Robert Thompson (justbob1982) Version I saw: UK Arrow Bluray release Actors: 3/10 Plot/script: 4/10 Photography/visual style: 5/10 Music/score: 6/10 Overall: 5/10 I don't know what people see in Italian horror, to be honest. It has massive fans who pay well over the odds, but most of the examples I have seen were very poor.Demons 2 is bolstered by the involvement of Dario Argento, an undoubted big name in the art-house world. While most commonly a director, Argento contributes to this film as a producer and writer, not to mention bringing his daughter onto the project. Now much more famous, Asia Argento made her screen debut in this film.It's really director Lamberto Bava's film, though. I haven't seen the first Demons, but I gather that not much is carried over in terms of plot and characters anyway. If anything, trying to second-guess which parts came from the first film actually made it more entertaining, a diverting little game I could play.After an extended set-up, the main body of the film is essentially a zombie film. They shamble around, biting people and either eviscerating them or transforming them into more of their own. There is some quite good puppetry and prosthetic make-up in places, which I would say is by far the best aspect of the film... except that in other places, it is laughably shoddy.The acting is also very bad. This goes beyond normal bad acting, in which you can normally see what they are trying to do, but failing. In Demons 2, some of the acting is so bad that you actually can't tell what the character is supposed to be thinking. Some of their motivations, and reasons for doing what they do, are really obscured, and I have to admit that I got confused at times.As it goes on, the film just gets sillier and sillier, straying almost into so-bad-it's-good territory at times. The filming is a million miles from art-house territory, clearly using cheap cameras and film stock. The only other redeeming features is a soundtrack which features several highlights from the British indie rock scene of the time. I am not sure whether The Smiths and The Cult even know that their music has been taken and put into this film, and I never would have matched the styles in my own mind, but as it turns out, it works. Hats off to them for that.For my full review, see my independent film blog on Blogspot, Cinema Inferno: http://cinemainferno-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/demons-2-1986.html

morrison-dylan-fan Getting set to order the new DVD of director Lamberto Bavas demons from UK DVD company Arrow,I was delighted to find out that Arrow had also done a new DVD for Demons 2,which led to me getting ready to see the demons enter TV land.The plot:As the residences of a large tower block get set to do night time activities such as working out at the gym,and holding a huge party,a mock-doc Horror film plays in the background of the residence flats.The film involves a film crew visiting a city which has become a wasteland since demons suddenly appeared,and attempted to kill everyone in the city.Finding nothing but dead demon bodies,one of the characters cuts their hand,and accidentally causes a demon to rise from the dead. Transfixed by the demonic baddie in the flick,a resident of the tower block soon discovers that she may have to change her plans for the night,when the demonic baddie from the movie breaks out of the TV,and enters her reality.View on the film:Leaving behind the "mob rule" of part 1,the screenplay by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini, Dardano Sacchetti and director Lamberto Bava instead use the tower block setting to give the film a delightfully episodic approach,with the writers entering each of the flats to show the residences individual fights against the demons.Along with the episodic approach,the writers take an excellent bonkers approach to the residence,which go from the wonderfully animated,fighting gym bunny, (a fantastic Bobby Rhodes) to a luckier than they know couple trapped in a lift (played by a very good David Edwin Knight,and a pretty Virginia Bryant).Changing the soundtrack from Heavy Metal to British Indie,thanks to Simon Boswell slick score and a number of fantastic Indie songs, (including one from The Smiths!)Lamberto Bava gives the tower block an extremely stylised appearance, with Bava superbly using smoke to show waves of hell covering the tower block,and also giving the movie a wickedly comedic atmosphere,thanks to splashing buckets of gore across the screen,as the demons become "real" reality TV stars.

metalrage666 All I could think of when I saw this was that it sullied the reputation of the first demon movie. While the first movie was full of plot holes, it was still quite enjoyable and for any fan of 80's horror, still watchable over and over. Demons 2 is just a confusing, painful mess.The story takes place in a new ultra-modern, (for the time), secure high-rise apartment block. One evening several residents are watching a documentary about the now deserted and completely walled city where the demon outbreak occurred in the first movie. Some teenagers scale the walls and go searching through the deserted city. They come across a demon corpse and one of the teens who cut themselves earlier, drips blood into the demons mouth. This somehow revives the demon who chases them off. Now this is where it gets weird and loses all common sense. A college student, Sally, is alone in her room depressed as her boyfriend didn't turn up to her birthday party. She's watching part of this demon documentary on her TV and is somehow noticed by the demon she is watching on screen via the camera that is filming it. So this indicates that the camera that is filming is somehow operating independently. The on-screen demon decides to enter into the real world by forcing it's way through the TV screen. Sally screams and turns away only to turn back to see the TV now just showing static. Thinking it was her imagination, she's about to rejoin her party friends when the demon attacks her. This demon is never seen again, but Sally slowly turns into a demon and begins attacking all her friends who in turn also turn into demons. The demon blood seems to be highly corrosive and begins to burn its way through the floors of the building shorting out the electrics. Being a secure building, everything gets shut down, so essentially everyone inside is now trapped. Lifts are shut down, phones are out and the windows can't open as air-con is ducted.What happens next is much the same as the first movie, it's a hide and seek gore-fest as the demons go floor by floor killing everyone they come across. The most notable scene is the stand off in the lower level car park between a bunch of bodybuilders and the remaining residents against the growing horde of demons. After a brief fight the demons gain the upper hand, turn all the people who weren't killed into demons and then go back up the building looking for more victims.Again there seems to be only 2 people remaining, a pregnant woman, Hannah, and her husband George who need to get somewhere safe as she is about to give birth prematurely. George lays a trap for all the demons making their way up the stairwell by rigging up a delayed explosion with a severed gas line. This kills all the demons except Sally, who is now blinded. George and Hannah make their way to the roof and then abseil down the side to the next building which looks like a TV studio. In one of the most hilarious scenes ever, a blind Sally is somehow abseiling down the side of the building after them, face first, and gets killed by George, and all of this is caught on camera. As Hannah gives birth, they notice Sally on the TV monitors running towards the screen. Somehow, George puts 2 and 2 together, as if demons popping out through TV's is a regular thing and proceeds to smash all the TV screens.This is really a stupid sequel that is best left ignored. They could have done so much more for a sequel, but demons coming out of the TV just never sat well with me and while some actors make a reappearance in this in other roles, it never flows properly and the sequence of events is quite pedestrian. While the acting in Demons 1 wasn't the best, it was a hell of a lot worse in this and the whole thing appears rushed. Stick with the first movie and pretend this doesn't exist.

