Really Awful Movies

If there’s one horror movie series that personifies what we do on this site, it’s Demons 1 and 2.

You’ll notice our podcast graphic is a reproduction of Bobby Rhodes and company emerging from the stairs, but put on in theater as a tribute to Siskel and Ebert (there’s three people for visual symmetry, even though there’s only two of us who host the show).

REALLY_AWFUL_MOVIES_PODCAST That said, we have a third member of our team who drops by on occasion, a kind of session man adding axe-work to our usual riffing.

He’s Scott Drebit over at Daily Dead. He holds the Demons films in as high esteem as we do. As he puts it in his excellent column Drive-In Dust Offs, the film abjures Romero’s social subtext in favor of what he calls, “maximum carnage, vibrantly displayed.”

Pace Signor Lamberto Bava, we acknowledge that Demons are NOT zombies, it was just a comparison m’kay?!

Both Demons are so stupid they transcend the stupid. Goethe might’ve said there’s nothing worse than aggressive stupidity, but in the case of this series, there’s damn-near nothing better.

It’s one of the few films that produce revulsion, laughter and applause. The first one is basically a metal video with eye gougings; it’s a kinetic assault on the senses, virtually plot-less, chaotic and intense.

It is the quintessential Really Awful Movies movie, as it’s by no means high art, yet it does what it does exceedingly well. It’s a rare breed, the horror that perfectly produces unintentional laughs and bloody thrills. More often than not the latter suffers at the expense of the former.

The movie’s been front and center on this site, appearing as a brand banner which eventually replaced Really Awful Movies favorite, the Man in the Pan from Re-Animator (a film that produces pound for pound, more intentional laughs and bloody thrills than any other). It inspired this website’s merchandise too…

So yeah.

A site banner, a graphic…We’ve chatted about both Demons 1 and 2 on the podcast and we’ve reviewed both films on the site. We included Demons in our book, Death by Umbrella! The 100 Weirdest Horror Movie Weapons. Also, we used snippets of the first film in our podcast intro and even got the rights clearance to do so.

And we hear that a 3D remake is on the horizon, which is pretty darn exciting.

We haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing Demons in a cinema, which is a shame, as seeing a movie about movie goers transformed into rapacious attacking demons is molto meta.

Grazie mille Dèmoni…

Like Parzival, we “travel with Fortune’s instruction,” a quest to watch as many random genre films as humanly possible. In the early days, this meant tracking down as many “massacre” movies as time allowed. Sorority House Massacre is one such film, if not exactly the holy grail of 80s slashers.

With a cover to entice teen boys everywhere, Sorority is on the surface, a run-of-the-mill era slasher with, well, lots of slashing and a knife pointed at a boob (not belonging to anyone actually appearing in the film, but that’s incidental).

This is a Roger Corman co-production, a rarity in that it was directed by a woman, Carol Frank (also responsible for assisting Deborah Brock, the director of The Slumber Party Massacre, which dropped its definite article for its incredibly inane and hilarious sequel. Please see our list of 10 Spring Break Horror Movies).

Sorority sister Beth is rattled by flashbacks to childhood trauma — flashbacks along with cheesy prologues being practically compulsory in the period.

In a dream like state, Beth encounters three chimerical figures, one of whom warns her to “be careful” vis-a-vis the sorority house in question.

Luckily, in the real world, people heed advice from the likes of financial planners, doctors, and personal trainers. In horror, regardless of the source, advice of all kinds is routinely ignored.

Set close to the Memorial Day weekend, this was likely nearly called Memorial Day Massacre, but maybe holiday horrors have a shorter shelf-life? Can’t see anyone flocking to a Santa slasher well into February. Fun fact: in the inspired hicksploitation send-up Tucker and Dale vs Evil, there is actually a reference to a “Memorial Day massacre.”

Anyway, Sorority House Massacre is not all about stripping down to skivvies (Though there’s a trying-on-dresses/topless synth montage): These girls go to class too.

Linear Algebra? Introduction to Materials Science? HELL NO! Rather, Anthropology and Psychology classes about deja vu and clairvoyance so Beth can have nightmarish visions of knives going through her desk.

To further her PTSD, there’s an obnoxious frat guy telling cigarette lighter-lit tales of pick-axe horrors. The account: a brother who murdered his entire family in THAT VERY SORORITY HOUSE.

Against the backdrop of an escaped lunatic on the loose, there’s fun period dialogue like “God Tracy, get sensitive!” and “I can pitch a tent”-type double- entendres.

That’s enough of a background you’ll need to get a sense of this slasher, which draws heavily on Halloween.

The film’s silly, but also somewhat underrated. There’s some neat Italian slow-mo of blood dripping from ceilings, shattered glass, and general POV creepiness.

*** (out of 5)