Noite Maldita

The Demons series is a complex one, all entries after the second film having nothing to do with Lamberto Bava's first two movies. The majority of the series consists of unrelated films that have been slapped with a Demons alternative title in certain countries: Michele Soavi's The Church (Demons 3 in Japan), The Sect (Demons 4 in Japan) and Cemetery Man (Demons '95 in Japan), Luigi Cozzi's The Black Cat (Demons 6 in France and Japan) and Lucio Fulci's Demonia (New Demons in Japan).

Black Demons, directed by Umberto Lenzi, is another contender for the Demons 3 title (the others being the aforementioned The Church, and the made for TV movie Demons 3: The Ogre, which was directed by Lamberto Bava but which shares nothing in common with Demons 1 and 2).

Coming from the director who kick-started the Italian cannibal craze (with Man from Deep River) and who gave us one of the most extreme example of the genre (Cannibal Ferox), it's no surprise that Black Demons delivers several gruesome scenes to delight gorehounds, but the bloodletting is sporadic and doesn't begin until quite a way into the film, so patience is required while Lenzi sets the scene...

Three students - Kevin (Keith Van Hoven), his girlfriend Jessie (Sonia Curtis) and her half-brother Dick (Joe Balogh) - are in Rio de Janeiro, where Dick witnesses a macumba ritual. While driving to another location, the trio's jeep breaks down and they are forced to take refuge at a remote Brazilian plantation, home to young couple Sonia (Juliana Teixeira) and Jose (Philip Murray) and their housemaid Maria (Maria Alves). When Dick plays the recording that he made of the voodoo ceremony, he becomes possessed, and resurrects the bodies of six murdered slaves, who crawl from their graves looking for revenge.

So, essentially, Black Demons is a zombie movie, with the undead picking up a variety of sharp tools with which to kill their victims: Sonia unwisely wanders out into the night (wearing white t-shirt and knickers) and gets her eye gouged out with a hook; Maria also gets her eye gouged out, and has an axe planted in her skull before being hung for good measure. Jose also meets a grisly fate, but he is stabbed in the neck by the possessed Dick.

With a combination of abysmal acting and uninspired direction by Lenzi, Black Demons is not a good film, the only real attractions being the gore and a few moments that are unintentionally funny: a zombie lurking behind Kevin, with knife in hand, is hilarious, as is the scene where the undead suddenly pop up into frame, and the ending, in which Kevin launches Molotov cocktails at the zombies, is completely inept, the bottles of fuel exploding like bombs.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

Black Demons (1991)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Italian horror flick has a group of people stranded in an old mansion in Brazil when black zombies (not demons) begin to attack them. All of this is brought on because a stupid brother went to witness a voodoo act, which now has the black zombies (not demons) out willing white folks. To say I was disappointed in this film would be a major under statement as I'm usually a fan of Lenzi's films. The Italian horror genre was already dead and buried by the time this film was released and the producer's even released it as Demoni 3 to, I guess, cash in on the two Lamberto Bava films. Those expecting gore are going to be letdown because there's actually not too much of it. We get one good scene where a victim has her eye ripped out and another throat slashing but outside of these scenes the gore is pretty low. This is the type of film we've seen countless times before and I was rather shocked that Lenzi didn't throw anything original into the mix or at least try to make this film fly better. It takes thirty-minutes for the first murder to take place and then we have to wait nearly another thirty-minutes for the next. The film is full of really bad dialogue including one scene where the owner of the mansion finds his maid doing black magic and he punishes her by making her go to her room just like she was a kid! The performances are all rather bland, which is to be expected but the fault of the film's failure has to go back on the director. The film looks very poorly done and there isn't any of the director's typical style.

I'm pleased to add this little Cubic Zirconia to my collection of gems. The plot is almost non-existent, the characters incredibly one-dimensional, but despite that, it was a good effort. It was obvious that at least some research on Candomble was done, and the ritual scene was amazingly well-crafted. The "Black Demons" themselves had great make-up, and the few gory scenes there were left little to be desired. Now, we come to the meat of it all: the acting. In a word, terrible. This isn't a film to be taken seriously anyway, but the unintentional comedy is everywhere. From accents that randomly disappear, accents too thick to understand, and the eye-bulging freak-outs of the maid, this is one film that's worth seeing in spite of itself. Get some friends together,pop this in, and have some laughs.

Why not bring director Umberto Lenzi in to direct a DEMONS movie? Sure, why not? Just remember this is not a DEMONS movie. It was just named that to try and cash in on the success of the earlier films.

Here two American siblings Dick (Joe Balogh) and Jessica (Sonia Curtis) along with her English boyfriend Kevin (Keith Van Hoven) are on a vacation in Brazil. Along the way Dick witnesses a black magic ritual. He records it on his tape recorder. The three of them are stranded, but luckily two strangers named Jose (Philip Murray) and Sonia (Juliana Teixeira) take them back to their house. It is here Dick replays the tape and revives the dead. Oopsy daisy.

Big problem I had with this movie was it became a little too dialogue happy. Too much yakkin' and not enough action. For gorehounds the death scenes are graphic and gory. Not worth it really.

Here is a movie that could have been a lot more. Released in 1991 under the title Demoni 3 (has nothing to do with the Demons series) and directed by the infamous Umberto Lenzi, the story takes off with a brother and sister and her boyfriend. Her brother becomes possessed by some black magic during a voodoo ritual and later on brings back to life 6 "Black Demons" to kill 6 white people to get revenge for their enslavement when they were alive. This movie moves very slow (as do a lot of Lenzi's films) and is acted quite badly. But then again, the actors didn't have much of a script to go off of. Unlike Lenzi's other classics like Cannibal Ferox or Nightmare City, this movie really doesn't hold your interest at all. With Nightmare City the gore was silly and the acting stupid but it was entertaining because the movie didn't stop, and the same goes for Cannibal Ferox. This movie, on the other hand, had may be 3 decent scenes of gore (most of which had someone getting an eye poked out) and the rest of the film is talking filled with bad background music. The only thing that kept my interest at all was the costuming for the demons/zombies. They looked genuinely kind of creepy. Besides that, the movie is to slow and that is really my main issue. 5\10 stars