Demons AKA The Most Convoluted Apocalypse Ever

Ok, so it's Halloween and in keeping with that theme, I've decided to review a personal favourite of mine, called 'Demons'. This movie was directed by Mario Bava's son, Lamberto and has a screenplay co-written by Dario Argento so the pedigree behind it is pretty good. 'Demons' has some of my absolute favourite Euro-Horror tropes in that it's a simple story told in the most ludicrous and overly complicated way possible, it's littered with characters who serve as nothing more than ridiculously over developed diversionary tactics and red herrings which make less sense than a pig with tits. It also has a soundtrack which is totally out of place for the most part and I'm pretty sure that Claudio Simmonetti samples 'In The Hall Of The Mountain King' for the main title theme but the tempo makes it sound whimsical and completely ruins the atmosphere. As a concept, this movie is fucking nuts. As movie, it's even worse. Get yourself bedded in because this is a fucking long one even compared to my other reviews. Lets go...  

The movie starts on a train with one of our main characters called Cheryl. She looks to be the goody-two shoes kind of character because she's dressed in that frumpy way that all goody-two shoes characters were dressed in the eighties. She's on the train because she's heading to class and she's holding a book about Bartok so you're left thinking she's a sophisticated chick. So, while she's on the train, she's getting freaked out by all the punk looking dudes and the old weirdos when she catches a glimpse in the train window of a guy wearing what looks like a metal mask over half of his face. I don't know if this is a common thing. She acts like she's seen it before and it's something she's regularly scared by but it's not really that common a sight on public transport. Anyway, she's freaked out and when the train pulls up and she gets off, she's all of a sudden left alone on the platform. She thinks she's ok but she hears all this clinking and shit and these footsteps from behind her. She starts to make her way to the exit and once again, she thinks she's safe but she bumps into the guy with the metal mask over half his face and it looks like he's wearing a bin bag with buttons on it. There aren't any chains and he isn't wearing spurs or anything so I don't know why he was clinking so much. Maybe it's a lot of change in his pockets or galvanised shower curtain hooks or something. Anyway, you think this guy is going to kill her and sex in her eye sockets but all he does is hand her this gold ticket to a cinema called the 'Metropol'. He walks off and starts handing out more of these tickets to people in the train station. Cheryl thinks that it's a perfectly reasonable course of action to catch up to this guy and ask for another ticket because she's meeting a friend and what better way to spend your evening than going to a cinema you've never heard of with two golden tickets given to you by a clinking weirdo at a train station? Cheryl asks the guy if he's dressed like that for the promotion of the film but he just kind of smirks and walks away again. He never even looks her in the eye when he gives her the ticket which is kind of confusing because (spoilers) he's obviously setting up the whole 'demonic possession' deal at the cinema so why does he look kind of ashamed of what he's doing? You know what, actually, hold onto that thought. We'll come back to it.

'My heart just isn't in this ruse but I spent two hours in make-up for this shit so just take the damn ticket'

Outside the train station, Cheryl meets up with her friend Kathy who looks like she might be a bit of a trouble maker. She's dressed a bit sexier than Cheryl but in a shock twist, it turns out that Cheryl is the one who enjoys nothing more than ditching class so she can be stabbed in strange movie theater's. Cheryl shouts Kathy from literally about 10 feet away and suggests skipping school and going to the Metropol. Kathy tries to reason with Cheryl and asks her if she thinks going to this movie theatre is a good idea but Cheryl is clearly insane and before you know it, they're outside the Metropol. Cheryl never explains where she got these tickets. It's the kind of thing you'd tell a friend, right? I don't know. Their relationship seems fundamentally flawed if Cheryl is psychotic enough to accept tickets from a train platform rapist in a bin bag and not tell her friend that this is how she acquired them and Kathy is fucking retarded for not just saying 'Bitch, is you crazy?!'.

