Review: Night of the Demon (1980)

Directed by: James C. Wasson
Starring: Michael Cutt, Melanie Graham, Robert Collings
Written by: Mike Williams
Music by: Stuart Hardy, Dennis McCarthy
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (Severin Films)
IMDb

This cryptosploitation flick was made by a group of filmmakers who never made another movie (at least under the same names). Sometimes that’s a very bad sign, and other times — like this time — it’s the very best sign.

Though this movie about a group of anthropology students and their professor heading into the woods looking for Bigfoot isn’t what would be commonly called “good,” it’s a darn good time. That’s provided your framework for fun includes a very large hairy creature with an offputtingly glabrous undercarriage whipping around anthropology-student intestines, ripping off biker dick, shot-putting campers onto sharp branches, smashing together knife-armed Girl Scouts like a tantrum-struck toddler with G.I. Joes, and impregnating a young girl with his yeti-young.

This isn’t classy stuff and, indeed, Night of the Demon was one of the earliest “video nasties.” But it started its modest existence in a much tamer form devoid of most of its guts-slinging, until producer Jim L. Ball got tired of that wussy bullshit and covertly filmed all the viciousness that gifted this movie its notoriety. The patchwork production is evident through a downright abusive use of flashbacks that conveniently allow ferocious murders to take place in a completely different setting with completely different actors than those driving the main story. These folks loved flashbacks so much, they occasionally slipped a flashback into the middle of an already unfolding flashback. All of this might be mistaken for ingenuity if it wasn’t so completely accidental.

This is a movie that feeds greedily on the haphazard, with no use for artistic conventions like narrative through-lines, second takes, professionals that are versed in the responsibilities of their job title, etc. Though this virgin zeal does occasionally yield unintentional disaster, it mostly culminates in an acute savageness that feels refreshingly unshackled by commercial concerns. The quasi-story almost inadvertently introduces some fascinating side plots about Bigfoot’s lost daughter and a sex cult that worships him before swiftly forgetting it ever concocted them. Even underdeveloped, these serve as juicy enough tangents to whet sick appetites between sloppy, inventive Bigfoot barbarisms. Amid the sickened shrieks of a keyboard’s synth approximation of a kazoo, the audience is treated to enough fetid brutality and dank, ominous atmosphere to forgive obvious flaws in a film that legitimately feels nasty.

Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10