NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 1988, dir. Kevin Tenney 90 min, Rated R. Starring: Alvin Alexis, Allison Barron, Lance Fenton, Linnea Quigley. Review by Beth Van Dusen

"Eat a bowl of fuck, I am here to party!"

Quite possibly the best reason for seeing Night of the Demons is this confusing yet extremely funny line. It’ll also give you a pretty good idea of what you’re in for if you decide to watch this movie.

So here’s the really original premise: Angela decides to throw a Halloween party for her rowdy teen friends at an abandoned funeral home. Were teenagers in the 80's more sadistic than the teens of today? It seems like they were always having parties that revolved around screwing with their friends’ heads. Anyway, I guess the gratuitous nudity and guys going "woo!" get old after a while because Angela decides to liven things up with a séance. Teenagers in the 80's were also really into playing with the black arts. Seems like those darned kids were always calling some evil power or other from the depths of hell. Of course, things go horribly wrong, and Angela is possessed by a demon. She then proceeds to turn on a strobe light on and do an interpretive dance to the Bauhaus classic "Bela Lugosi’s Dead". This scene seems to be where interpretive goth dancing got its start as I have seen this dance performed countless times at clubs. At least Angela was possessed. From what I could tell, none of the tragic club kids can use this excuse.

After ruining a perfectly good song, Angela starts the killin'. She either kills people outright, causing them to come back as zombies, or breathes on them to make them demons too. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but you could drive a busload of zombies into the plot holes in this movie. As you can imagine, the clichéd deaths abound. A couple dies while having sex, limbs are severed, and somebody gets their eyes poked out. One thing really did stand out though. During one of the unnecessary boob scenes a young woman stabs an entire tube of lipstick right through her nipple. You don’t see that everyday.

It may not sound like it, but I do kinda like this movie. It has no redeeming qualities as a film, but not many movies of this genre and time period did. It has annoying teenagers dying in gruesome ways, campy humor with minor creepiness, and lots of partially naked girls (if you like that sort of thing. I got a little tired of seeing them, but that’s just me.) If nothing else, it’s a nice piece mental bubblegum.

Mmmm, blood flavored...

Rating: Three out of five Brains.