Inside the cinema, things are heating up. You're treated to a slow, sexy shot of the usherette touching her legs and making sure her stockings aren't all ruffled and shit. She looks at herself in the mirror and turns to face the camera so you're thinking to yourself at this point that this treacherous snake whore is probably going to be a key element in this demonic take over but (spoilers) she isn't. There are loads of other moments a little later on where you think that this chick is definitely on the side of evil but (spoilers) she isn't. I can't stress to you enough just how not-evil this character is. Sorry. I'm fixated on her because this character is the dumbest fucking red-herring I think I've ever seen in a movie. Anyway, back to the action and the people who have been developmentally disabled enough to turn up are all piling into the cinema. You can tell that this is a classy affair because in addition to the gold tickets (which look totally real and not like someone cut up a lamé coat and wrote 'Metropol' on it), there's a dirt cross bike in the foyer which is on a pedestal and it's being ridden by a dummy carrying a samurai sword in one hand and a demonic mask in the other so that's appropriate and makes total sense. One of the character's, called Frank, has turned up with his wife and he mentions that the building was condemned and that someone must have spent a fortune on the renovation. I'll level with you, I think Frank is a piece of shit. There's no two ways about it. He has a huge attitude problem and he's fucking whining to his wife about something or other and she basically asks him to calm down because they want to have a nice evening because it's their anniversary. Frank's response to this is that she should relax because he's brought her to a show and she shouldn't really want anymore. Please feel free to remember at this point that this is a free show at a previously condemned cinema which they have only been able to attend because of tickets given to them by a chrome plated maniac who clinks for no reason. Total dick seam.

 'What? I aint hit ya tonight, have I? Yet'

So, elsewhere in the foyer, we meet some of our other main protagonists who are due for the the traditional euro horror treatment. There's George and Ken who are two rapey looking dudes wearing slacks who spot Cheryl and Kathy trying to negotiate a can of coke from a vending machine and spend part of their screen time pouring praise on the generic looking dirt bike in the foyer. There's Tony The Pimp (who is a pimp) and his two whores Rosemary and Carmen who he's treated to a night off from the dick with free cinema tickets and up to 45% less bitch-slapping, Hannah and Tommy who are two young lovers of no consequence and a blind guy called Werner who's with his carer, Liz; the most in-compassionate carer in the universe (more from her later). Oh and Werner looks like a Blind Harry Dean Stanton. I usually refer to him as such when discussing this movie with friends but I'll continue to call him Werner for the remainder of this article because it's easier to type but feel free to call him Blind Harry Dean Stanton when you're out and about. Continuing the action in the foyer, Werner has randomly decided to start reaching out to feel his surroundings when he accidentally touches the dummy on the dirt bike. He tells Liz not to touch it despite the fact that she's not paying any attention to what's happening and she isn't six years old. Rosemary the whore has spotted the demonic looking mask hanging from the dummy on the bike and she's picked it up and started horsing around with it by putting it on her face and trying to scare Carmen When she takes the mask off, she's managed to cut her cheek and Tony chides her, telling her 'that'll teach (her) to touch things' so there's a lot of good, strong fatherly advice flying around in this foyer.

'Liz! Liz! Stop doing what I'm about to tell you to start doing again. It doesn't need to make sense, I'M BLIND!'

Next, all of our cast from before are getting themselves seated ready for the movie that they know nothing about. 

--Seriously though, as far as schemes to bring about the end times go, this one has been pretty fucking complex so far. Think about it; this is a previously condemned building which has been completely and totally renovated for the purposes of this single night by beings who are putting a lot of faith in the ultimate stupidity of people turning up to a show, which they don't know the content of, with tickets given to them by a mute psychopath in a train station. Think of everyone you know and think about how many of them would willingly show up to the screening of a film they know nothing about after being given tickets by a weirdo. It's madness. Complete and total fucking insanity. Half Mask Man from earlier in the movie may have had, say, 100 tickets. If he gives out every single one of them, this means he's relying on 100 complete fucking idiots showing up to a holocaust which he's not really done a great job of making it seem like it's innocuous. Anyway, back to the movie-- 

Cheryl and Kathy have sat kind of near the front, as have Tony and his whores. George and Ken skulk in and slither over to Cheryl and Kathy (I don't know why I'm giving them such a hard time. They're actually pretty nice kids and Cheryl is totally into anonymous, cinema hook ups). The film starts what seems like half way in and has pretty good production value considering that it doesn't even really need to exist. The films shows these four kids riding up to the ruins of a house or something on motorbikes. Maybe motorbikes are something these demons need in order to possess everyone, like they need to be in the background or something. I don't think they play an active part in a ritual or anything, I think the demons just like motorbikes. I don't know. It's fucking stupid. Anyway, these kids have pulled up at these ruins. There's two guys and two girls and one of the guys is actually Half Mask Man but with his face intact (I must have watched this through at least 15 times before I even noticed that they were the same guy). They're looking at all these stone tablets and talking about Nostradamus and how it's rumoured that he's buried at the ruins. It doesn't matter. One of the guys in the film makes a comment about Nostradamus but it's clear that he knows as much about Nostradamus as the writer's of this film know about sanity. Anyway, these kids continue dicking about in the ruins until the guy who will become Half Mask Man finds a stone version of the mask from the foyer. He puts it on and the other guy tells him that he's being a prick and to take it off. When he does, he has a cut on his face just like the one Rosemary had from the mask earlier. This makes Rosemary want to check her own face in the bathroom mirror so she gets up and makes her way out of the theatre. While this is going on, several things are happening at once;

