Demons

Patrons at a new movie theater turn into demons one by one.

This 1985 flick stars Urbano Barberini, Natasha Hovey, and Karl Zinny. It was written by Dario Argento, Dardano Sacchetti, Franco Ferrini, and its director Lamberto Bava.

If you ever needed a reason not to accept a free ticket to a movie, here it is.

God I love this movie. Words fail me.

Let’s cover the plot a little bit. Not too much, just a little.

People are given tickets to see a nameless movie in a brand new theater by a guy who looks like he’s depriving an Opera house of a phantom. They go out of curiosity to see the flick. In the lobby one of the patrons, in a fit of whimsy, puts on a display mask, scratching her face. Outside of that, nothing unexplained happens.

The movie within the movie begins and it’s a Horror flick about four kid exploring some ruins. They come across the same mask as in the lobby. One of the kids, in a fit of whimsy, puts on a display mask, scratching his face. This proves to be a very bad thing, as he turns into a demon.

Watching this, the scratched patron becomes ill and goes to the bathroom. There, she turns into a demon. And everyone she wounds also transforms.

If all of this sounds like a Night of the Living Dead ripoff, its probably because that’s what it is. It’s not a patch off the classic. There are no rules to anything. Sometimes the people transform right away, sometimes they don’t. The transformations cause excruciating pain, unless they don’t. Walls come out of nowhere sealing people in. They can’t even keep what the source of the problem is straight. Is it the mask? The movie? The theater?

This is, I’m afraid, a bad movie.

That works in spite of itself.

I’ve seen this movie multiple times. I still get tense. Not scared, never scared. But enjoyably tense.

It’s a fun flick. As a younger man I thought of it typical of the Italian Horror scene, and not in a good way. My opinion has only changed in seeing it as a positive instead of a negative. This is an example of how fun this particular corner of the genre can be and worth seeking out.

I plan to expound further on this when I have a bit more room to do so. It’s one of my favorite flicks and I love talking about it.

It’s a meh flick (1.0 points) with some good moments. Maybe that’s my love for it (2.0 points) clouding my judgement.