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FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1977) **** William Sanderson, Robert Judd, Dan Faraldo, Peter Yoshida. If there was ever a movie that could push the audience's buttons, it was Fight for Your Life. During its limited theatrical run, it reportedly caused near riots in theaters wherever it was shown. It's easy to see why. The movie follows three escaped convicts, led by racist hillbilly psychopath Jesse Cain (William Sanderson), who take an African-American family hostage in their home and torture them. Cain spews vicious racial epithets almost constantly as he and his cohorts (who, ironically enough, are Latino and Asian) subject the family to a host of racial and sexual humiliations. Though it's easy to dismiss as mere exploitation, Fight for Your Life speaks volumes about what America had on its collective mind in the late 1970's, reflecting anxieties about the effects of drugs, violent crime and volatile race relations on the country. Of course, it's also great entertainment. Thanks to a strong script from Straw Weisman and Robert Endelson's smart direction, there's never a dull moment in this film, though it certainly isn't for all viewers.

DEMONS (1985) **½ Urbarno Barberini, Natasha Hovey, Karl Zinny, Fiore Argento. Produced by Dario Argento and directed by Lamberto Bava, this hyper-gory Italian film is about a group of people who are all given free tickets to a horror movie. Soon after it begins, the unsuspecting moviegoers, like the characters in the film, start turning into flesh-hungry zombies. It all sounds promising enough, but that's where the originality ends. The audience inexplicably finds itself trapped inside the theater and the rest of the movie is pure formula: a group of anonymous, one-dimensional characters is picked off one by one by the zombies, only to become zombies themselves, who (you guessed it) pick off the remaining anonymous, one-dimensional characters. Of course, Bava knows that it's all about the gore and, on that score at least, Demons really delivers. There's enough gut munching, eye gouging and scalp tearing to satisfy even the most hardened gorehound, and the special effects (courtesy of Argento regular Sergio Stivaletti) are about as good as they come. Thirty-something types will also appreciate the early ‘80s heavy-metal soundtrack, which features Mötley Crüe (`Save Our Souls') and Accept (`Fast as a Shark'), among others.