Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS is from 1985 and it’s a thoroughly 1985 movie in a very good way. It has a catalog of tough punk type side characters, a very danceable electronic score by Goblin keyboardist Claudio Simonetti, and somewhat random rock soundtrack including “White Wedding” by Billy Idol and “Walking On The Edge” by Rick Springfield. It has lots of atmosphere and stylized imagery with colored lighting that makes the frame look like a blue or yellow screen printing, and a handful of scenes just starkly showing a strip of flashy businesses around the mysterious Metropol movie theater where it takes place. Gothic horror downtown.

When it opens on the subway, Simonetti’s theme song is grooving so hard – the drum and keyboard sounds he’s using seem old school hip hop influenced – you’re pretty sure this is gonna be a classic. And I think your instincts are correct. Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) is, I believe, a music student in Berlin headed to a lecture, clutching her Bartok book nervously as she eyes the cool punk hairstyles around her on the train. Lady, they don’t even know you exist. Get over yourself. Then she starts glimpsing reflections, almost like a hallucination, of some kind of cyborg man (second unit director Michele Soavi) with a half metal face? I don’t know, maybe it’s an updated Phantom of the Opera mask. He turns out to be real and approaches her at the station… she actually runs from him but is relieved when he turns out to be just a guy giving out passes to a movie screening.

Maybe she’s a little less uptight than I thought, because she convinces her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo, A CAT IN THE BRAIN) that they should skip the lecture and go to the movie, even though the tickets don’t give a title or a description and it’s at a theater they’ve never heard of. Kathy is worried it will be a horror movie, but they go anyway. That’s it, Kathy – live a little!

There’s one weird thing in the theater lobby: a display of a sort of S&M inspired suit of armor riding a red motorcycle, holding a sword and a metallic demon mask. Gritty KNIGHTRIDERS reboot? Another moviegoer named Rosemary (Geretta Giancarlo, SMITHEREENS, 2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS, MURDER ROCK) jokingly tries on the mask and gets a small cut on her face from it. That will turn out to be important. Less important are the posters in the lobby, but of course I took note of them: THE TERMINATOR, Herzog’s version of NOSFERATU, Argento’s 4 FLIES ON GREY VELVET, the 1980 concert film NO NUKES, the re-release of METROPOLIS with the Moroder soundtrack, the Paul Newman movie HARRY & SON (crinkled up like they rescued it from a dumpster), and AC/DC: LET THERE BE ROCK.

Some preppy dudes named George (Urbano Barberini, OPERA, CASINO ROYALE) and Ken (Karl Zinny, DELIRIUM) hit on Cheryl and Kathy in the lobby and then sit by them inside. They seem like real douchebags, and Ken even has a sweater tied around his neck, over his tucked in white polo shirt, but they turn out to be okay and George will become the dashing male action hero of the movie. So first impressions aren’t everything.

Some of the other people at the movie include a blind man named Werner (Alex Serra, LADYHAWKE) and his daughter Liz (Sally Day), young couple Hanna (Fiore Argento, PHENOMENA) and Tommy (Guido Baldi), and bickering older couple Frank (Stelio Candelli, HERCULES) and Ruth (Nicole Tessier, GIANTS OF ROME). Rosemary is with her friend Carmen (Fabiola Toledo, A BLADE IN THE DARK) and a dude named Tony (Bobby Rhodes, THE LAST HUNTER), who Wikipedia informs me is their pimp so now I feel naive. I just thought they were hip and dressed cool. But it makes sense that a pimp would be good at taking charge and telling people what to do.

There’s also an usher named Ingrid (Nicoletta Elmi, DEEP RED) who keeps giving them all creepy looks, but it eventually turns out she’s not evil, she just works here.

As far as I noticed the movie-within-a-movie is never given a title. Its first shot (headlights of two motorcycles) mirrors the first shot of the actual movie (lights on the subway). It’s about young people exploring ruins where “according to legend, Nostradamus was buried here.” (According to other sources he was buried in a Franciscan chapel in Salon and later re-interred in the Collegiale Saint-Laurent during the French Revolution.) They discuss things he predicted, including “the coming of the demons” and when they open his casket they find a mask like the one in the lobby, which cuts one of their faces just like happened to Rosemary. Right after this scene Rosemary notices she’s still bleeding and goes to the restroom… where her wound pulsates, inflates and sprays pus, and she transforms into a very cool demon drooling bright green slime, who begins scratching and biting others to infect them too. Hats off to legendary makeup effects artist Sergio Stivaletti.

