Showing posts with label Night of the Demon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Night of the Demon. Show all posts

30 Jun 2012

Night of the Demon: Will's Review

I hate to rag on micro budget movies, getting a film finished and out there is no mean feat, but for some things there's no excuse; There are plenty of good actors who will work for guild minimum, and a coherent script costs no more to write than, say, Night of the Demon...

You see, the film starts at the end, and is told in flashbeck, a common enough method, only there are several flashbacks along the way - flashbacks within flashbacks, and while many of the scenes do not feature the main character (the one doing the flashing back) the sub-flashbacks almost all have no survivors, and in one case the guy doing the main story wasn't present when the nested (and witness free) flashback was recounted! So he is recounting the recounting  of a tail which no one could have known about and which he didn't even hear!


That might sound a bit nitpicky - and it might have been, but for the fact that the film is so disjointed that it is at times borderline incoherent. Sometimes chopping a back story into portions and telling out of order is an interesting way to have us share in a protagonist's confusion or gradual discovery, (Memento, A Serbian Film) or to hide an important fact until its reveal would be more dramatic (Sixth Sense) - here it's seemingly done randomly, as the entire back-story would have been better presented in one go as the films second act. It still wouldn't have been a great film (or even an good one) but it would have at least been easier to watch.

Spoilers follow, but I wouldn't recommend you sit through the movie unless you're some kind of freak with OCD that has decided he HAS TO watch the whole DPP list, so I wouldn't bother avoiding them:

Our focus is a group of anthropology students who are investigating reported Bigfoot sightings. It turns out that Bigfoot is real, and once raped a local woman, impregnating her with his mutant offspring. Her father, a priest who witnessed the rape, killed the baby, believing it to be of demonic origin. The woman has lived on her own in a cabin in the woods ever since, and seems to get used in some rape ritual carried out by her late fathers followers, who now worship the Bigfoot. Our students basically emotionally abuse this poor woman and exhume her child's grave(!), without giving it a second thought, until Bigfoot kills all but one of them. The survivor is declared insane.


Effects wise, the deaths are terrible, but the creature himself isn't too bad (for a film of it's age and budget):


It's so patchy and non-linear that it kind of defies review beyond this, So I present an equally patchy and non-linear collection of clips and comments:


Remember that they are in this woman's home:





"Nevermind" ???? NEVERMIND??? Really?


Bigfoot think's he's Jason now apparently 
(He uses an axe on a couple of occasions too):


Best Kill in the movie:
(also the best clip in VNAW history)

Mmmm, those clips make it look better than it is; sorry about that.

AVOID!

Body Count: 13
Boob Count: 1 pair
Dead Animal Count: 0
Most Memorable Kill: see above.


Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.

Night of the Demon - Lisa's Review




*** SPOILERS ***

Well we've got a right stinker this week.  I wouldn't say it was the worst one I've watched so far on the list, but it is definately not one I would ever recommend to anyone else for any reason, other than a desire to complete the nasties list challenge.

Our basic storyline here centres around a very nasty Bigfoot who lives in a forest and likes to go around killing people in various entertaining ways.  Of course there is a willing group of cannon fodder for our monster courtesy of a group of college students (yup... yet again) and their professor who are investigating the truth behind the legend of this particular monster (or Demon if you will).

The movie actually starts by telling you how its going to end.  The professor is in hospital, all bandaged up.  The only survivor of a Bigfoot massacre.  The movie is told through a series of flashbacks, which like another movie we watched recently also made no sense as the person telling the story was not present at all the flashbacks!  Irritating!  Contingency issues is the least of our worries here though.

Where do I start?  The acting in this movie is terrible.  The script is laughable to the extreme, but not in a funny way, more in a 'I can't believe I'm watching this shit' way.  The story is oh so predictable but is full of holes.

One thing which really irritated me about the movie is the way some of the deaths or reactions to them are drawn out.  They in no way change or add anything.  The camera just stays there filming the same scene for aaaaaaaaaaaages.  I could just feel the actor hung upside down with blood dripping down his face, into his eyes and mouth thinking... 'Come on already!!!'   Also there is nothing more irritating than a screaming woman in a horror... jeeeeeeeeez you have your fair share of this here.  I refer to the first death scene which happens to a courting couple who are making love in a car.  The bloke is dragged out and onto the top of the car and murdered out of sight.  His bloody body however falls down onto the windscreen and slithers downwards (as they always do when a windscreen is involved).  The womans reaction was downright ridiculous!  How many ways did the director ask her to react?  Its like her said, 'No, try that again', she did about 20 attempts and they kept them all in!!  This is all while she is completely starkers by the way.  She does pick up something to cover herself with and decides to cover her waist with it....



The gore is ok in places, but it would have been very easy to improve the effects with a little more effort.  Gore includes an impaling on a tree, a ripped off penis when a motorcyclist stops to relieve himself, a throat slitting on a window pane, an impaling on a pitchfork, a disembowlment (this was probably the best one as he proceeds to whip the poor guys innards around the room) and the birth of a half human / half Bigfoot.

So where does the baby come from?  Well our students hear a story that a young woman called Wanda (who has a reputation for being crazy) has had an encounter of the very close kind with Bigfoot where he impregnates her.  Her father (a preacher) witnesses the rape and waits until his daughter gives birth so he can kill the offspring which he believes to be evil.  He's an odd sort, her dad.

Wanda then undergoes a ritualistic reliving of her rape every year by her fathers followers who believe the ritual somehow protects them.  Is it any wonder the girl is a little disturbed?

Our ever understanding students blunder into her home and basically force all this information out of her by way of hypnotism.  When the beans have been spilled, predictably Bigfoot makes an appearance and does away with the cast (I felt a cheer coming on.. GO BIGFOOT!).

Sadly our professor lives to tell the tale in a hospital and we are subjected to this movie.  As always with this kind of experience, everything is put down to 'madness'.

Conclusion?  This is bloody awful.  Avoid.

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.

24 Jun 2012

WEEK 57: Night of the Demon



Alternate Titles : NA
Year: 1980
Reviews / Author Comments due: 30/06/2012
DPP Status: Successfully Prosecuted
Wikipedia: LINK



Feel free to use the comments section of this post to add your own reviews and thoughts about this movie.