characters dying in unpleasant ways for the vague entertainment of the audience. None of the characters are interesting, none of the deaths are memorable, there is no attempt at a backstory other than ‘spooky place has spooky demons.’ It might be fun to sit through with friends in order to make fun of it but that’s true of almost anything. I’ve had good times sitting through Sam Firstesnberg movies with friends and those are unqualified trash.

    It might sound like I’m about to launch into some kind of Roger Ebert-style moral outrage but it’s all too boring and pathetic for that. There are offensive things in here, sure, the female characters are treated horribly the male characters, the nudity is frequent and gratuitous, but the violence is so tame as to be forgettable and the only way I would actually condemn anything about this movie were if I were to find that the members of the cast or crew had been mistreated in real life. Sure the movie is fairly reprehensible but they all knew that when they agreed to the script.

    This movie is as substantial as mist, I’m surprised it didn’t evaporate as soon as I was done watching it. The fact that it has any kind of praise at all, and unironic praise at that, is rather baffling to me. I rather enjoyed the goofiness of ‘The Hitcher,’ I was able to dig a little the 60’s vibe of ‘The Dunwich Horror,’ I was even able to conjure up something of a morality tale from ‘Pumpkinhead,’ of all things. This was just empty noise and visuals that took up far too much of my time and far too little of my interest.