So we’re 24 minutes in and we have a great meta-horror premise. A mysterious movie causes an outbreak of demons in this old theater, the filmgoers will fight the demons to survive, etc. You can see where it’s going, and it sounds fun. Except what’s actually coming is even cooler. I should mention this is produced by Dario Argento, who wrote it along with Bava, Dardano Sachetti (THE BEYOND) and Franco Ferrini (PHENOMENA). So if just being Italian wasn’t enough to tell you, this is gonna take things to a more feverish, phantasmagorical and apocalyptic destination than the premise would otherwise suggest.

There are, of course, screams heard and dismissed as part of the movie. And a demon transformation behind the movie screen, then tearing through as if coming out of the fictional world into the real one. You gotta have that. Once the cat’s out of the bag, fleeing moviegoers find walls erected behind the exit doors, and try to claw through. They’re shocked to discover that there’s no projectionist and the projector is automatic (a Nostradamus-type vision of the future) before they smash it to bits and pull the film out. They hole up on the balcony, pulling the seats out and piling them up to barricade the entrances. They chip though a wall to create a tunnel into another room, but it’s a room without a doorway or window. I hate those.

There’s a whole bunch of outstandingly imaginative creature effects, gore and imagery. One that was iconic enough to be used as the poster is a bunch of silhouetted demons with glowing eyes, I’m not even sure how they did it. It looks like artwork even in the movie.

About 40 minutes in we leave the theater to meet a carload of punk assholes driving around the city in a hotwired car, snorting coke from a Coke can. One of them is named Hot Dog (Giuseppe Mauro Cruciano, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE). He deserves such a terrible nickname, and the driver/ringleader Ripper (Pasqualino Salemme, “Accuser,” THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST) is even worse. Chased by cops, they break into the theater through a back door, letting one of the demons out. Whoops.

Shit gets even crazier. Obviously George gets to use the motorcycle and sword from the lobby, driving all around the theater slashing up demons. Then there’s a rumbling and it seems like demons are breaking through the ceiling but instead a helicopter falls through!? Yeah, I guess shit is getting bad outside too. But I don’t blame them for wanting to leave this place anyway.

I suppose you could say it’s very metal the way Bava, Argento and crew lean into horror movies being evil, exaggerating the concept beyond all reason, but not in a satirical sort of way, more like celebrating and reveling in their industry’s bad reputation. Not only are horror movies evil, they’re the actual end of the world.

That’s my guess of what the boys might’ve intended – an in-joke, or a fuck you, or a yes and to their detractors. But also I choose the more positive reading that art is an unstoppable force. In this case in a bad way, but not always. This is about the transformative power of cinema – movies can turn you into a monster!

You know that feeling of seeing a really involving movie and then coming out of the theater and having to readjust to the world outside? Here they emerge to a burning city, a collapsing civilization, a whole different world. They’re riding to an uncertain future in a Jeep of armed survivors, like they’re off to find John Connor (the guy mentioned in that movie they have the top half of the poster for in the lobby). It’s an amazing ending even before it gets to the brutal mid-credits punchline.

And then when you retrace the steps back to where it started it’s so beautifully inexplicable. It was time for the demons to rise (as possibly predicted by Nostradamus) so they… made a mysterious movie hinting at it, and passed out tickets? Is the metal-faced guy a demon? He looks like an actual robot when we see him again later. I don’t know how to explain all this. I don’t want to know how.

I’ve seen DEMONS before and I’m pretty sure it was in the aughts, the last time I went to the All Freakin’ Night horror marathon in Olympia. But you’d think if I’d seen this in an old movie house that would’ve been really cool and I’d remember definitively. Maybe the fact that I don’t is a testament to the particular dreamy quality of the movie. It feels like a blurry memory even as you’re watching it. It really hit the spot this time. Highly recommended for your seasonal activities, or otherwise.