• Werner is developing this odd fascination with Liz's emotional state and I strongly suspect that the only reason he's here is for sexual gratification. He keeps asking her if the kids in the movie are scared and if she's scared. Liz just seems dead to it all after what I can only assume is years of abuse at the hands of this maniac
• In the movie that these idiots are watching, Half Mask Man is losing his shit and he's turned into a lunatic. He's produced a knife from somewhere (it looks like a kitchen knife. An ancient, Sumarian Sabichi if you will) and he's stabbing the shit out of all the other kids
• Another guy has come into the cinema and he's sat down next to Liz. He's making out with her pretty heavily in front of Werner but Werner doesn't know this is going on because he's too transfixed with the sounds of murder being shot into his ears by a dolby surround system. That and he's blind

This is the killer's P.O.V. Just take a moment to think about how this looks from the victim's P.O.V...pretty fucking stupid, right?

In the bathroom, Rosemary is getting very upset with the oozing gash on her face and rightly so because before you know it, that shit's swelling up like a bad zit and exploding all over the place. Tony is getting impatient and he wants to know what the hell happened to Rosemary so he sends Carmen to look for her. She finds Rosemary hiding out in a bathroom stall and is attacked by the possessed Rosemary, who slashes her face to shit. Carmen manages to escape the bathroom and runs off but can't seem to find her way back to the main movie theatre and decides to take a detour to areas of a cinema even I wouldn't know how to get to. Meanwhile, things are getting hot and heavy with Liz and her mystery lover who I've decided she doesn't know because that makes it weirder. They've found the most inconvenient place in the entire movie theatre to make out, behind some curtains but Liz is still in ear shot of Werner who's calling out for her as he's running low on emotion juice. Kathy can somehow hear Carmen screaming and tries to tell Ken that she knows a real scream when she hears one (presumably because she rooms with Cheryl and Cheryl is so fucking crazy she probably screams in the middle of the night for no reason). All of a sudden, Carmen comes bursting through the cinema screen and falls to the floor. Tony immediately stands up and rushes over to her, showing us that as a Pimp, he possesses an uncharacteristic concern for humanity. Meanwhile, Possessed Rosemary has become agitated whilst looking for Carmen and has come across Liz and her creepy lover. Possessed Rosemary wraps a rope around their necks while they're still kissing and begins strangling them. I don't quite know how this works and seems a bit of a complex way to kill two people at once but then again, I'm looking for logic in the palace of lunacy. 

Back in the theatre itself, Carmen is causing a fraction of concern for the assembled idiots. She's fallen on all fours and shit's getting fucking vile as she starts changing into a demon in a display of some of the most disgusting prosthetics I've ever seen. She jumps at the throng of people gathered round her and slashes the bejesus out of Frank's face. In the ensuing chaos, Werner is understandably confused. He somehow manages to nearly trip over Liz's ravaged body and he sets down beside her, saddened that he will no longer be able to sap the emotional states of his carer anymore. As he's doing this, Possessed Rosemary gets her claws into him and scratches out his eyes which is fucking disgusting and also pointless. It's like punching an amputee in the stump. So, with Werner now double-blind, Possessed Rosemary runs off in search of more pointless injuries to inflict on people. In the auditorium, vast numbers of people who I'm pretty sure weren't in the theatre before are making a run for it and trying to get out of the theatre but someone's bricked the doors up and they can't escape. Tony The Pimp seems like the only dude who's in full control of his faculties at this point and suggests that everyone should find the emergency exit. Amidst the panic and a Possessed Rosemary making another appearance to tear the ears off a deaf woman or something, Kathy is screeching about how people are getting possessed just like in the movie. In fact, she mentions that the movie is to blame for everything that's happening, she can't explain how she knows and that it's just a feeling which I guess is as sane an attempt as you can hope for. Tony The Pimp agrees with this because what would be the point in arguing logic at this point? He makes a bold statement about how Rosemary put on the mask and how the demons are instruments of evil and they have stop it. He's talking about the movie, unfortunately and not making a selfless gesture for the betterment of humanity so you're a little dis-heartened that Tony doesn't possess quite as much of a strong moral compass as you'd have once thought. Tony suggests that they all try and find the projection booth but when they do, it's deserted therefore adding another intriguing layer to this cleverly devised and deeply convoluted plot.

