The Demon Lover

When I first encountered THE DEMON LOVER I despised it and posted a bomb movie review -- three stars, which from me is pretty grim news -- but have since come to know & respect the film more over a few more viewings and a little more time. Also a little more familiarity with the whole low budget indie American horror scene from the 1970s, of which THE DEMON LOVER is actually a pretty competent example. I might even say I've sort of developed an affinity to it, partly due to some of the behind the camera talent responsible for the film.

Namely Dennis and Robert Skotak, whom literally EVERYBODY has seen the work of by now. You'd have to be someone like my mom to not have seen TERMINATOR 2 or ALIENS or any of the dozens of high profile huge budget entertainments the Skotak's helped to visualize as production designers & creators of visual effects. They were nothing short of pioneers in the realm of science fiction horror action cinema and this is their first feature movie. They made the Demon costume with the glowing lights who looks like the bass player from Gwar, the gore effects, magic effects sequences and likely shot the gory still photos used in the film's police procedural subplot.

In 1978 they may have just been a couple of talented punks looking to channel their creativity, but soon after THE DEMON LOVER was released they got jobs working at Roger Corman's New World studios, came into contact with another Corman employee named James Cameron, and worked with him on ALIENS, TERMINATOR 2 and TITANIC. Pwned! And co-director Donald G. Jackson went on to an illustrious career as a B movie maverick, producing the riotous HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN amongst other amphibiously themed schlock delights. Great things come from the most unlikely places sometimes.

The one lesson I have learned over the years by studying low budget filmmaking is that you can't fault a movie for being made when it was & under the conditions it was made. That's not fair. However it came about they made the film and merely contrasting it unfavorably to other more well known or successful examples of the form doesn't get anyone anywhere. In it's own way THE DEMON LOVER is just as amusing & clever as other films of its like; CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, BLOOD SABBATH, and ENTER THE DEVIL come to mind.

It doesn't have the scope of THE DEVIL'S RAIN nor the thrills per minute ratio of RACE WITH THE DEVIL but instead tries to pay more attention to the occult angle without a large scale production getting in the way. Christmas Robbins is effective as the wannabe warlock who actually manages to evoke Mephistopholes even though nobody seems to believe him, and Tom Hutton does a better job as the polyester jacketed homicide cop assigned to a slew of murders than I recall from sitting through the film first time out. His baffled expressions are non-acting on the highest order.

The film's greatest claim to fame is the presence of horror icon Gunnar Hansen as "Professor Peckinpah" in the film's most outrageous appropriation of names for it's characters. There's also a Frazetta, a Romero, and I believe I heard the name Leone at one point. The delivery of the film is just as unsubtle as the appropriation of names and its charm lies not so much in the execution as it does in the reckless abandon in the creative act at work here. The film has clumsy little homages to Dirty Harry movies & spaghetti westerns, and even manages to work in a bizarre little splatter bloodbath ending that seems to have been inspired by TAXI DRIVER.

Sure, it's low budget kitsch really, a point I missed the first time through when expecting the film to be as straight up as it looked. There's a decided lack of artistry to the cinematography but an abundance of energy that makes up for it. If nothing else here's a chaotic little bit of mayhem for aspiring filmmakers to study to see how to make a passable little horror movie on the ultra cheap. These guys were determined to see the film as they were able to make it right then & there, and it actually does amount to an absorbing hour or so for fans of this kind of material. Perfect drive-in movie nonsense.

And for the record I've encountered three different forms of this movie so far. Unicorn Video has the standard fullscreen version running just 70 minutes but it turns out there's some graphic carnage removed from it's print and some of its dialog scenes have been shortened. Severin Films apparently copped a Unicorn tape for their DVD presentation, which is to be expected I guess, and my verdict is to avoid it & get the real thing. Then there's another North American tape titled COVEN that has some footage removed from the very beginning but more of the gore clipped out of Unicorn's print, and also comes it at just around 70 minutes fullscreen with a rougher picture quality than Unicorn. But the real gem is a British made pre-cert PAL format tape running 72 minutes in a widescreen 1:85:1 ratio with all of the mayhem intact. Worth tracking down.

