Night of the Demons (1988)
Night of the Demons is probably the worst movie I own. Well, maybe that’s Body Melt, but Night of the Demons is certainly among the weakest of the movies I own and have no intention of ever getting rid of. Like many of films by Kevin S. Tenney, Night of the Demons is enjoyable in spite of itself. Tenney is a director of simple pleasures and so long as those pleasures aren’t good acting, good writing, a good plot, or anything that involves a budget you’re good. And while this is a firmly backhanded compliment that I’m sure I’ll regret if I ever met Kevin Tenney and he had read this, I do mean it sincerely, his movies are the worst things I’ve ever enjoyed.
Night of the Demons is a movie that’s got two things going for it, it’s got some creative special effects and the characters are a notch above the usual death-fodder you find in 80s horror movies. Neither one is the top of the pile but it sets Night of the Demons apart from just another forgettable 80s horror movie. The movie also has a pretty decent set-up and it being a movie just packed to the gills with nudity in an era before easily-found free pornography was a thing and it was a sure winner at the time.
The movie’s fun enough but slow to start and it’s really all about the third act. I found the sequels (and the spiritual sequels The Hazing and The Convent) to be more entertaining. Night of the Demons is fun, but I find little else to recommend.
Night of the Demons (2009)
The remake of Night of the Demons goes bigger and smaller than its predecessors. We’ve got a modestly well known cast here, with Shannon Elizabeth, Monica Keena from Freddy vs. Jason, Edward Furlong, and Tiffany Shepis. Linnea Quigley even shows up for a visual gag, repeating the famous upskirt shot from the original film except now it’s played for laughs instead of titillation, which is a better encapsulation of what the horror genre did to Linnea Quigley after she turned 40 than anything I could come up with.
The set-up is similar, it’s a different house but the idea of demons possessing people at a party and picking off guests until only a few remain is here again. The movie teases us with an opening scene involving a huge party only for the police to come and reduce us to a much smaller cast. There’s more special effects here and they’re primarily practical, there’s some decent gore effects, and the character beats play better than in the original. Edward Furlong even manages to acquit himself fairly well as the male lead of the movie. While I’m not sure how much of demon-possessed Angela is actually Shannon Elizabeth, she’s pretty decent in the few scenes where I know it’s definitely her.
Is it a good remake?
I would say yes, the Night of the Demons remake doesn’t quite capture that Halloween spirit like the first one does, and the story behind the haunted mansion in this movie isn’t quite as spooky or compelling as Hull House in the original movie, there’s still a lot of improvements here. The movie’s paced better, the acting is better, the characters are better, the special effects are better, and while it may not be quite as spooky as the original, it’s a much more enjoyable movie.
Does it stand on its own?
Night of the Demons ‘09 is considerably better than the original, but that metric is graded on a curve. There are scores of better movies than either Night of the Demons film, they’re both goopy low-budget cult films mostly notable for being a cut above similar movies like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama or Witchouse. So they stand on their own as dumb, fun horror movies and little else, but if you like that kind of thing then this is a pretty solid entry into that canon.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Watch it, think about buying it.