Shudder Saturday: Night Of The Demon (1980)

Ahhhhhh when in doubt for a viewing choice . . . you could always do worse than pick a title that was given the notorious "video nasty" label in the UK in the 1980s. Of course, you could also always do a lot better, but I am a simple man of simple pleasures. Watching Night Of The Demon was a weird experience for me. It's one of those films that I started to suspect I had seen before, many years ago, but couldn't recall exactly when. I'd either watched it before I started to get better at keeping track of my ratings and reviews, or I'd seen bits of it back when it would have been viewable in contraband VHS form. Or maybe it just has that feel of so many other video nasties I have seen.

The plot is, quite frankly, bobbins. An anthropology professor (played by Michael Cutt) takes a load of his students into the wild to track down some kind of Bigfoot creature. Oh, the creature has spent some time mutilating and killing people it has encountered, but that doesn't dissuade this group of determined disposable victims. 

This is the kind of film that makes up for a lack of budget and technical ability with some scenes that really wallow in grime and grottiness. Not that any of it is truly shocking, certainly not nowadays, but there's still something satisfying about watching a film from this era that feels as if it has a certain edge and unpleasantness to at least warrant some of the over-reaction to what was becoming more accessible via VHS throughout the 1980s (predominantly). Despite it being murky and overacted throughout, this at least tries to deliver on how it was sold. Things happen, there are some gruesome moments, and there's even some gratuitous nudity thrown in there to upset modern viewers against that concept.

It's no surprise to see that this was the only screenplay written by Mike Williams, just as it isn't surprising to see that director James C. Wasson never did anything to match this dubious success, but I applaud them for presenting something here that feels very much like an unabashedly trashy and fun horror ride. This would make a surprisingly decent double-bill with something like The Funhouse (a film I have never loved as much as most horror fans), or you could maybe slot it into a line-up full of much less eventful "Bigfoot" movies. Just don't accidentally line it up after Harry And The Hendersons, I don't think anyone could handle that traumatic juxtaposition.

The cast all deserve some praise for participating, considering some of the more unpleasant scenes, but there's nobody here you will immediately recognise from many other movies. Cutt went on to have a number of other roles in film and TV, as did Paul Kelleher (who plays the Sheriff here), but many, such as Melanie Graham, Shannon Cooper, William F. Nugent, and Jody/Jodi Lazarus, appeared in very few, if any, projects after this.

There's so much to dislike here, but I liked this, despite the fact that it's the kind of film that gets you a side-eye from people if you mention it as something you have enjoyed. Okay, maybe I am being a bit more positive BECAUSE of that, pushing back against those who can't appreciate all of the wide and varied movie entertainment that comes under that big umbrella of cinema. That doesn't alter the fact that I would watch this a dozen more times before I would watch the interminably dull Willow Creek though, which is something I hope they put on any advertising when this is re-issued for some glorious 50th anniversary cinema release.*

*never going to happen, I know, but I would support it nonetheless.

6/10

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Cannibal Terror (1980)

Directed by Alain Deruelle, and a couple of uncredited helping hands, and written by a few people, you have to wonder just how it took so many people to create one big lump of useless rubbish when surely one person could have messed everything up just as well. I could have created something more worthwhile than this back in 1980, and I was only 4 years old then.

Cannibal Terror gained some notoriety when it was banned in the UK in the "video nasty" debacle of the 1980s but deserves none of it. Basically, people just thought the worst when they saw a movie with the word "cannibal" in the title and banned something that, ironically, didn't deserve one ounce of the attention it found heaped upon it.

Some people kidnap a little girl, some people try to follow the kidnappers, and then some cannibals eat lengthy innards now and again, and that's almost the summary of the entire movie. Oh yeah, it also has one of those scenes where a woman is casually raped and then acts pretty nonchalant about the whole thing afterwards. You know, those scenes that rarely appear in films for good  reason. If any of the actual cannibal stuff was nasty and entertaining for gorehounds, then this may still have been saved, but it's not. The whole movie is just horribly dull.

Full of bad acting, inept direction, a soundtrack that sounds as if someone tone deaf was given a scrambled score for a mini-synthesiser version of "La Bamba" and coma-inducing pacing make this movie an absolute chore to sit through and unworthy of your time, even if you're like me and just trying to catch up with every title that was ever labelled a "video nasty". Truly terrible.

2/10

Buyer beware - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cannibal-Terror-DVD-Burt-Altman/dp/B000UOOUXY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1389011640&sr=8-2&keywords=cannibal+terror

Faces Of Death (1978)

I usually have an answer ready when people ask me "but why would you watch THAT?". It might not be an answer they agree with but it's an answer nonetheless. Film, like any art, isn't just supposed to provide people with numerous warm, fuzzy and comfortable moments. It entertains but it also holds a mirror up and forces us to look, it raises questions, it puts forward strange and exciting ideas, it can cause extreme reactions. And few reactions will be more extreme than the one you have if you're ever unfortunate enough to see Faces Of Death.

I'd heard of this infamous title many years ago, of course, and knew that it was something not necessarily to be viewed for enjoyment. It would be challenging and, perhaps, disturbing. But having been made back in the late 70s, I assumed that it would also have lost a lot of the power it once had and would have dated badly. Well, it has dated but that doesn't really lessen the impact any - because violence and death are constants, no matter what the decade.

Positioning itself as some sort of thoughtful look at mortality and the impact that man has on the planet, other animals and even himself, Faces Of Death is one of the few movies that has left me pretty disgusted. Because the fact is that this is just a cheap and easy way to cash in on death and no amount of lame narration can change that.

Some of the scenes are faked, and some of them quite obviously so, but there is also plenty here that's all too real. A dog fight involving two pitbulls, a cockerel having its head chopped off, animals going through a slaughterhouse, a suicide victim or two and plenty of footage of dead bodies being prodded and emptied and examined. You can pretty much smell the fetid stench of death emanating from the screen and it's not a nice sensation.

But maybe the point of the film is to alert us to dangers all around us and to teach us some helpful lessons about how best to get through life? No. In fact, you'd be better off watching the Final Destination series for guidelines on how to live that little bit longer. And at least those movies are entertaining. Michael Carr, as Dr. Francis B. Gross, does what he can but it's just not enough in the face of such overwhelmingly macabre and unpleasant material.

John Alan Schwartz wrote and directed this Mondo movie (and even in that particular subgenre I would place it near the bottom of the pile as many other, earlier Mondo films at least gave the appearance of being a bit more educational, even if it was all just nonsense) and it certainly remains a shocking work that many will end up disliking. Like I did.

2/10.

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