 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Demons
|
 |
|
I first saw Demons on VHS in the mid 1980s – in passing, as it were, one in a stack of tapes
grabbed from the local video store. I enjoyed it, and thought: “OK film. Some
interesting elements”. It resonated with a bunch of styles and trends evident
in the global genre cinema of the period: horror, teen, thriller, gore, giallo … at a moment where almost anyone
with half a brain could agree with Philip Brophy’s intuition of 1983 that
“something different is happening in
these films”.
Thirty-five years or so later, I am revisiting Demons on DVD. It isn’t, any longer,
much of a film in my eyes. Whatever tingle of mad enchantment it once wielded
over me is gone, vanished. So I am clearly “out of phase” with the current
fan-cult retro-worship (marked by a 2021 “limited edition” Blu-ray from Arrow)
of this film, its 1986 sequel (Demons 2),
and its director (Lamberto Bava, son of Mario – although I do have a soft spot
for the wild deframings of his 2007 Ghost
Son).
But this out-of-it situation, at least, causes me to
reflect on certain conditions of fandom: how certain films seem notable in
their time and cultural context – or, to switch to the different evolutionary
time-scale of the individual, how they can “click” if encountered at a
specific, optimal moment of one’s own cinephilic development. Both time-scales
(the cultural and the individual) are equally valid; it’s useless crying “I was
around when the fad was hot and now it’s gone stone cold!” to a younger
generation. In fact, the so-called distinct sensibilities of “generations”
(despite journalists’ undying obsession with marking, defining and comparing
them) having nothing to do with anything – they’re just a convenient (tired)
fiction, a stupid myth. Whenever and however you encounter a film that signals
“something different” for you, grab onto it for dear life. And try to figure
out what that difference is, what it means, and how to express it in words.
Film taste is never a right-or-wrong situation;
there’s not much point in arguing that this film or that director is ultimately
“better”, richer, fuller on its own terrain, than Demons or anything else. (Although I do hold onto the personal
conviction that Bigas Luna’s great Anguish [1987] plays the reflexive “hysterical panic in a movie theatre” game far more
brilliantly than Bava and his confrères.)
Demons, produced and co-written by
Dario Argento, runs through various hallmarks of the maestro’s grand
haunt-and-slash style. The spectators of horror, transfixed as certain,
gruesome death approaches them; the slit of light through a door crack; the
plunging knives; the disco-driven music score by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin
(alternating with tracks by Billy Idol, Mötley Crüe, Go West). Bava – like many
‘80s filmmakers in the wake of Sam Raimi’s inaugural The Evil Dead (1981) – takes Argento’s terror trademarks to a more
hyper-literal level of queasy gore, with animated model work of spikes plunging
into eyes, flesh exploding with pus, creatures bursting out of bodies, and all
the rest of it – these were the merry years of what Brophy in his classic ’83
essay called horrality, horror and
semiotic textuality combined, as much influenced by early ‘80s David Cronenberg
(Scanners [1981] and Videodrome [1983]) as by Argento.
In the early scenes (which kick off proceedings well),
there’s a clear Brian De
Palma influence as well: the rushing-by train windows, fugitive glimpses
of apparitions in the dark, imposing station architecture of Dressed to Kill (1980) – mixed with the
obligatory, repertory stand-by of stalking (and suddenly disappearing)
footsteps from the Jacques Tourneur (1942) and Paul Schrader (1982) versions of Cat People. And all taking place in
Berlin, which seems like another Argento production-touch (as well as a
premonition of the truly dreadful 2018 remake by Luca Guadagnino of Argento’s
masterpiece Suspiria [1977]).
