CHECK OUT OUR DISCUSSION OF DEMONS 1 and 2 on the Really Awful Movies Podcast.
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The residents of this apartment complex could use a tenants’ association.
Demons 2 continues where Demons 1 left off: that is to say, springing to life from a bad movie. However, the movie-within-a-movie in the sequel isn’t nearly as crappy: a bunch of urban explorers scale a wall and scope out an abandoned factory. Tetanus shots for everyone!
One of them runs his hands along some barbed wire and isn’t cut (whoops) but their good fortune ends there as one of them happens upon a “demon’s claw” which looks like the dry ingredient of a lobster cocktail. The explorers bring the claw back to life by accidentally bleeding on it, perhaps rendered more believable had it been from a hand wound from said barbed wire.
This shlocker is on television, captivating an entire Hamburg apartment complex which really needs a better cable package, not to mention better parenting behaviour as even the kids are transfixed by the film (one young’un even answers the phone with “I’m home alone!”).
Mario Bava’s son Lamberto directs and explores, however briefly, the lives of these high rise denizens. This includes a bunch of spandex-clad gym rats and a couple, one of whom is pregnant and doing an odd exercise routine with a clearly visible fanny pack baby bump.
There’s also one “Sally” who is having a huge birthday throw-down and is constantly fretting about her hair and dress (director Bava appears as her dad, out for dinner with mom and having a dismal time at a restaurant complete with a German accordion band in a thinly veiled pot-shot at Teutonic culture).
Soon, Sally will have concerns much graver than sartorial ones as she and the other residents of the building turn into mindless flesh-eating demons when the movie’s zombie characters emerge through tenant televisions, Poltergeist-style, first with white noise (Ringu The Ring would follow a similar plot line, except with a video that kills its viewers a week later.)
The building’s got a big gym downstairs and personal trainer Hank (Tony the Pimp, played by the excellent Bobby Rhodes from the first Demons) enlists the help of his fellow meat-heads by jumping on a car in the underground garage and giving a Cyrus/Warriors-esque speech to rally the troops.
There are some great kills including death by “pec dec” gym equipment as well as a tanning bed that kills by crushing rather than UV/skin cancer. Also tune in to see what happens to Daisy the Dog.
Hilarious dialogue abounds too: “What are you doing? I’m just giving oxygen to our baby” and “Mind if we do it with the television on? We can do it any way you like.”
Demons 2 is basically Cronenberg’s Shivers meets Night of the Living Dead — two site favorites. Combined, you simply can’t go wrong.
To hear more about Demons, check out our chat about Demons 1 and 2 on the Really Awful Movies Podcast
***1/2 (out of 5)
Really Awful Movies 
That speech from Bobby Rhodes on the car is easily the highlight of the movie.
There were problems with this one. If I remember correctly, on the old AB commentary track, the moderator asks Bava what’s going on in the film and he responds, “I don’t know.” I think it was around the end, with the helicopter.
Still, I never understood how someone who enjoyed Demons 1 can outright hate Demons 2. It’s certainly weaker, but not by THAT much!
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