Demonia

Demonia (1990)

** (out of 4)

Five nuns are brutally murdered and five hundred years later their spirits get a chance for vengeance. Archaeologist team Professor Paul Evans (Brett Halsey) and his partner (Meg Register) begin to realize early on that something isn't right.

DEMONIA is a later day Lucio Fulci film, which is actually slightly better than its reputation. By this time the Italian horror market was taking its last gasps of air so if you're expecting something that looks or feels like ZOMBIE or THE BEYOND then you're certainly going to be disappointed. With that said, if you've seen Fulci's later day films like THE GHOSTS OF SODOM then you'll be happy to see that this here is better than that.

The biggest issue with DEMONIA is the same thing that haunted a lot of these films and that's the fact that there just wasn't enough money to pull everything off. The story here is an interesting one but it's never fully developed, which is really too bad. As I said, the budget was certainly very low here but Fulci still managed to build up a nice atmosphere and there's some minor gore, which his fans will enjoy. I also thought both Halsey and Register were good in their roles and they at least keep you interested in what's going on. Al Cliver (ZOMBIE) also appears briefly.

DEMONIA certainly isn't a classic movie and if you're new to Fulci it's certainly not the place to start watching. With that said, there are a few interesting ideas and moments scattered throughout.

In 1486, in Sicily, five nuns are crucified in their nunnery by the superstitious locals that believe they are evil and worship devil. In 1990, in Toronto, the skeptical archaeologist Professor Paul Evans (Brett Halsey) and his superstitious colleague Liza Harris (Meg Register) explore with their team the medieval dig where the nuns were killed. Liza has dreadful nightmares with the nuns while members of the expedition mysteriously die and the locals are against the research in the archaeological site.

"Demonia" is a deceptive Lucio Fulci's gore movie. The terrible story is never scary or intriguing; actually it is boring, with the low pace of the first half, and ridiculous with an awful conclusion associated to an annoying soundtrack. It is funny to see, for example, the blonde archaeologist that is superstitious, participates in séances and is scared after finding coffins with bones in a crypt. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

No, it's not the name of a disinfectant used by exorcists, but rather the title of Lucio Fulci's 1989 film about demonic possession on the island of Sicily.

Brett Halsey and Meg Register star as a pair of archeologists, one sensible and scientific, the other sensitive and superstitious, whose latest dig is plagued by a series of violent, non-Mafia-related deaths. It seems a local Medieval nunnery was once the site of devil worship, flagrant carnality and ritualistic murder - until the locals banded together to exorcise the evil by crucifying the nuns (depicted in the film's prologue). Turning a deaf ear to the warnings of the village leader and the local butcher, the archeologists carry on digging, and ultimately loosing the hounds of Hell, Fulci-style.

DEMONIA is a largely uninteresting affair, sluggishly paced and directed with apparent indifference by Fulci. Everything seems a bit tame (artfully placed blankets throw cold water on the orgy scenes) and second hand, from Giovanni Cristiani's corny, tympani-heavy score to the use of such hoary spook-cinema devices as double exposures to suggest ghostly apparitions and echoey dream voices (has anyone in your dreams ever spoken with an echoey voice?). Fulci stumbles further by having his heroine plagued by nightmares that offer no information beyond what we already saw in the prologue.

Fulci himself turns up late in the film as an inspector from Scotland Yard, only to turn up clues to a mystery that is no mystery to us; worse yet, Fulci's Inspector Carter's last scene finds him eyeballing a piece of cloth (torn from the habit of one of the murderous ghost-nuns), identifying it as centuries old, and then disappearing from the film entirely). Al Cliver (aka Pier Luigi Conti) appears as Porter, a fellow archeologist who meets an untimely end at the hands of a transparent, headless, speargun-toting haint (Fulci regular Cliver is billed in the credits as Al "Clever").

The film perks up a bit halfway through, when the local medium (a character similar to one played by Rada Rassimov in Mario Bava's BARON BLOOD) meets her predetermined demise by dint of half a dozen cat hand puppets, but DEMONIA is still slow going. A third act disemboweling of one of the dig members is gross but unconvincing, and the film climaxes on an ambiguous note that fails to satisfy or justify the investment of an hour and a half.

..But she's no Catriona Macoll. Wow.....I like "Zombie," "The Beyond," even have a special place for "The Gates of Hell." For some idea of this one's rank in the Fulci canon, "Aenigma" is better. This one makes no sense, the gore is cheap, and everyone, including Lucio must have been sleepwalking when they made this. Sure it ain't the worst thing ever, but it's pretty bad. Flatly directed with a potentially interesting storyline, Fulci missed the target big time with this.

Demonia seems to be a movie by Lucio Fulci that I don't know about... the death scenes in this movie are corny and are not the same to other death scenes in Fulci's earlier films, mainly the ones from the late 70's to middle 80's. I think it was because of the special effects director was changed or something, I'm not sure. But the one I remember was the one scene where the guy is caught upon a trap while trying to get his son from one of the nuns or whatever, and the guy is split apart from his son tripping upon a rope or something. The effects looked terrible, I'm sorry.

Otherwise, the movie was weird to me. Not saying that the movie is a piece of crap, though it could be better. The music was... well, I think it could be better. I liked the intro music, plus the music following the intro scene.

So, final verdict? Well, Demonia is a mixed bag of good and bad. If you're a true Fulci fan (like me), then this is your movie. If not, then... I guess you should give it a try. Demonia, the 'What the Babuguganosh!?' moment of Fulci's career.

Also, Al Cliver (Zombi 2) actually is in this movie, though he is credited as Al Clever... clever, I must say, eh? Ha ha ha... ha???