Demon Cop

There are many films out there that stink to high heaven but which still manage to redeem themselves somewhat by providing unintentional giggles along the way; Demon Cop, however, is such an amateurish mass of excrement that it is not even good for a few laughs.

A jumbled mess of terribly written, badly acted, crudely lit, poorly framed scenes, seemingly edited together completely at random, this rancid garbage from the multi-talentless Rocco Karega (failed actor turned failed writer and failed director) must surely qualify as one of the worst movies in the history of horror.

The film opens at the Ravenwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane, where we are greeted with a cheery 'Hello' by Cameron 'Will Act For Food' Mitchell, who informs us that he is not a patient at the institution, but the doctor. The doc then proceeds to ramble inanely for a couple of minutes about the 'files of the damned' and Edgar Allen Poe, making us wonder if he might be a patient after all, before recounting the details of one particular case, that of a poor soul infected by a 500 year old demon that can be transmitted through blood...

What follows is some of the most incoherent trash ever committed to film, featuring a monster with gag-shop plastic teeth and scary hands made from rubber gloves, 'actors' who frequently fluff their lines (but who soldier on regardless hoping that no-one has noticed), baffling shots that linger interminably on eyes, feet or the backs of heads, while the characters spout lengthy chunks of meaningless dialogue, and some of the most unconvincing reaction shots you are ever likely to see.

By the time Cameron Mitchell reappears at the end to wrap things up (and presumably to collect his payment—after all, a man's got to eat!), there's a good chance that you'll either be sound asleep or checking into the nearest asylum yourself.

There are moments of brilliant so-bad-it's-goodness, but most of the movie is a nauseatingly badly made mess. Actors constantly flub lines, the camera never seems to be framed correctly, the story is almost non-existent, there are numerous weird psychedelic parts for no reason, the writer/director/star is an ugly balding man... it's just so terrible. I'd recommend NOT watching it, since I felt kind of like I had the flu the entire time.

One night on an independent channel famous for showing off-the-wall films was aired this monstrosity. Though tempted to turn it off, we watched it to the bitter end, hoping to see some semblance of redeeming value. Alas, there was none. Absolutely nothing. The film quality was cheap; the soundtrack was muddy; the editing was ridiculous. Then again, there was precious little to salvage. After a few minutes of Cameron Mitchell's doctor character narrating about some patient of his, the viewer is tortured by no plot, pathetic writing, abysmally terrible acting, and an utter lack of cohesion and continuity. The rotting cherry on top of this fetid mess was the most horrendous "special effects" and "makeup" to ever disgrace the screen, even for television. The main character stumbles through his role in a dimestore rubber mask and a pair of dishwashing gloves which appear to have been dipped in glue and rolled in beads. Perhaps the poor lighting and gag-worthy film quality were attempting to cover up how bad-to-the-tenth-power the makeup was. One can only hope that at least one deliberate decision was made in the course of this hopelessly amateurish video. Seriously, a handful of three-year-old kids could've produced a better project. At the end, poor Mr. Mitchell returns (how desperate he must've been for money!) and drones out some nonsense that's supposed to connect this pile of crap with the AIDS epidemic. Please spare you and your loved ones the inhuman cruelty of sitting through this. It was so bad, even Mystery Science Theater 3000 couldn't have salvaged it.

Demon Cop is a film of preknown origin with great cover art, and after 80 straight minutes of exposition I still don't know what happened. Thankfully, there's an abundance of truly strange/hilarious moments in this movie. It's really in a league of its own. The whole thing is on YouTube, so you can at least watch the spooky intro and outro starring Cameron Mitchell.

Last week I watched the movie Future War (1997) and, while that movie is laughably bad and considered one of the worst movies on IMDB, it has a lower rating than this film, which by just about every measure is easily ten times worse than Future War in every regard. This flick is the lowest form of low budget SOV garbage and, while I tend to grade on a curve for these sorts of film, there is no curve steep enough to where I can say anything positive about Demon Cop.

The editing alone is such that it would embarrass Godfrey Ho, seemingly pasted together by someone half-asleep with a half-dozen or so scotch and sodas under their belt at 4:00 AM, without any regard to what someone actually trying to watch the movie and understand what the hell is going on might think. The film also relies heavily on narration to explain what is going on, which is rarely a good thing, inflicting the viewer with scenes where you hear dialogue explaining background information but you see no one talking and, instead, see a hand writing in a diary or a car driving down the road, which puts this mess where? A fusion of filming styles that merges a Godfrey Ho ninja flick with The Beast of Yucca Flats? With the exception of Cameron Mitchell, no one in this movie can act worth a damn and the sound and special effects are the bottom of the barrel, pretty much on the level of a student film, but I've seen student films better than this. The plot is nonsense and hard to follow for the reasons stated above, coupled with the addition of characters and scenes that seem to lend nothing to the film, leaving you that more confused (it took me three attempts just to sit through this thing). The film attempts to be a horror/ action flick, but the action is laughable, and the only scary thing is that Cameron Mitchell was hard up for cash to the point that he was willing to show his face in this piece of trash.

If you are a fan of grade Z-Minus cinema, then by all means you need to see this movie. It is truly epic awful, but this one qualifies as on of those flicks that never should have seen the light of day and it is almost insulting that something this lame was inflicted on the public. Demon Cop is a tough watch for even a veteran bad movie fan--you've been warned!