When I popped the Night of the Demons remake into my machine, I did so with complete certainty that no matter how much it sucked, I would still prefer it to the 1988 original. Y’see, I came to the first Night late into the game, so instead of nursing fond teenage memories of that crazy film where that chick sticks a lipstick container into her boob, I instead think of it as 90 minutes spent with the most singularly obnoxious collection of horror movie assholes I’ve ever seen.
As the remake started, however, I found my faith tested. Once again, the screenwriters seemed to mistake having their characters insult each other for the first 20 minutes as a witty form of character development.
It isn’t, screenwriters. It really, really, isn’t.
Eventually, the demons appeared at the Halloween party and the characters grew less overtly hateful, and while I never actually found myself enjoying the film, it also never tortured me as much as the original. It is interesting to note that in the remake’s recreation of the infamous lipstick-in-the-tit scene, Diora Baird’s fake fake boobs look much more fake than Linnea Quigley’s original fake fake boobs, which suggests the art of fake-boob prosthesis is the one special effect that hasn’t advanced much in the intervening years.
Speaking of Quigley, she has a short cameo at the beginning. It made me sad. As did the performances of pretty much the rest of the cast, none of whom actually seem to want to be associated with the film — the worst offender being Shannon Elizabeth (completely miscast as Goth queen Angela), whose only remotely authentic moment comes in the scene where she fellates a wine bottle.
So, yeah, the terrible remake of Night of the Demons is pretty fucking terrible, but not as terrible as the terrible original, which I believe sets the terrible standard for horror movie terrible. Terrible progress? —Allan Mott
Then and only then do the spirits of the royalty leap from their paintings and converse with them. One of the ghosts is — and, oh, I do so hope the title of the film didn’t spoil this for you! — without a head. In order to bust an ancient curse wide open, he sure could use that noggin. The payoff scene finds the headless body running around like a loon as his melon hovers overhead.
One of the dorks has an important father, so there’s some concern that he shouldn’t be spring breaking and possibly ruin his father’s image, and one of the non-dorks falls in love with the really hot singer (Corrine Alphen) of an all-girl rock band (whose presence in the film is the only reason I’ve watched this movie as many times as I have).
I wasn’t sure if the movie was going to work, because Ryan and Travis didn’t seem like they were doing acting. Then I realized that’s the point: This is shot in a quasi-documentary style, with fly-on-the-wall glimpses into this couple’s ordinary life. It’s supposed to feel real, rather than theatrical, and does.