When Simon Pegg was doing the interview circuit in support of the excellent film Shaun of the Dead that he co-wrote and starred in, he did an interview with Britain's The Big Issue where he said what many horror fans perhaps thought but never dared say, that zombies were "a bit rubbish". This isn't meant as a knock on our beloved brain dead friends but rather he was referring to the way that a zombie in of itself is not particularly threatening. With a bare minimum of thought processes and with only the compulsion to kill and eat, not to mention poor motor responses and slow movement, your average zombie is a pretty poor excuse for a monster with only large numbers of them creating any sort of threat. 28 Days Later went some way to answering this criticism by making the film's 'Infected' antagonists fast-moving psychotic killing machines however, they're not zombies in the strictest sense, just human victims of a rage-based plague. The makers of the Dawn of the Dead remake found a mid-point between the traditional shambling zombies and this new breed of faster and more dangerous enemy and while many felt this was heresy the resulting film was an absolute blast. Perhaps part of why this is comes from the fact that whether on purpose or entirely by accident, the remake of Dawn reminded this scribe that the Italian horror movie makers had been doing stuff like this for years. For instance, Umberto Lenzi made the cult favourite Nightmare City (also known as City of the Walking Dead) in 1980 where an accident with radiation causes the appearance of irradiated blood-drinking zombies capable of driving vehicles and using weapons. Then Dario Argento and director Lamberto Bava, son of Mario, brought us the extremely nasty Demons in 1985. While not zombies per say, the titular demons were fast and vicious while still sharing some characteristics of their zombie cousins. Whether you accept these things as zombies or not, the resulting film is a gruesome experience which is so 'Italian' in style one would have to be obsessively purist not to enjoy.

A young woman named Cheryl is traveling on a train in Berlin, minding her own business amongst a host of morose-looking German people. When the train enters a tunnel she catches a glimpse of a man's face outside the window but just as quickly as it appeared, it is gone again. Departing the train, she finds herself alone on the platform and becomes aware that the man she saw briefly appears to be following her. She rushes from the platform and up an escalator, and almost bumps into the very fellow she was attempting to get away from. He looks like he came right off the set of a cheap Italian rip-off of Mad Max, head to foot in leather and wearing a metal mask over part of his face, seemingly hiding some sort of facial disfigurement. However, all he's doing is giving out complimentary tickets to a free screening at a new cinema called the Metropole. Cheryl takes two, one for her and one for her friend Kathy (gotta love these exotic mainland-European names eh?) and off they toddle. The Metropole is threadbare and strange, in the foyer a dummy stolen off the set of another slightly lower budget Italian rip-off of Mad Max sits atop a dirt bike holding a katana in one hand an a vaguely demonic-looking silver mask in the other. There appears to be one member of staff, an usherette decked out in green and possessing an obscene amount of hair and crazy eyes that are spaced too far apart. People arrive including the two young ladies we saw already, plus two young men who immediately try and pick them up. Others include a middle-aged couple who hate each other, a pimp and his two hos, and a blind man and his daughter. Ho #1 goofs off with the metal mask on display but cuts her face in the process, the significance of which will come into play shortly. The screening starts and the viewers are treated to several scenes from a dreadfully acted horror movie within a dreadfully acted horror movie. Four youths break into an old cemetery and end up finding the tomb of Nostradamus, uh huh, and inside is a mask just like the one on display in the cinema! Egad! One of the characters cuts himself with it and soon turns into a foaming demon and goes on the rampage. The same thing happens in 'real life' too as the ho with the cut goes to the ladies room and herself turns into an Alka-Seltza drooling beast and with every attack another person is infected. All hell breaks loose and the cinema-goers flee, only to find that all the doors and windows have been bricked up. There's no escape from the ever-increasing demon onslaught and even worse, Accept and Motley Crew are on the soundtrack! AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRG!!!!

