Almost Evil Dead

The truth about Hollywood is that most films that come out are derivative works of something else. Yes, it’s true that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every new work is built on the things that came before, with the famous quote from Picasso saying, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” That’s because you’re inspired by what you see and you learn from the art that already exists. It’s rare to see a wholly new idea come out of nowhere, and even those ideas are still built on the groundwork of other artistic ideas that came before (such as Star Wars emulating classic sci-fi and adventure serial ideas in new ways).

Still, when Hollywood sees something new come along that audiences seem interested in, a whole lot of other creatives and studios jump on board to make their own copies. Star Wars inspired a boom in sci-fi space operas. Jaws created a wave of fish and monster horror films. Halloween was so successful that holiday slasher flicks were all the rage for years. And even a low-budget little success like The Evil Dead inspired all number of wannabes and also-rans. One of those being the Night of the Demons, an “Evil Dead-alike” that draws heavy inspiration from Sam Raimi’s original horror classic and its sequel, Evil Dead II.

To be a film like The Evil Dead, you pretty much have to have three things: teens who go to a remote location, a ceremony those teens then (stupidly) perform because they don’t realize the consequences of their own (stupid) actions, and demons. Night of the Demons feels like it was purpose built to check off those boxes in order, leading its cast of characters along to a party in an old, abandoned mansion in the woods where the teens perform a seance, wake some demons, and then suffer when the demons start killing and possessing everyone. It’s a film that’s light on plot, heavy on demons, as it works to get its one job done: killing as many of the characters as it can before the credits roll.

Judy (Cathy Podewell) is a good girl, a student (high school or college, the film isn’t clear) who just wants to go to the school Halloween Dance and have a good time. But her boyfriend, Jay (Lance Fenton), hears about a party his friends are throwing at Hull House, an old, abandoned mansion that, at one point, served as a mortuary, and he decides to take Judy with him there instead. His friends, Max (Philip Tanzini) and Frannie (Jill Terashita), bum a ride to the party, while other teens they know – Hal Havins as "Stooge", Allison Barron as Helen, Alvin Alexis as Rodger – get there separately. And the whole thing is being put together by creepy girl Angela (Amelia Kinkade) and her friend, the "slutty one" Suzanne (Linnea Quigley).

The party is going well enough, with dancing and drinking and making out, until the music spontaneously shuts off for no reason. Taking it as an opportunity, Angela decides they should hold a seance, using a mirror to look into their reflections and attempt to see into their past lives. They don’t get through the ceremony before a demon is unleashed, and quickly it finds a receptive host in Suzanne. Then one by one, the possessed girl starts finding other hosts, picking them off and bringing them into the demonic hold. Once the other party-goers realize what’s happening, they try to escape, but the evil Hull House blocks them at every turn, locking exits and even removing ways they could try to flee. The survivors will have to work together, and improvise a way out, before they, too, become one with the demons.

At base level Night of the Demons does a pretty okay job of making a film similar to The Evil Dead. It has all the elements you would expect, along with decent makeup effects and a bit of gore as the movie wears on. There are moments that really rise to the occasion, that bring on a few scares and a bit of ick, that make you go, “yeah, this is a decent enough horror film.” It certainly tries very hard, and works for all it can to find the right energy appropriate for this kind of film. I can’t knock the film for trying.

The issue with the movie is that it doesn’t have the same level of demonic glee with its subject matter that The Evil Dead or Evil Dead II could muster. Raimi and his collaborators went hard on the splatter, gore, and silliness, and it makes for an absolutely demented and chaotic good time. The Evil Dead is the kind of film where anything can happen, where characters sway between good and evil, possessed and freed, and all the while all kinds of crazy, zany, absolutely gore-tastic moments are going on around them. The Evil Dead keeps you on your toes because it’s unrelenting and off-the-wall all the time. Night of the Demons never finds that level of energy.

Night of the Demons spends far too long on setting up its demonic romp. The whole first act is spent introducing us to the characters, slowly trickling them to the party, and even spelling out the mythology of the film. I admire that the film wants us to know some of these characters well and that it has this whole, elaborate background for the setting (a haunted mansion built on demonic land that has been evil since the days of the Native Americans), but it takes far too much time setting everything up when, deep down, all we really want are demons and murder.

Unfortunately, once we get to the demonic possession, it still takes its time. The Evil Dead is unrelenting, but Night of the Demons isn’t. It lets its characters walk off and wander away in pairs around the large (and ill-defined) mansion, taking their time chatting and screwing before a demon finally shows up. With a massive setting, the demons have to wander, stalk, and wait for their prey. It makes you appreciate The Evil Dead, where everything takes place in, essentially, one big room so the players can’t easily escape the demons. It keeps the action focused, where Night of the Demons lacks that same focus.

But, as I said, there are moments that do work really well. There’s an eye-gouging scene that’s particularly effective (and goopy), and this is preceded by a rather famous scene where a possessed girl inserts a lipstick tube into her breast. That’s a weird moment that is never mentioned again, but it does help to illustrate the unsettling ways the demons have taken over and adapted within their host bodies. I wish there were more moments like that, and less of the demons just slowly chasing after victims while those victims flee, over and over again.

The biggest sin of Night of the Demons is simply that the film isn’t scary. Due to its slow pace, wandering demons, and general lack of gleeful energy, the film is never really able to muster the tension or terror you need from a horror film. Its few great moments don’t make up for the long stretches where nothing happens, letting the audience drift off into a kind of stupor until something interesting eventually happens minutes later. It’s not well paced, not well marked, and it just can’t rise to the occasion even when it tries.

You can feel that the creators of Night of the Demons knew what they wanted to make but they didn’t have the right ideas of exactly how to truly pull it off. They wanted to create something legally distinct, with its own flavor, while still clearly playing in the genre defined by The Evil Dead, but in the process of doing this they lost the very energy that made that splatstick film interesting. Night of the Demons tries, and I give it credit for that, but this is a textbook case of a copy lacking the sharpness of the original.