Will the riddle of the empty projection booth ever be solved?!? SPOILERS No. No, it won't

--Right, seriously now, this is fucking crazy. Is this film honestly trying to make me believe that a satanic cult or something has bought and renovated an old movie theatre for the sole purpose of hoping that someone puts on the mask from the foyer? That's insane. That's not a devilish plot to take over the world; that's a prank and a pretty shitty one at that. Like, make a fucking concession or something. Why in the holy hell would you put your demon possession face mask on a dummy riding a motorbike? Just put it on a pedestal with a sign underneath it that says 'Please try me on'. Just get Half Mask Man to smash it into innocent bystander's faces on the street. And why fucking brick people in? What...what even is that in tactical terms? And who bricked them in? Independent contractors? A sub-division of demon builders who are great at masonry but not so good at apocalyptic take-overs? Half Mask Man? Usually I'm happy for a film to play out but I want answers from this asshole movie--

So, after Tony has finally decided that he's been calm and collected for long enough, he loses his shit and tells everyone to 'smash everything' thereby hoping to scupper the demonic take over by distracting them with a trip to Radio Shack to make repairs. Cheryl catches another glimpse of Half Mask Man in a window but I don't know why I mention that because it doesn't matter and I'm a fool for letting you believe it means anything. Next (and yes, seriously this happens right in the middle of this movie) we're taken outside of the Metropol and we meet some punk kids who've stolen a car and they're driving around town snorting cocaine out of a coke can. That, right there, is subtlety personified. This seemingly non-sequiter punk sideline doesn't make any sense to begin with and the punks' interludes happen at totally random times so I'll just get their character development out of the way now so it doesn't spoil the flow later on. They're driving around, they're snorting coke, one of the punks is a girl who manages to spill the cocaine all over the fucking car. Their leader gets understandably pissed and tells them to pick it all up. While they're parked up, the police pull up alongside them and ask them for their license and registration so their leader bullshits a bit and the kids all make a run for it and end up outside the Metropol (I'll join these chuds a little later on when they become relevant again but as you'll come to find out, these punks absolutely, categorically, unquestionably do NOT need to be in this film. Like, at all). Meanwhile, back at the Metropol, all the survivors have made their way up to the balcony area in the main theatre and Sheryl is being bubble-headed enough to think that now they've smashed up some projection equipment, the satanic uprising that they've all been witness to is surely quashed. Werner pops up from behind some seats to act as this film's harbinger. He starts banging on about how it isn't the film that kills, it's the theatre but to be honest he's not really in any kind of position to make a statement like this. Not only has he not been with the rest of the survivors while all this has been going on but he's blind and should just shut the fuck up. Likewise, Tony is slowly losing his grip on Pimp reality and he's shouting at George because George doesn't want to throw Liz's dead body over the balcony. Tony calls him a bitch or something to that effect and makes Ken help him throw the body over the edge. Just as they're about to throw her over, Frank's possessed body comes out of nowhere and tries to pull Tony over the side. Tony, true to form, produces a flick knife from his jacket and gets into a mini knife fight with Possessed Frank. Possessed Frank appears to have utilised the rope that Possessed Rosemary used to strangle Liz's mystery lover with to climb up to the balcony with perhaps the express intention of killing Tony because even in death, I think Frank would be this much of an asshole. Tony stabs Possessed Frank over the edge of the balcony and when Frank lands, he vomits splendidly on Hannah, who is crawling around on the theatre floor.

Demonic Possession = Vomit. That's actual science.

