As I woke up last Friday with the wind and rain rapping at my bedroom window, I decided to brew a pot of Lady Grey tea, turn on the PS3 & TV and go through some of the files I’ve got backed up on the hard disc. What followed was an impromptu look back at my favorite decade of horror (and undoubtably the best decade for gore) as I worked through a bunch of ’80s classics that I can now finally cross off my “I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Watched That Yet” list. First up was Demons.

I am a huge fan of Italian director Mario Bava and had been meaning to check out his son’s notorious film (produced by Dario Argento) for a while now. I remember as a young pre-teen the cover of this VHS would scare the shit out of me and made me skip past the Horror section of my video store (unfortunately a Google image search did not return any results).

In the interest of transparency, I must say that I am predisposed to like this movie, as I am with most films that star a large cast trapped in one place being terrorised and killed one by one. But even beyond that this movie is very good. I think with these kinds of films (shlocky horror films) the plot is not as important as characters and special effects. I don’t mean to say story should be disregarded, but rather a generic story is often better. This way we have a basic story to follow, the characters add stakes and emotional engagement (or at least interest), which enhances the effect of the special effects on the audience.

On that note, I may just briefly touch on the effects, saying that they are amazing. Frequent Argento collaborator Sergio Stivaletti and Lucio Fulci’s Rosario Prestopino are part of the team behind bringing the demons to life and (again) they knock it out of the park.

Next up From Beyond.