Call me blasphemous if you must, but I’ve always seen Demons 2 as a far superior movie to the first film.
I originally picked up discount VHS copies of both flicks at Suncoast Video in ninth grade and secretly watched both in the video editing booth at school, mostly due to their undoubtedly satanic nature that would have brought me hell at home.
Demons is somewhat fondly remembered by Italian horror fans for its wholly cinematic rampage in a Brigadoon-like movie house where an audience full of grating stereotypes is mysteriously locked in as a sketchy film about Nostradamus inspires the gates of hell to open and the titular beasts to wreak havoc on the world.
In Demons 2, however, a remake (I believe) shows on television, one that the once-again stereotypical denizens of an apartment building are all watching. Starting with a wholly whiny woman having a birthday party where she throws a temper tantrum every few minutes sobbing about God knows what, a demon pops out of the TV showing the film and possesses her, rather violently.
Now a demon herself, as she throat-rips all of the partygoers into demons themselves — not sure how that works, but I’ll go with it — they, in turn, infect the other tenants, including members of a health club, a small boy and, in one of the movie’s evilest aspects, an adorable dog I named Mr. Scruffles.
Meanwhile, two uninfected heroes try to survive the night, with varying results.
With far better special effects pulled off in far more imaginative ways, Demons 2 has a slight Gothic riff on the first one, with the main difference being the soundtrack, featuring great tunes by The Smiths, The Cult, and Love and Rockets, to name a blackened few. That’s more than enough to recommend it as far as I’m concerned. —Louis Fowler