Tuesday Terror: Demonoid (1980)

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After a couple unwittingly releases an evil force, the wife searches for her now-possessed husband. Her efforts to thwart the demon’s plans don’t go unnoticed and soon she becomes a target. Can the wife find a way to send the entity back into the fiery depths of hell or will she get caught in the grip of evil?

In a lot of ways, Demonoid sounds like a typical horror movie. The trouble begins because a white couple doesn’t head the warnings of Mexican mine workers. The locals are just superstitious, you see. As owners of the mine, the couple decides to go deep inside in an attempt to shame the workers for their fear.

What happens when they stumble across several mumified corpses and an altar? They take one of the objects – a box – from the underground temple back home. After a few drinks, the husband decides to open the box; it appears to be full of sand. Little does he know that tampering wih the box has sealed his fate.

The unusual, fun part of this flick? These folks are being plagued and possessed by a demonic left hand. Imagine Thing from the Addams Family out of its box and roaming the streets for a host. Once this evil left hand is interlocked with the fingers of a human’s left hand – the party begins!

Some embrace the evil and give themselves over to it. Others fight against it. How do you get rid of an evil hand? You chop it off. Once you no longer have a left hand, the demon must be on its way. How do you defeat it? That’s quite a different matter.

One warning, the film begins with a bunch of people in pointy, hooded robes running through the mine. A woman’s clothes are ripped (her breast pop out), chained to the wall, yada yada. It very briefly resembles a horror-bdsm themed movie and feels out of place. It’s as if a producer realized they didn’ have any tits in the film and they needed to add an extra scene.

Full of dramatic chases and hand chopping, Demonoid makes absolutely no sense. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to – this is the 80s. πŸ™‚

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Tip: Stop taking “random” objects from temples/burial grounds etc – especially if you don’t understand their significance.

Tuesday Terror: Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 (2015)

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Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 (there is no 1 or 2) is a parody of 80s slasher movies. A young man joins a frat to discover who killed his twin brother. The boys have a history of deadly pranks; could one of them have finally gone too far? Whoever the killer is, they aren’t finished. As dude bros begin disappearing and dying, just about everyone they come in contact with is a suspect.

Take a dash of Animal House (1978), cartoonish antics and a heavy sprinkling of blood/slasher and you get Dude Bro Massacre 3. Bleh.

An 80s movie with corny bits is nostalgic. A 2015 movie pretending to be an 80s movie is annoying. In movies where a group is stalked one by one, the group needs to have some character variation. One “dude bro” is fine. A whole frat house full of them is tedious. A real 80s movie would not commit this sin.

So, despite the buckets of blood, there’s no sense of satisfaction when one of these dudes dies. Oh, there’s a bunch of “bi” jokes and gay innuendo. It’s tired.

The kills are ridiculous, the reveal/explanation is preposterous and the final battle is uninspired – which is fine for an 80s horror movie. The problem? This movie just isn’t fun.

Tip: Avoid films with “Dude Bro” in the title.

Tuesday Terror: Demon Wind (1990)

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Cory is on a quest to reclaim his family’s land and discover the truth about their tragic past. The evil that plagued his ancestors has been waiting for him. Will Cory and his friends be able to survive the Demon Wind? ‬

This is the kind of movie where a main character gets every sign NOT to go to a place. His dreams warn against it, the locals warn against it, etc. The main character acknowledges that it could be dangerous but he just has to know the truth. Also, he never passes on the warnings to his friends so they can make an informed choice about following him into foolishness. Once they arrive at the forbidden place, the group spends the rest of the movie desperately trying to leave.

That’s the overall structure but the devil (ha!) is in the details. It’s as if the writer saw a bunch of horror movies and tried to stuff elements of all of them into this one. That Demon Wind is actually an evil fog. There’s a satanic cult and zombie demons. Two out of seven holy daggers show up. Evil children. A talking doll. A spell book. An explosive snow globe. A magician/karate master with fancy footwork. The kitchen sink.

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Okay – everything but the kitchen sink. Some of these bits happen in interesting ways. Others are just confusing. The group of friends is just demon fodder. After the first two are killed, two more show up the next day to replace them and edge up the body count.

Eventually, the big baddie reveals himself but it still takes Cory a moment to put up a decent fight. There’s a physical change that happens to Cory when he’s in battle mode that makes absolutely no sense. My best guess is that the design of the transformation was inspired by Alien Nation, a movie/tv show that came out around this time.

But is it entertaining? Yep.

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Tips:
*If you show up to a place and the first thing you see is a skeleton nailed to a cross, t’is a sign you should go home.
*Snow globes are dangerous – break only as a last resort.