The Demon (1981)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Pretty Good

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The characters in the movie make decisions that do not make any sense. The story line is awful. It is not scary at all. Do not see this movie. It is one of the worst horror movies ever. Do not see it. It is really stupid. Do not see it. See Halloween if you want to see a really scary movie. Do not see this.

first off the only thing this movie has going for it , is the scantily clad half naked women... other than that, it's wretched,, it's seems to start off decent enough with a killer kidnapping a teen girl,, later on we find out she was killed,, fair enough,, a psychic was brought in to investigate and all of that.. but then suddenly out of left field,, comes a second plot, which heads nowhere some guy hiding behind shadows starts stalking the cute teacher,, and we don't know if it's the same guy who took the girl.. it goes from being a movie about a psychic trying to help to some other guy stalking a teacher,, this movie has so many plot holes it isn't funny ,, this is so very hard to watch when you have no idea in the world what is going on.

What a mess this one is! This South African production appears to be two movies put together with only the relation to the "Demon" connecting both the stories. The first part of the film concerns the family of Emily Parker who was kidnapped during an evening home invasion by a tall man that may or may not wear a mask and may or may not have gloves with blades sewn onto the ends of the fingertips even though he chooses to strangle his victims anyway. Confused yet? Yeah, this is a real doozy. Anyway, the Parkers enlist the aid of Col. Bill Carson (B-movie royalty Cameron Mitchell slumming for a paycheck so he can afford some Capetown prostitutes one would guess) a former Marine with ESP who can pick up the "vibes as the kids like to say" of the crime. This begins Col. Carson's bizarre trances and seemingly useless psychic drivel, "he's less than a man, yet more than one - much more". Thanks, that really helps. At one point Carson has a creepy extrasensory wet dream in Emily's room complete with tearing pieces of her clothing and sniffing them while sweating profusely. Luckily he didn't find her panty drawer. Mrs. Parker becomes apprehensive when Carson turns up no leads as her husband seems more concerned with catching the kidnapper rather than finding his daughter. Mr. Parker pursues the killer to his apartment thanks to a vision Carson had and is promptly dispatched by the hulking madman. When Carson returns to the Parker residence to speak with the newly widowed Mrs. Parker he is shot in the head for no reason whatsoever. You trusted a psychic instead of the police, what the hell did you expect? Maybe, I dunno, you're fired? Thus ends the Col. Carson/Parker storyline with about a half hour to go.The bulk of the movie centers on Mary, an American teacher that is being followed a la Halloween by the Demon/Strangler/badguy whatever. Mary works with her eighteen year old cousin Jo who speaks curiously with a South Afrikan accent. Jo is dating some rich American playboy which is useless to the plot yet gets a stunning amount of screen time instead of establishing why the killer has targeted Mary and what motivates him to murder various customers of the town's redlight district. I appreciate the fact that the various nude scenes placed throughout the film were added strictly for the American version as both ladies' extended nude scenes broke up the monotony of the bloodless murders and boring date footage (What, no mini golf scene?). It doesn't matter as all the attention paid to Jo's courtship are dashed when she's murdered anyway along with her new boyfriend. Mary is a little clueless as well. If some beast of a man was stalking you would you fling the front door open in the middle of the night at the slightest knock? Mary does quite frequently. The finale features the Demon sometimes in a mask and sometimes not toying with Mary suddenly when he killed every other victim quickly allowing her to escape through the house wearing just her panties. Can't say I'm complaining but I'm just a lowbrow American. (Smiling wryly)The editing is so disjointed that it's hard to get your bearings while watching this train wreck. Scenes such as the waves crashing into the shoreline rocks appear here and there for no explicable reason that I could see. At one point two boys playing soldier stumble upon a skeleton in a tree with a blonde wig on it. Who the hell is that supposed to be? There is no insight into the Demon as well. Was he really a supernatural force or just some psycho that grunted and growled a lot? The movie never gives a clear answer. Cameron Mitchell's gonzo performance is one of the only saving graces of this movie. He's just so over the top with his psychic theatrics. Hope that check didn't bounce Cam. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to this disco that's right up my alley.

Percival Rubens' "The Demon" is one of them late 70's low-budget horror oddities of which you can't help wondering why the hell it was ever made. What director, in his right state of mind, comes up with a completely illogical story about a malicious killer with unexplained motives and a heroic copper who gets killed even long before he's face-to-face with his nemesis? And this describes just a small part of everything that is wrong with the film's screenplay. There's a sadistic killer on the loose in a small town. He wears gloves with claws attached to them, yet he exclusively kills his victims by choking them with a plastic bag. He always seems to walk in the shadow, has the size of a giant and never speaks a word. Is he really a demon…or just a frustrated outcast who never received any motherly love? He seems to be after the local kindergarten teacher and her gorgeous cousin but why is anyone's guess. On the other side, we have an ex-cop gifted with psychic powers looking for the killer. Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace", "Nightmare in Wax") truly makes a fool out of himself here, pretending to be in contact with higher forces and sniffing a missing girl's pillow for clues. He's smart enough to predict his own death, yet he doesn't take any efforts to prevent it. As you can see, the plot is one giant MESS and there's absolutely nothing that makes the slightest bit of sense. The only positive point I can raise is that "The Demon" benefits from a neat morbid atmosphere and an occasional flash or sheer suspense. It's also quite sleazy! The two lead girls regularly strip all their clothes off but this doesn't seem to influence the madman in any way. On the contrary, he's more interested in tearing apart the dressing gowns than in naked female bodies. Like I said, it's a bad bad bad BAD film…but curiously intriguing at the same time.