DEMONS (1985)

What. The. Hell. This was co-written and produced by Dario Argento. I’ve seen some of his movies, and think he’s great. So I picked this up. It’s not directed by him, and maybe that makes a difference. Like the other movies I’ve seen by him, there’s not a lot of “making sense” going on here, but unlike those other movies, this just doesn’t work. Sure, it’s gory. There’s lots of blood, busting boils with demonic pus, weird transformations of people into demons, and all that good stuff, but NOTHING FITS TOGETHER. It’s about a bunch of people who go see this mysterious new movie in a mysterious new theater, and mysteriously the stuff in the mysterious movie happens to the people in the mysterious theater. Is the theater evil? Maybe, I guess, because nobody can manage to get out. Or maybe that’s the movie’s fault. I don’t know. There’s nobody running the projector, which is weird, but never explained. The ticket-taker at the theater seems mysterious, but she winds up being killed off like anyone else there, so there’s a wasted opportunity. Someone should have asked who hired her! It might answer some questions, maybe! So anyway, nobody can get out of this place, and people try everything. Then, for no good reason at all, a helicopter crashes into the theater. Just out of nowhere. It’s mysterious! Then we find out that the demons are all over the place outside, so you have to ask why we bothered going to the movies in the first place. Then there’s kind of a twist ending. Sort of. You expect it, though. I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.