Soul of the Demon

First off, this is a bad movie, but so bad it's good! The characters are so hilariously terrible, the script so relentlessly boneheaded, that the movie actually becomes enjoyable. This movie has more heart and soul than the last ten Hollywood blockbusters put together. You totally get that the people who made this little SOV horror flick really believed in what they were doing (even if they didn't always know what they were doing).

It's also a really fun time capsule movie that takes us back to a time when everyone had big stupid hair and called each other "Dude!" every few seconds. The gore ain't bad, either, considering the budget. Would have liked a little nudity, but I guess you can't have everything.

If you love cheesy 80s horror, this is pretty much a prime example of it. It gets a solid 7.5 stars from me, and I would definitely call this one of the best shot-on-video horror movies of all time ('cause we all know how rotten most SOV flicks are--especially the ones made back in the 80s and 90s).

The basic plot has two junior high morons dig up a possessed satanic statue. One kid's older metal-head brother and his lunkhead friends (complete with mullets) decide to hold a séance with their girlfriends on Halloween night in a haunted house. Naturally, they call upon the soul of the demon from the statue, who then possesses the little brother. He gets all demonic looking (like a bargain basement Freddy Krueger) and uses black magic to kill the head-banging morons and their girls, but fortunately, he does this without spouting off any stupid one-liners. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Can the soul of the demon be put back into its statue prison?

Typical dialog: A stoner dude goes to take a leak in the woods behind the house (talking to himself the whole way like he just stepped out of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), and says, "Whoa! This tree looks fine. I think you been drinking too much beer, dude! Oh, man! Smells like some righteous doo-doo, man!" And then the demon kills him. Hysterical!

For all you gore fans, here's the scoop: All but the final death scene are of the black magic levitating object/telekinesis variety. In no particular order: a girl is cut open by a wood saw (from between her legs), girl's eyeball punctured by tree branch (comes out the back of her dead), dude gets his head twisted all the way around to break his neck, girl levitated off bed and ripped in two, dude's head explodes after complaining of headache and nosebleed (which he attributes to all the "rough sex" he's been having, LOL), another dude gets levitated and pinned to a wall then ripped in half so all his guts fall out, and yet another dude gets his spine ripped out and thrown away.

Some of these scenes are more suggestive than explicit (like the wood saw between the legs, although we do get a panty shot), while others (like the girl ripped in half) are quite graphic. But the absolute best, most awesome gore scene (worthy of Tom Savini) is the meat cleaver to the face one girl gets. It cuts the top half of her head off at an angle, gore spews out, then we see her upside-down, chopped off head with its big gold hoop earrings still looking around, just like that one zombie shovel scene in George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985). There are some obvious nods to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead (1981) and Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) as well: bedsheets pinning a girl down to be sawed in half and sharp wood slicing through a girl's eyeball. This flick is definitely a cult classic and real guilty pleasure. Well worth hunting down if you're into this sort of thing.

Soul of the Demon is one of the few films I've already seen from the Tomb of Terrors box set and I remember it being pretty good. It starts out with police cleaning up a gory murder scene over the credits including bloody murder weapons, shreds of flesh with moving disembodied eyeballs and bodies laying under bloody sheets. Two kids dig up a demonic statue and are warned by a guy with really bad skin to put it back. They don't of course and later on some teens have a séance invoking the demon, Astaroth whose soul resides in the statue. 50 minutes in and the movie picks up as the demon precedes to slaughter the houseful of teens. This is were the movie delivers with some great low budget gore. A head explodes (unfortunately it's too dark to see much) splattering brain matter over a woman who is then elevated above a bed and she is brutally ripped in two in an awesome, gruesome gore scene. There's also a stick through the eye and out the back of the skull, a woman sawed through the hoo-hah (not very graphic), a twisted neck, a head cut in half with the top half still having the eyes moving, a nasty stomach ripping open to spill guts Fulci style with the body ending up in two pieces and a hand plunged into a man's back with his spine being torn out. While not a total gorefest these last 25 minutes are blood drenched and worth the doldrums of most of the rest of the movie. The effects are quite good for the budget level.

Soul of the Demon would make a good double feature with Fatal Exam, recently released in a box set by Vinegar Syndrome. Both have similar plots involving demonic activity in a house and are pretty slow for most of the runtime. Both pick up towards the end though Soul of the Demon delivers much better bloodshed while Fatal Exam is much longer but its "boring" parts are more interesting including lots and lots of Pepsi drinking. Both also have some hilariously bad but endearing demon "animation". This being SOV is probably why the snobs at Vinegar Syndrome haven't released it yet.

This is the most ridiculously low budget horror flick I've ever seen! It's awesome! And somehow they manage to have quite a few over the top gory special effects scenes through out the movie. It tends to follow the ancient formulas,e.g.: When one of they characters decides to leave the group to pick up some pizza,...of course he gets killed first! The characters are the cheesiest tough guy metal heads you've ever seen! Here is my favorite line from the movie: girl: Hey, your nose is bleeding! Are you okay!?! guy: Uh, yeah, huh huh, must be the rough sex! *blood start pouring from his ears too* guy:UUUUUHHH, IT HURTS...*BOOM, his head blows up only to be followed by an even more impressive death as the "girl" is raised up off the bed and torn into two pieces by some invisible force!* If you love movies that are so bad they are good, you will love this!

Two kids find an ancient demon statue in a coffin-shaped box. Coincidentally, the older brother of one of the kids decides to hold a seance with his friends, that very night. In an old abandoned house!

What could possibly go wrong?

When the group inadvertently conjures the demon from the statue, many grisly deaths ensue.

While it is extremely cheap looking, SOUL OF THE DEMON isn't a complete disaster. It makes the best of its limited resources by taking its cues from 1980's trash classics like NIGHT OF THE DEMONS. Besides, gorehounds will be giddy over the gushy guts and dismemberments!

Worth a look if you can tolerate the bargain basement production values...