happyendingrocks This relentlessly absurd follow-up to Lamberto Bava's solid cult classic certainly doesn't boast as many top-shelf gross-out moments as the original, but if you're in the mood for a mindless blood-fest with loads of unintentional comedy, there's plenty of fun to be had here.The action unfolds inside a swanky high-rise apartment complex, in which seemingly every tenant in the building is raptly watching a docu-film about the aftermath of the monstrous infestation we saw in the first Demons. The broadcast portrays four overzealous youths trudging deep within the "forbidden zone" to document the macabre remnants, and when they stumble across the body of a demon, they inadvertently awaken it when a member of the group drips their blood onto the creature's fossilized lips.After dispatching its unwitting discoverers, the monster somehow pushes its way through the television screen and into the apartment of one of the people watching the show: unlucky tenant Sally, who quickly finds herself transformed into a lady demon. Once she's finished slaughtering a roomful of friends on hand to celebrate her birthday, she begins oozing acidic blood, which melts through the floor into the apartments below hers, infecting all who come in contact with it and triggering a full-on demon uprising.The film then basically jumps back into the dynamic of the first movie, with creatures prowling their way through the building attacking everyone they find, and the panicked prey (who are trapped inside the complex because of a power outage, which makes all of the exit doors impossible to open for some reason) fighting back any way they can. This sense of deja vu is bolstered by the presence of Bobby Rhodes, who also appeared in the original Demons, and even though he's playing a completely different character this time out, his function and actions as the order-barking de facto leader in Demons 2 are nearly identical to what we saw him do the first time the creatures struck.If you still intend to take this movie seriously after reading my brief plot synopsis, good luck trying because the whole film is pretty much wall-to-wall silliness. Some of the highlights include a group of heavily-oiled shirtless bodybuilders in uncomfortably skimpy shorts who combat the demons by throwing barbells at them, and a pint-sized child demon whose stomach inexplicably hatches a rubber puppet that looks like it was borrowed from one of the Ghoulies sequels.I'm not sure if it's the screenplay or the dubbing that is responsible for the often perplexing dialogue, but there are some real obtuse gems here, my favorite being the touching moment when lead protagonist George assures his pregnant wife Hannah, "don't worry, I won't leave you two alone," and then bounds down several flights of stairs while she remains behind, by herself, in a darkened hallway. George reinforces his action hero acumen toward the end of the film, when he forces his long-suffering lady to ride on his back while he takes hold of a rope attached to a grappling hook and rappels down the side of the apartment building (a healthy form of exercise for a woman about to have a baby, obviously).The action-packed showdown between the demons and the crew led by Rhodes in the building's subterranean parking garage is particularly mirthful, and I can't remember ever seeing a group of bloodthirsty creatures this limber and acrobatic in my life. These demons are a great match for the gym rats and aerobics babes they're up against, executing full-on flips off of car roofs and somersaulting over walls of fire to converge upon their victims.Most of the creature make-up is as ghastly and effective as it was in the first Demons, but the more elaborate FX set-pieces are largely cheesy and hilarious, such as the aforementioned plastic tummy demon and the lime-green-painted mannequin which is tossed off the roof to simulate a demon falling to its death.The baffling finale finds George and Hannah escaping to a television studio, where Hannah impressively gives birth without a drop of blood being spilled, and after a pretty anticlimactic final confrontation the film sort of just ends, leaving several plot threads hanging unresolved. We never really find out who survived the parking garage showdown, and a few other ancillary characters drop off the face of the earth as well. Most glaringly, extended portions of the movie follow a group of punk rockers racing through the city to attend Sally's birthday party, which results in them getting into a car accident near the apartment building. After they crash, the members of the injured cohort stumble out of their car, where they are greeted by another minor character who has been waiting out front for them to arrive. After this quintet is united, we never see any of them again, and the mystery of why 10 minutes of the run-time was centered around this subplot goes unsolved.Clearly, this isn't mandatory viewing by any stretch of the imagination, but Demons 2 makes up for its general ineptness and lack of coherence by offering a healthy dose of gross, goofy fun. In this case, that's good enough for me.