After a brief Car-Punks interlude, Tony has well and truly lost his marbles and he's making the survivors smash all the chairs to form a make-shift barricade so no more demons can get in. Tony's in the middle of screaming something not entirely un-motivational when a possessed Liz springs back to life and bites Tony on the leg. Tony shouts to George to throw him the knife (why George has it now, I don't fucking know) thereby posing George with the age old quandary of 'Do I jump into this titanic struggle twixt pimp and demon or not?'. As Tony and Possessed Liz do battle, they fall over the edge of the balcony and become tangled in Frank's racist climbing rope from before. As they do, Tony drops the knife. George picks up the knife and lets Tony fall to his death which effectively removes the only character worth remembering from the film. Down below, Tommy and Liz are re-united and try to find an exit all on their own, those selfish little bastards. Back on the balcony and the survivors are trying to smash their way through the wall of the theatre with fire extinguishers. Outside the building, the punks are now parked up (they're becoming slightly more relevant at this point but only because one of them seems to hear the sound of fire extinguishers being bashed against 12" thick brick walls from literally 800 feet away which is fucking stupid). Back in the building, George has managed to smash some of the wall down with a fire extinguisher and he can see another room through the hole (which renders the punks' hearing even more incredible). Werner, meanwhile has decided that he wants to make life even more difficult for himself by crawling out through the piles of chairs, to find an exit. All the survivors are still smashing this wall with whatever they can find and when they finally manage to break through, there's a small staircase and a room behind the wall which is a dead end. It's randomly situated but the film makes out like it's a room which has been specifically built for the purposes of psychological torture. It's literally just a room. It's a bit dank and the walls are dripping but essentially, it's just a room and everyone acts like they've all just found out that their parents were responsible for the Holocaust or something. This is where the punks come back into play. They've managed to evade the police and they're trapped in this alley way when a door to the Metropol mysteriously opens and they all pile inside. Moronically, they don't shut the door behind them which, I'm to understand, when you're being chased by policeman, is a dead giveaway as to your location. Because they don't shut this door behind them, Werner manages to get out and ducks behind a car which is parked in the alleyway.

 --The fuck is this shit?! In addition to this being the most complex and costly demonic take over in the known universe, the demons have put further faith in a group of cocaine addled dicks getting in trouble with Johnny Law and being in the exact right place at the exact right time to find a back entrance into the cinema AND allow one of the possessed access to the street? And it's the fucking blind guy who's been made double blind?! Is that irony? Fuck this movie--

The police see Werner duck behind this car and mistake him for one of the punks so they move towards him. Instead of punks, they encounter Possessed Werner who is potentially the most retarded of the demons we've seen so far because he thinks that by putting his hand over the barrel of a gun, it ceases to pose a threat to him. Back inside the theatre and the punks are proving to everyone that they're as pointless to this story as a dick on your arm. They're all picked off pretty easily and I don't have to mention them again. At this point, a couple of things happen. Tommy and Hannah have decided to try and make their escape through the air conditioning system but Hannah, in a reasonably neat turn of events, has turned into a demon (but held off just long enough to go all demony in the hands but not in the face) and butchers Tommy in the air shaft. While the demons have been making mince meat out of the punks, they've also been making a hell of a racket and there's been some gun fire (yeah, the punks had guns but still ran from the police. Don't look to me for answers, I didn't write this piece of shit) so all the survivors in the balcony area of the theatre are frantically pulling part of the make-shift barricade down in a display of such ferocious stupidity, it'll make you throw your shoes at the TV screen. George, Ken, Kathy and Cheryl exhibit previously untapped powers of common sense and don't see this noise as salvation but as another way for them to have their guts pulled out through their assholes so they make their way out of the balcony area through another area of the barricade. This proves to be prophetic because all the demons from before start coming through the barricade that the other survivors are pulling down and slash, stab and vomit over everyone they can see. Meanwhile, George and the others have managed to navigate their way through the barricades (which, come to think of it, has a lot of gaps and crawlspaces. How the hell did it maintain it's structural integrity for this long?). George and Cheryl are the first ones out but as Ken is about to make his exit, he says that Kathy fainted. They drag her out and make their way to the foyer. Probably to get another look at that sweet ass dirt bike. Probably.

'Aw, man it's so roomy in here. You can really spread out. Hey, don't you guys reckon you could really spread out?! Say, what d'ya think's holding all these chairs up?'

