This DVD I rented is labelled DEMONS III: THE OGRE, but I knew that wasn’t really a thing. That’s just how video labels chose to promote THE OGRE, a 1989 TV movie that Lamberto Bava went off to do after giving up on a third DEMONS.
THE OGRE opens in Portland, Oregon, where a little girl wakes up and wanders into a dungeon/wine cellar and finds a bizarre, pulsating cocoon on the ceiling. It’s like a giant spider egg sac except it glows yellow, drips fluid and beats like a heart. She sees a spindly monster inside, and it reaches a hand out for her, then chases her. Eventually she wakes up. Yes, it was only a dream, but she dropped her teddy bear in the dream, and now it’s gone. (read the rest of this shit…)
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.
a.k.a. 
STAGEFRIGHT (aka DELIRIA, or STAGEFRIGHT: AQUARIUS as the title screen says) is a very stylish slasher/giallo type deal from Michele Soavi, Dario Argento’s second unit director on TENEBRE and PHENOMENA who went on to be best known for directing CEMETERY MAN. This one is more obviously in the footsteps of his mentor than that one.
