Really Awful Movies

CHECK OUT OUR DISCUSSION OF DEMONS 1 and 2 on the Really Awful Movies Podcast.

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, and recently, revisiting Demons 2.

***1/2 (out of 5)

Uh oh, another fraternity prank gone wrong! It’s absolutely vital for a slasher movie to have a backstory, so that an hour of indiscriminate killing can have a point. That’s opposed to slashers without a backstory, which merely have an hour plus of indiscriminate killing. Key distinction.

Pledge Night is the story of the ill-fated aspirants of Phi Epsilon Gnu, guys eager to join their psychopathic cricket sweater-wearing brethren.

One pledge is warned about these kinds of organizations by his mother, although he should’ve been tipped off by the creepy, sinister homoerotic initiation rituals such as the “cherry racing” (hopefully something that only exists in the minds of the movie’s creators — we didn’t Google) in which cherries are picked up by the buttocks in an entirely revolting relay.

Pledge_night-frat — If you play your cards right, you too will be able to look like you stepped out of Jay Gatsby’s garden party!

Anyway, back in the day, sayeth mom, there was an ill-fated prank at the previous incarnation of the frat (since disbanded):

“The fraternity brothers were preparing this mix for initiation. It was supposed to be a harmless mixture…my boyfriend Sid was up first.”

“This mix” was a bathtub full of what was supposed to be something stinky and unpleasant to dunk a pledge in, but it turned out to be…A VAT OF ACID.

Boyfriend Sid is played by the singer from metal band Anthrax, who looks like he wouldn’t be caught within an acid bath’s distance of ANY dumb frat let alone this one…anyway…

Sidney died the next day, in the intensive care unit.

Or did he…bwaaaaaaaaaaa!

What makes this one a marginal cut above the usual frat house massacre movie is this red herring: “every year they pick a brother to scare the other pledges.”

As a result, victims are reticent about sounding the panic alarm.

And how’s this for dedication, making the killer’s job that much easier? “The screams are just to freak us out. Remember: we’re confined to the basement so we remain brothers.”

So, these “dirty pledges” “scum” and “the lowest forms of life” get theirs, while the viewer gets some fake scares (interspersed with the usual picking a victim off one by one).

There’s one notable killing that would make Martha Stewart or Gordon Ramsay proud: an eggbeater murder!

*** (out of 5)