Black Demons

Alternate titles : Black Zombies, Demons 3.

Tagline : "They will tear, rip, and bite anyone in their path of vengeance."

This low budget zombie film from the infamous Umberto Lenzi takes place in Brazil, where 3 American tourists, Kevin (Keith Van Hoven), girlfriend Jessica (Sonia Curtis) and friend Dick (Joe Balogh) are busy sightseeing, when their jeep breaks down in the middle of the countryside.

They manage to find help at a nearby farmhouse, where the young owner agrees to put them up for the night, until they can get their car fixed. But it seems the farmhouse is located on an old plantation, complete with it's own graveyard for the former slave workers there. Which Dick discovers, and decides would be the ideal place to play his tape recordings of voodoo rituals in (never a wise move in a horror film).

Predictably, the next thing that happens is the bodies of the former plantation slaves rise from their graves and go on the rampage. Except, by “rampage” I mean killing one person, before heading off again. As the 3 friends subsequently find themselves stranded at the house for several nights, due to a series of plot contrivances. Yet show little concern as more people start to go missing, and fail to realise there are zombies on the prowl, despite the noises their rattling chains make, or the screams made by their victims.

Things come to a head when Dick goes mad and tries to attack them and the zombies finally decide to come out of hiding and kill off the remaining survivors, leading to a rather dull final battle, as Kevin and Jessica realise the zombies can be killed by fire and start chucking petrol bombs at them.

A very slow and dreary film, the zombies are more "Hammer" zombie than "Romero" zombie, so don't actually eat their victims, but rather hack them to death with various farm implements. However, they seem remarkably intact for people that have supposedly been dead for over 100 years. Whilst there are a few decent gore scenes, the film is let down by its low budget and bad acting. This was apparently a very rushed production, and was made at a time when the Italian film industry was in decline, which unfortunately shows.

The film isn't a total loss, but is really one for die hard zombie film fans only, or the morbidly curious.

Overall Marks : 4/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• This was one of 3 films, along with "The Ogre" and "The Church" to have been retitled "Demons 3" in some countries, to cash in on the popularity of Lamberto Bava's "Demons" films, despite being completely unrelated. This name change was ultimately down to the distributors and Lenzi has said in interviews that he was was less than happy about this.
• This was to be Umberto Lenzi's final film, before retiring from the industry.
• Joe Balough was offered the role of Dick as he had previously starred in Lenzi's "Hitcher in the Dark" and had gotten on well with the Director. Unfortunately, he struggled with the heat and was ill a lot of the time, which is what Lenzi attributed to his poor performance in this.
• The film was written by the Director's wife, Olga Pehar.
• Lenzi had originally cast a different actress in the role of Jessica, but she had to pull out at the last minute due to personal problems. So the agency just sent the first available actress they had to take her place, which happened to be Sonia Curtiss. Lenzi didn't know about this until she arrived at the airport, and was absoloutely furious, as he felt she was too short and not attractive enough for the character he had in mind, and also felt that she was only a mediocre actress. However, as production was underway and he was unable to recast, he had to make do. Which caused a lot of tension on set between them.
• Keith Van Hoven, who played Kevin, was apparently extremely difficult to work with, and did not get on well with the other cast members and frequently clashed with the Director on set.
• Filming had to be suspended for a couple of day after Sonia Curtis drank some unpastuerised milk, that a farmer had given her, and got a bad case of food poisoning. So they had to rush her to hospital.
• Prior to the 2003 US DVD release from Shriek Show, this film was very difficult to get hold of, as VHS releases were few and far between and despite being filmed in English, nearly all releases were of the Italian dub, having never been released on video in the UK or US. The Portguese release entitled "Black Demons - The Rage of the Living Dead" by Domo video was the only one that utilised the English track.
• Despite all the problems, Lenzi has said that he liked the story and thought this was an interesting film. But due to the rushed production, low budget and problems with the cast, he was left feeling unsatisfied with the end result.

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