The Demon Lover

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!

Satanist Laval Blessing (Christmas Robbins, looking like James Hetfield circa 1990, after he's eaten a whole load of pies) holds a party for his coven, but when he insists on them all getting naked to participate in an orgiastic ritual, they decide to leave. Miffed, Laval (and the one woman willing to strip for the occasion) summons a demon to take revenge on his disloyal followers.

This low-budget independent horror features atrocious acting, a terrible script, dreadful photography, and a hilariously bad demon (big horns, big fangs, and big red eyes), but it is thanks to its ineptness in all departments that it proves to be quite watchable. Films this bad are what fans of z-grade horror live for, and this one doesn't disappoint, delivering such delights as a totally pointless karate training session in which Laval gets kicked in the goolies, a poorly choreographed bar brawl, three girls having a play-fight with canned cream, and Frank Zappa being shot in the crotch with a crossbow.

Director Donald G. Jackson (Hell Comes To Frogtown) blissfully ignores the fact that no-one in his film can act (even Gunnar Hansen, in a brief cameo, ain't great), giving us numerous bloody but unconvincing death scenes guaranteed to have viewers in stitches. Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but for those with a particular mind-set, it'll prove a fun way to waste seventy or so minutes.

4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb.

Try as they might, no-budget filmmakers working on DV just can't seem to capture this level of sordid, inept fun! THE DEMON LOVER has it all: Bad acting, lousy writing, murky camera work, a ridiculous-looking rubber monster, a little skin (not much), a little blood (not much), characters named after comic-book professionals, and a surprisingly accurate look at what a lot of fringe-type folks were like in the late 1970s. Yep, tasteless and stupid as the movie is, and awful as the people in it act and look, you really could've met people like the cultists in THE DEMON LOVER at the time! They might not have been devil worshippers who ended up facing their lord and master in person, but they still existed (and they're still out there with their, uh, lifestyles). BTW, the final confrontation between the ex-cultists and their blowhard former master is priceless: Watch for the crossbow bolt! And don't miss the big karate demo in the middle; it's truly the stuff of '70s I'm-so-cool wanking. A cruddy drive-in flashback par excellence.

I first rented this movie at college, and expected so much more than I got. Hansen is the only member of the cast who can act, and despite an OK storyline, the cheap, amateurish production quickly sinks the film.

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