Night of the Demons is a cheesy haunted house movie that's low on demons and heavy on campy entertainment. It's not perfect, but it's a very entertaining movie. As usual, let's look into what makes this movie so enjoyable.
The story revolves around a bunch of teens who decide to have a party in a funeral parlor, and then the hostesses are possessed by demons. Other than that, the plot is pretty much standard haunted house movie fare, with not a lot of originality. This is a good thing, though. The plot also takes a backseat to the ridiculous characters. That's really the main attraction to this movie. The characters are just so over the top, it's worth watching solely for them. The dialog is riddled with silly one-liners, to the point where the film almost seems like a horror-comedy.
There's not a lot of character development in this movie, but there's no need for it. Character development takes a backseat to silly 80's stereotypes, and for once it actually works. Normally, the "Let's get drunk and party"-types are really annoying, but there's an injection of over the top 80's characteristics that make them quite fun to watch. There's the usual archetypes; the good girl, the boyfriend, that one couple that the audience doesn't really care about, the jerk, the comic relief fat guy, etc. The characters are played up to the point of being comical, however, and this leads to some very entertaining exchanges between the characters.
There's not a lot of suspense in this movie, either. In fact, there's almost no demons in this movie. There's a lot of creepy goings-on, but not a lot of demon action. They only show up during the last 30 minutes or so, but when they do, the makeup for them is fairly decent. The death scenes are fairly decent, too. There's only two scenes with special effects-based death; an eye-stabbing scene, and a flying disembodied arm. Both of these are fairly convincing, and don't come across as too campy.
Overall, this is a really silly and campy horror movie. It's not very scary, but it certainly is goofy. If you're in to awesome 80's-ness, it's definitely worth a watch. It's nothing profound, but it's definitely fun.
Enjoyment- 4.5/5
Quality- 2/5
IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093624/
March 28, 2012
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