5/10

Don't you hate it when you purposely lower your expectations in order to avoid disappointment, and come to find out, it's all been for nothing? As a desensitized lover of B-horror of the 70's, Master Of Evil actually sounded decent enough. Decent enough for the guy who enjoyed The Chooper, at least. Yes, Master Of Evil is cheesy, and yes it's low-budget, and yes, it would technically be in that "so bad it's good" category, but no, I did not enjoy Master Of Evil. I can overlook a lot, but non-stop boring is a lot to ask. These guys offer us nothing but conversations, arguments, some little satanist-mascot guy, and very little story to speak of. Concerning a group of Satanists who party often, in a castle owned by their leader, Laval Blessing, a smug, yet confident young fellow, with hair that's way too long, and way too curly for his own good. Blessing unsuccessfully tries to set up satanic orgies, but you got to, at least admire the guy's ambition. Eventually, Laval upsets everyone, making them split, with his deep satanic knowledge and whatnot. Later on, Blessing conjures up an incredibly fake-looking devil thing, which possesses a few unfortunates, and kills a few more. An epic, indeed. Oh yeah, our pal. Gunnar Hansen shows up, as if it matters. For something with a similar vibe, with (a little) more life, check out Werewolves On Wheels. Ultimately, Master Of Evil screams dead acting, incoherent dialog, characters with seemingly no purpose, a grainy, murky look to everything, a typically unfitting score, and of course, a ridiculously outlandish devil monster, with glowing red eyes (usually)... well, now that I put it like that, it sounds pretty damn good. Maybe I spoke too harshly earlier, Master Of Evil ain't bad, check it out! 5/10

When I saw this film I could have guessed that it came out on Trauma video instead of New Horizons and directed by Alan Ornsby. This movie has more of an early 80'e feel to it with the synthasized music and bad acting and I was surprised to see it made otherwise . Anyway, a cult of people resembling the looks of early Metallica, King Diamond (without his makeup) and Frank Zappa along with a chunky nerdy looking annoying guy get themselves involved in a satanic cult lead by a man that calls up this rubber looking demon that goes around killing people when he conjures him up and leaves a trail of dead bodies behind as the police investigate the killings and try to find the leader of this cult. The scene of when all the members kill each other is laughable, I couldn't stop laughing, in fact the whole movie is funny with it's terrible acting and terrible cast, terrible plot and the actors speak their lines so bad it's like they are reading from a cue card and their voices are dubbed. Please avoid this one!

Man, I just can't get enough of this sweet lunatic trash. The Devil Master was the starting point of prolific trash director/producer Donald G. Jackson (his later works including Hell Comes To Frogtown) and though I've not seen any of his later work if it works like this fun shot of dysfunctional weirdness I'll have to get on it pronto. Plotwise things are simple, members of a group into the occult annoy their leader, the awesomely named (and maned) Laval Blessing, so he sicks a big hairy demon with glowing red eyes on them. Its fairly standard silliness, but the kicks come thick and fast, in no small part due to the fact that any notions of technical ability have been methodically stripped away, leaving only cheap-jack enthusiasm. All the dodgy edits, chintzty sets and inept compositions can't stop things from smoothly bowling along, even where there clearly isn't enough relevant footage and the film has to delve into extended, hilarious filler. A spell of our villain working out at his local dojo will raise smiles, but the bar brawl that comes after is a laugh riot, and this is just a midsection booster. Elsewhere non-acting and characters named after various comic book artists, film-makers and others keep the momentum bubbling and the odd random splash of grue and bleak tone serve to keep you on your toes. Christmas Robbins hams things up an amusing storm as Laval Blessing, while Gunnar Hansen has a fun cameo as a helpful professor and the girls are reasonably pretty (one gets topless as well) so on the human side of things the film checks out OK, but generally the ineptitude is key. That and the monster, which really is pretty cool as monsters go, even if it doesn't appear to often. It really looks just how I'd imagine a beast conjured from the demon side and given life on a fractional budget to be and I cheered a little inside every time it appeared. Oh and weirdly, the ending is actually kinda unsettling in a schlocky sort of fashion, carrying a deranged mean punch that serves to make the whole affair just that little bit more memorable than it otherwise would have been. Altogether this is skippable for 90% of viewers and as far as occult based trash goes it isn't all that interesting, lacking in much in the way of fun esoterica or groovy ritual aesthetics, but if your tastes run towards this kind of no count lunacy its worth a one time watch at least.

Under-the-barrel raunch involving the usual wild-for-kicks teens...this time around they're a strange mottle resembling old-school Black Sabbath fans, and their audacious dabblings in black magic parenthetically unharness a bloodthirsty demon which the group leader dispatches for a series of random killings.

This financially underprivileged drive-in dreck is a showboat of laughably deficient capacities...not for one meteoric instant is DEMON LOVER indicative of professional contribution to any aspect of its production. Even by the casual standards of 70s era drive-in trash, it's a wondrous botch...and a veritable Faberge Egg for the elite brotherhood of schlock-mongers.

Interestingly, the dubious "mountain in labor" origins of this celluloid poopstain would become the focus of DEMON LOVER DIARY, a coarse but otherwise spectacular film-document which is cardinal viewing for anyone interested in the bizarre universe of zot-budget regional film-making. 3.5/10