Demons is not for everybody. If you don't like pointless stereotypes, bad acting, nasty gore, ripping off of better films, and plots that make no sense, you should probably avoid this. For the rest of us there is much to enjoy here, however Demons suffers from many of the problems that would seem to be inherent in the Italian horror genre. The cast and characterisation are pretty awful but things are made worse by the fact that the film wasn't shot in sync-sound, instead the voices were dubbed on afterwards. The results are mostly terrible, most notable being the pimp character who even though is portrayed by a black man is dubbed by someone who clearly is NOT black, one almost expects them to add "sucka" or "fool" to the end of every clichéd line he spouts. Most of the rest of the cast are either utterly helpless women or whiney jerks who grate on your nerves to the point that they just can't die quickly enough. A group of coke-snorting punks enter the film part way through in a stolen car but sadly any credibility is lost when the heaviest song they listen to in their car is Billy Idol's 'White Wedding'. The best character is the blind guy who goes to the movies with his daughter; he just sits there and asks her what's happening, why the hell did he go in the first place? Another quirk of the Italian horror movie, or should that be casualty, is plot. People are tricked into going to a cinema, are trapped inside and are slaughtered by angry slobbering beasties before becoming one themselves. Why is this happening and who is behind it? Who the hell is the guy with the silver mask? Why does the usherette seem as clueless as to what's going on as everybody else despite working there? How come nobody walks out five minutes into the horrendous film they're watching? Why is it the tough coke-snorting outlaw punks don't listen to anything heavier than Billy Idol? If you want a horror with logic, narrative, and a story that explains anything at all, the Italian horror genre should probably be avoided altogether. Even the way the demon-isty starts is lame, hoping that some poor sap would cut themselves on the shiny metal mask in the foyer is taking a pretty big gamble, and luckily the bricklayers made quick work of walling the hapless victims inside. These are a few of the plot 'eccentricities' on display here, alarming considering the film credits four people with the writing of this mess, including director Bava and producer Argento. However, these shortcomings will only affect your enjoyment as much as you allow them to, many will find at least some amusement in the appalling writing.

Despite these flaws, Demons is a rip-roaring good horror movie that has aged amazingly well in the twenty years since its genesis. Made for less than two million dollars, the film relies very heavily on gore and special effects and even today they are highly effective, visceral and gruesome. Demons must have been quite the challenge for special effects creator Sergio Stivaletti and his crew as the film not only calls for the usual claw slashing and violence but on-screen transformations and other such body horrors were to be rendered on screen. The results are very impressive. Demons, along with John Carpenter's version of The Thing show that just because computer graphics have come a long way and are capable of more and more realistic and ambitious special effects, when it comes to good old gore you really can't beat prosphetic limbs, fake heads and buckets of fake blood. Demons features some truly outstanding effects, wounds gush green goo, claws grow from hands, nasty pointy teeth push regular human ones out of mouths, a small demon appears from a woman's back, all in blood-soaked grisly glory. While not 100% convincing, when a fake head has been used you can tell, the sheer nastiness not to mention the creativity involved ensures their success. In addition, one of this scribe's favourite effects moments didn't even include any gore. The scene in question was reproduced on the film's posters and case covers and features a mob of demons coming up a staircase, a bright light comes from behind while their eyes are like mirrors - blank and reflecting light towards the camera. The scene is a visual treat and one of the best and most atmospheric moments in the film. Despite the poor writing, the proceedings must be credited with some originality as even though the ending apes certain zombie classics, Bava and company deliberately went out of their way to differentiate their film from the glut of Italian Living Dead clones coming out (there's about fifty two thousand of them). As mentioned before, the film's antagonists resemble the beasties seen in more recent movies as they do not merely shamble, rather they run around in a frenzy, taking great gashes out of any human they come across. They also kill in more original ways, witness the kissing lovers simultaneously killed by a red rope, or the woman who dies when her scalp is forcibly torn from her skull. Added to the fun is a 80's alternative/hard rock soundtrack that gives a whole different feel, the fast guitar riffs adding a certain urgency to the proceedings. Its no wonder they decided to replicate this formula so faithfully in the following year's Demons 2.

Demons has its fair share of problems, but is nevertheless an overlooked gem, suffering a little due to the popularity of the output from Bava's contemporaries such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Plot and character development is greatly lacking, but if you just want to see some good gore and a cast of stupid people doing stupid things and getting massacred for it, look no further. Oh yeah, and these demons would, like, totally kick zombies' asses.