After the opening prelude, we reach the imposing
Metropol cinema, refurbished for an enigmatic reopening. Nobody in the projection
booth (it’s fully automated: sign o’ the times!) where a horror movie (who made
it?) is about to unspool; no one around except a blonde, spooky-looking usher
taking the invite cards handed out by that semi-masked man in the metro … But
this is not the kind of film where anyone requires backstory explanations of a
“demons mythology”, heaven forbid. The sequels (Michele Soavi’s The Church [1989] serves as a loose
third instalment) just multiply the fuzzy Chinese-box conceits (like being
attacked through a transmitting TV set) without ever really explaining
anything. There are demons loose in our world: that’s all there is to it.
It’s only the shut-in, le grand renfermement, that matters: once the demons start
multiplying and killing, the Metropol becomes a typical giallo-style spatial architectural labyrinth, with its (literally)
confusing thick red curtains, its stairs and corridors and rooms extending to
some fuzzy infinity (breaking through walls brings no clarity, for the
demon-pursued, as to the floor-plan layout), its vivid patches of blue-lit
walls (odd prefiguration of the candy-coloured LED lighting of every indie film
of today!). We could almost be in the surreal Roman cinema of Bernardo
Bertolucci’s La Luna (1979) – except that where, once, a
roof opened to show the miracle of the sky and the moon, now a helicopter full of corpses smashes through the ceiling down into
the aisles (its spinning blades will come in handy as a self-defence tool).
Demons is not rigorous in its spatial
play (neither full-on surrealist nor convincingly realist) – as Argento at his
best and De Palma are – but there is a pleasing pattern of tight little
gauntlets (an air vent, a passage through heaped-up seats) through which
characters must agonisingly squirm. That’s part of what made Demons interesting to the open-minded
cinephiles of 1985: that lightly formalist element we (rightly) associated with John Carpenter, Walter Hill and other prime
practitioners of the fantastique. Add
to that the manic “excess” – an open-access keyword for horror fans back then
and again today – of a guy zooming around the cinema on a motorbike wielding a
sword for the purposes of mass-demon-decapitation – and I believe I have pretty
much accounted for what I enjoyed in this movie when I was in my 20s.
Too often, however, Demons amounts to just the anything-goes trick of a supine body
suddenly confronted with a demonic hand appearing from absolutely anywhere in
the frame to rip out their throat or whatever. It’s too easy! That, and a
fairly facile re-treading of the teen types of the period: wholesome boys and
girls in their sweaters and neatly ironed pastel pants, stoned punks in all-black
sniffing coke (from a Coca-Cola can, no less!) … But note this separation of
the broad giallo tradition from the
George Romero “living dead” lineage of contemporary horror: here, neither teens
nor demons mean (or suggest)
anything! The intellectually stunted genre-freaks from at least the mid 1980s
onwards who clamour for an ultra-obvious “subtext” (zombies are mass
consumers!) give the likes of Lamberto Bava or Lucio Fulci (like Umberto Lenzi
or Sergio Martino, all vastly overrated figures today) a free pass when it
comes to such weighty signification. And, indeed, such lack of theme eventually became de
rigueur in most run-of-the-mill horror movies by the 2000s. Not a way to
go: in the contemporary fantastique landscape, I prefer the ambitions of an upward-trending mainstream figure like
Guillermo del Toro (The Devil’s Backbone,
2001).
A final note before I bid adieu to Demons for evermore
in my life. Its claustrophobic shut-in (over two-thirds of the movie, as in Anguish) is followed by a supposedly
revelatory twist, the one that Alfred Hitchcock originally planned for The Birds (1963): the threat seemed
contained, confined to one place, until our remaining whitebread hero and
heroine finally get outside to discover … all of central Berlin has already
fallen prey to the demonic apocalypse! It makes no sense, but sense (as noted) doesn’t
call the shots here. It’s an effect of wishful crushing irony: all is hopeless!
So the projected sequel – which is not, in fact, what the sequel takes up – is
flagged: a journey of rugged survivalism,
tight families with guns and crossbows defending themselves against the
invasive horde. Another hallmark of the Red
Dawn 1980s. And also, alas, of today …
© Adrian Martin 27 February 2021 |
