31 Days of Halloween: Can you survive the Night of the Demons?
By Jeremy Dick
For today’s horror movie pick for our 31 Days of Halloween, we’re looking at Night of the Demons, the film that will change the way you look at lipstick.
“Stop looking at me!!”
If we’re going to be going through 31 of our most favorite horror films as part of 1428 Elm’s 31 Days of Halloween, there’s no way I could leave this one out. 1988’s Night of the Demons is such a unique and special horror film that it would spawn a franchise, with two sequels following in the 1990s and then a remake in 2009. But I still feel like the original classic doesn’t get the attention these days that it deserves.
Kevin S. Tenney directs this awesome flick, using a script by producer Joe Augustyn. It’s about a group of teens holding a party in an abandoned funeral parlor called the Hull House. There, they wind up accidentally resurrecting a demonic force inside, which possesses a couple of the partygoers. Now “demons”, they begin killing the others at the party — turning them into horrifying demons as well.
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The threat only grows as the night goes on, with the teens becoming outnumbered as more of their own turn evil. Demons are able to lure new victims by hiding what they have become, only exposing themselves when it’s too late. By by the time the secret is out, those remaining are running to survive as the mutated versions of their friends are trying to kill them.
Though this is clearly a movie about “demons” killing people, there’s a psychological element to it that makes it extra frightening. It’s freaky to see the ways becoming a demon changes people. That of course includes perhaps the most memorable scene of the film involving Linnea Quigley and a tube of pink lipstick. She draws all over her face with it to make herself look “pretty”, and then inserts it into her body in a way none of us could have ever seen coming.
via midnightsocietytales.com
Just tell her ‘yes’…
The movie has a lot of freaky and creative kills, and only gets weirder as the story moves along. Like when one horny couple wind up getting snuffed in a casket after climbing inside to get it on. The guy loses his left arm in the process — which later comes alive and attacks one of the survivors! It sounds funny, and it is, but it’s freaky at the same time. You have to see it to see what I mean.
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If this movie has managed to slip underneath your radar, I can’t stress enough that you really need to watch it. And even if you have seen it before, do yourself a favor and give it another go. The film really holds up and I work it in every Halloween season. So I say revisit the 80s with one of the best 80s horror flicks to exist and one of my own personal favorites, Night of the Demons!