Night of the Demons (1988)! Horror movie review

The eighties are quite rightly revered as a golden decade of horror. What stands out in so many of the horror films made during this period is a genuine love for the genre carried through in movies with budgets both large and small.

Right from the off with its introductory animated sequence you can see that “night of the demons” is a horror film that has been lovingly crafted. The storyline itself is nothing ground breaking involving as it does a group of partying teenagers beseiged by evil spirits in a spooky house with a history but its just done with such aplomb and character that you cant help but enjoy the hell ride!!! The story takes place on the night of the halloween as a group of young un’s travel to an old house in the middle of nowhere to attend a party being thrown by party girl suzanne and her friend Angela, who just so happens to have a strong interest in the occult. The group decide to hold a seance as part of a party game which needless to say unleashes a savage group of demons that are hungry for fresh meat, murder and mayhem!

Special effects and make-up duties were carried out by Steve Johnson and they are simply monstermendous! This is one area of the film that on recent viewing has not aged at all. The blood looks real! The demons are suitably rotten! and i would not expect anything less from a man with this guys pedigree seeing as he has provided special effects and makeup duties for a ton of terror tales including the howling, ghostbusters, the fog, nightmare on elm street and bad moon to name but a few. An interesting piece of trivia for fright fans is that Steve Johnson ended up marrying Linnea Quigley who plays the part of Suzanne in the film.

A couple of standout scenes from the film include Angela performing an erotic dance to the bauhaus song “stigmata martyr” as she slowly becomes possessed by a demon and the character suzanne proving her nipples are as practical as they are pert! by using them as storage for her make-up!!! You really need to see the latter to understand this properly!

Angela as the demon begins to take hold!

Suzanne about to get real freaky with her nipples!!!

Audio is superb for the film throughout and makes excellent use of traditional haunted attraction type sound effects that really add to the halloween atmosphere of the film.

Night of the demons does suffer a little from the variance of acting ability on display! Without naming names, whilst there are some standout performances this invariably draws even more attention to those not quite on the same par as their fellow thespians!!!

In conclusion, Night of the demons is not a master piece and it never sets out to be! But it most certainly is a frightfully fun filled rotten romp of a horror movie, that was clearly put together with love and an intention to detail. Final score: 7.5 skulls out ten!