Dead Eyes

so we all know that the first two demons movies are pretty much as good as it's going to get. i am not going to lie to you after seeing all (seven?) 'demons' movies, I can truly say that the first two entires are masterpieces and the rest are an eclectic bastard lovechildish creative, bad, and completely crazy entries.

This movie is so awful in a good way. It's also pretty hard to track down (insert obvious reasons.) It's referred too as like 7 different titles, but the one I was watching was English dubbed audio with Japanese hard subtitles. The movie shamelessly poses as 'Suspiria 2' but at the same time also seems to acknowledge what they're doing is pretty awful so they throw in a lot of funny crazy effects to distract you from the plot that includes a grand total of 4-5 people and pacing that fluctuates between wayyyyy to slow and holy crap what just happened and why?

it's not as good as the first two demons movies, but if you like to chuckle at a truly goofy and poorly made movie, this movie is a gold nugget. There's so many unintentionally hilarious moments you can't capture unless you are truly trying to make a serious effort and it just unfolds like a pile of unsorted laundry. Pretty much anything you can think may or may not explode and smoke and leak green worms and intestines WILL AND SHALL. That part's never really explained but a lot of other things are.

Hilarious dated effects guaranteed to open your eyes wider than a syfy movie creature shot. I had a fun time with it :)

"i'm in the mirror. No - i'm in the rifridgerator , Wait - I'm back in the mirror *blarchhhhh*"

I have watched a lot of schlock and I really love 80s horror and the stuff coming out of Italy in the 70s and 80s. However, this film has no redeeming qualities, zilch. Most movies have at least 1 or 2 things going for them, be it the effects, the camera work or the atmosphere, but this movie just feels cheap, cheap, cheap.

Story sucks, the actors suck, the English dub sucks, the effects suck, the atmosphere sucks. Even a guy like Cozzi can do better, what were they thinking?

I've just finished watching the late eighties Italian horror The Spider Labyrinth, which was a film devoid of cheese. This film, however, is like watching a slice of Gouda. But there's a place for films like this too, and I enjoyed it.

Some sort of sequel to Suspira/Inferno, it features some film makers getting together to make a film about Levanna, the Mother of Tears. Actress and new mother Ana is all set for the part, probably because her husband is the director, which makes script writer Dan's wife very jealous (and she's played by Caroline Munro, for the record).

Things start getting immediately weird when Ana starts having visions of a grape faced lady (you heard me) coming out of a mirror and attacking here. Seems that Levanna is real and wants to come back into our world, which involves Ana and her baby and that. You know the drill.

I though it was funny when Levanna started haunting Ana's fridge and then formed a vision of a fake repairman coming to fix it! That's just cruel. Also Bret Halsey's in this because perhaps Lucio Fulci had momentarily lost his phone number.

Anyway, the director guy and the screenwriter get in contact with some medium, who warns them off, and that's when Levanna goes nuts and starts wasting everybody, causing the medium's guts to explode out of her body, just like in Cozzi's Contamination! By this time there's also a little girl contacting Ana via a television to help her, but Levanna makes this TV explode and then spew up intestines (you heard me there too).

Things then start getting pretty unpredictable and VERY eighties, visually, but Cozzi may not be the best fan of reality, but he can sure pour on the madness and crazy set pieces. Whether or not this is a better sequel that Mother of Tears is up to you. Both are very cheesy and the later film was a lot gorier, but it also had Asia Argento in it and didn't really have the tone of Suspiria or Inferno, whereas this one is more similar in look and feel. That's up to you.

Luigi Cozzi sure had a thing for Caroline Munro, eh? In this film, you get to see her take a bath, wear lingerie, put varnish on her nails, have sex and get leggy while getting into a car. For the record, my favourite Munro moment is the musical number she does in Don't Open Til Christmas.

Where can I start with this movie. Okay, this movie has had many titles such as "Demons 6", "The Black Cat", "Armaggedon", and the list goes on. None of the titles for the movie make any sense.

The movie starts out with a director planning to make a film about a witch called "Levana". His basis for the movie is based off of Dario Argento's "Susperia". The director decides that he is going to cast his wife as the lead in the movie. Well, apparently there is a real witch named Levana and she is not to happy with this whole project and decides to make the directors wife a living hell.

The main problems with this movie are continuity and pace. I will admit that this is a very atmosphere flick but the whole movie still falls flat on its face. There are so many moments in this flick where I had to say out loud "What the hell is going on?". For instance, many scenes just tend to wander off in to space. Literally, the camera has shots out in space and on the moon. This has nothing to do with what's going on in the movie and if it does, someone correct me because I haven't figured it out.

The pace of the film would seem to at points move farely well but for the most part the scenes just start to drag and you could care less with what's happening. The beginning of the movie is a prime example. The characters are introduced and the story starts to develop but then things just start to fall to pieces right before your very eyes.

The acting in the movie is rather humorous at moments. A certain scene when the director and his assistant meet the man who wants to produce the movie is rather hysterical. And almost all of the scenes with Lavana in them are laugh out loud funny.

I think the main thing that saves this movie is a decent original score (I'm not talking about the bad hair metal in the background) and a few moments of gore. It seems that the director of the movie (Luigi Cozzi) still loves to have people having their organs blown to pieces. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, watch Contamination.

All in all, could have been a much better film. 4/10 stars

'Black Cat' (1989) (aka 'Demons 6: De Profundis') I saw this today on Amazon Prime Videos. It's an Italian made horror film. This description intrigued me "Ann Pritcher is a new mother and actress in her husband's film. A film about a terrible witch, Levana, whom Ann is playing. But when Ann starts researching the part of Levana, she is haunted by visions." I like older Italian made horror films like those starring Barbara Steele. Often they had a haunting Gothic look and off beat stories compared to run of the mill American made movies. I cut all foreign films some slack because maybe the English dubbing isn't always the best and the film might be better in its native language. This film even beyond the laughable dubbed English is a total mess. The effects are laughable and the story is dragged out with nothing of real interest to it. Who ever did this seems obsessed with bright neon like lights for a scary effect. They like to have the bright light, especially green, emitting from windows, refrigerators, drinking glasses, eyes...everything but the black cat's butt. And the gore was also laughable. They also seem to like using green goo...just looks like pea soup. I don't like overly gory films, this didn't bother me because it was so phony looking. It seems anyone using the title 'Black Cat' or the like can pretend it's based on a story by Edar Allen Poe to attract viewers. About the only tie in to this is Mr. Poe's name may have been mentioned someplace in the dialog. Frankly this film, and I use the word "film" loosely, was not worth my time. I give it a 0 rating but the IMDb forces me to make 1 the lowest.