Kathy is quite clearly very ill because she starts asking these questions like 'Who are you?' and 'Where am I? What is this place?' in a really weird voice. These fucking idiots think she's just hysterical or something but it's painfully obvious what's happening. Kathy seems to get the shittest deal of everyone who's fallen victim to the demons because after she turns and Ken beats her around the head with the edge of an air conditioning hatch, she falls on all fours and starts convulsing until an actual demon climbs out of her fucking back! I don't understand this scene because this hasn't happened to anyone else who's been possessed. By the way, I've decided to call this little critter 'Hilton the Existential Demon' due to the fact that he's the only demon with enough power to break through someone's back but ask questions about the deeper significance of the soul before doing so. In all the confusion of Hilton busting out of Kathy's back and him making a bolt for it, Hilton slashes Ken across the chest and Ken gets upset because he knows he's officially fucked. He runs off and George and Cheryl follow him. Ken has to reason with George for a while before George relents and decides that yeah, cutting his best friend's head off is probably the merciful thing to do. It seems to take a while for George to come around to the idea, though. I get it, though. It must be difficult. Anyway, George kills Ken and Cheryl runs off back into the main theatre where she's surrounded by demons. Things are looking pretty bleak for her at this point until George bursts through the curtains to the theatre on the back of the dirt bike, wielding the samurai sword.

I have seen some deus ex machina's in my time but this takes the fucking biscuit

George manages to cut a swathe through the demonic population of the theatre and you wonder why they didn't just do this in the first place when all of a sudden, there's a crash from above them and a helicopter comes through the roof. I get that this is a sign of the horrors going on outside of the Metropol but given that the films offers zero explanation as to why a lone helicopter pilot would just randomly lose his shit and come crashing through the roof a cinema, it seems pretty weird. George and Cheryl manage to climb up some sort of rope that they find on the helicopter and they're seemingly home free until Half Mask Man shows up on the roof and immediately sets about kicking the shit out of George in a pretty ineffectual way. Speaking of Half Mask Man, I don't get this guy. What is he fucking about at? I'm thinking he's got to be the guy in charge or at least like an executive of Demon Corp. or whatever and you'd think that to be in that position, he'd have to be a demon himself so why doesn't he just slash George up and turn him into a demon? Why's he so vindictive that he's got to try and push him down the hole in the roof? Well, whatever's happened, he's obviously feeling a lot better about the whole apocalypse thing because he looks like he's enjoying the murder now rather than at the start when he looked all guilty and shit. Maybe he attended one of those self improvement seminars while all these guys were trapped in the theatre but then again he'd probably need to be on hand to facilitate or something. Those building contractors who bricked the doors up don't delegate themselves. Man, being a demon seems like a lot of work when you consider all the administrative responsibilities. Anyway, Cheryl drives an antenna or something through Half Mask Man's back and then they both push his face onto a spike.

They climb down some ladders or whatever and come face to face with the stark reality and the shear magnitude of what's happening; the world has gone to shit. Everyone's either a demon or having their dick stomped by a demon, buildings are on fire and everything looks totally hopeless for George and Cheryl until a guy who looks like Donald Pleasance turns up in his jeep with his kids (who are terrifyingly aryan and way too proficient with firearms) and offer George and Cheryl the retarded explanation that '(they) saw some lights in the sky so maybe not everything is lost' which is terrifying because it seems like they're doomed to spend the rest of the apocalypse saddled with this fetal alcohol syndrome maniac and his sociopathic children. The credits start to roll and you think everything's going to be ok for George and Cheryl aside from their curious travelling partners. They'll be able to settle down, maybe start a family; the future is looking pretty promising for them all things considered until, for some reason, Cheryl turns into a demon despite having no contact with any of the other demons and one of the aryan kids has to gun her down and that's how the movie ends. For real this time. Yeah...

No, hang on. I spoke too soon. This takes the fucking biscuit

So, there you go. That's 'Demons'. It probably comes across like I don't enjoy this movie but I don't understand how anyone couldn't enjoy a film where the climax is a katana showdown on the back of a dirt bike. There's so much to enjoy about this movie regardless of how fucking insane it is. I read an article which pointed out that Argento and Bava were keen on having a hit movie in the U.S hence things like the over abundance of heavy metal on the soundtrack and tearaway punks stealing cars and snorting cocaine. Although, saying that, trying to make something seem a little bit more 'American' by putting cocaine snorting punks and heavy metal music on your soundtrack is like making a movie to appeal more to English audiences by having a guy hitting his wife while eating baked beans and listening to the Beatles. One of the most fascinating things about Euro Horror cinema is that watching Italian made movies from the 70's and 80's is a little bit like those episodes of Star Trek where an alien intelligence creates a stylised interpretation of what it perceives as being 'reality' for the amusement of a befuddled Enterprise crew. It's a slightly skewed, off-balance version of what we know as normal but instead of making you feel kind of sick, it's just kind of endearing. Some would probably argue that it's a good thing that they don't make 'em like this anymore but fuck those clowns. It truly is a shame that they don't make 'em like they used to. Happy Halloween, everyone.

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