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Page 1 of 3 Back in horror’s halcyon decade of the 80’s, there were no hits and misses. There were simply good movies, and then the bad ones that you enjoyed anyway. We had moved on from the nuclear paranoia of the 50’s, the sex kitten romps of the 60’s, and the gritty torture epics of the 70’s, and were basking in pure, unadulterated camp. My friends and I (yes, I actually had a friend or two, at some point) would scour some local video store, bearing in mind this was before everything was a pusillanimous, unit-shifting national chain, and mine the treasures that the horror section held, if only you were willing to wade knee-deep in shit to get to them. Luckily we were just the anti-heroes for the job. We would return to whomever’s house was the appointed abattoir for that weekend, and gorge ourselves in an orgy of Sno-Caps, Pepsi, and subversive VHS goodness. We would do this over and over again, until we had exhausted the store, and then we’d move on to the next one. Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, baby.
If titles such as Neon Maniacs, Blood Diner, and, hell, even The Video Dead cause a little glow of warm nostalgia in your tummy-tum, then I guess you know a little something of what I am getting on about. One of the shining gems uncovered during those weekends was Night of the Demons (not to be confused with Night of the Demon, singular, which is an entirely different article). This is a movie with a very slow beginning, and is the kind of film that separates the geek wheat from the chaff. Sure, there are some feminine butt-cheeks pretty early on, but mostly it is painfully wooden acting and horribly trite dialog straight out of the gate. Also, the incredibly overused and frankly stupid premise of the “goth” kids (one of which played by an obviously thirtysomething Linnea Quigley) inviting a bunch of “regular” kids to their Halloween party out in the abandoned funeral home, and then having the regular kids actually show up, is insulting to anyone who has, you know, attended high school. If I invited some preppie cunts to one of my infamous for all the wrong reasons motel bashes, they would have bashed my head in. | My interest notably picked up as soon as we were introduced to the requisitely stereotypical punk rock character of Stooge, played by the woefully underrated Hal Havins, seeing as I am something of a Double H completist (you’ll definitely want to check out his stellar turn in Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl-A-Rama). The action then takes us to a local supermarket, where the aforementioned b-horror goddess Linnea Quigley is doing a reverse-cowgirl on the camera, with the resultant pink-pantied upskirt distracting the two counter dorks (one of whom resembles a young Barry Bostwick to a frightening degree) whilst Angela, the giver of the party and soon to be emblem for the entire series, stuffs party munchies into her bag. That’s right folks, she steals. I mean, demons are one thing, but shoplifting? That’s just fucked up. |  |
Okay, so now we have all of the players at the funeral parlor, otherwise known as Hull House. There is Angela and Suzanne, Judy and her would-be beau Jay, Max and his girlfriend Frannie, and Stooge and his friends Helen and Roger, the token black dude (hey, even having a black dude survive more than five minutes of a horror film is considered progressive filmmaking). There follows the *cough*teens*cough* doing the predictable white people dance around the boombox they apparently stole from Return of the Living Dead (it even has a TSOL sticker on it!). What to do now….what to do…*drums fingers* Wait, I know: a séance! Uh oh, I should have given a spoiler alert, huh? Sorry ‘bout that.
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