Night of the Demons

Alternate titles : Halloween Party

Tagline : "Angela is having a party, Jason and Freddy are too scared to come. But You'll have a hell of a time"

It's Halloween, and school chums Angela (Amelia Kincade) and Suzanne (played by Scream Queen Linnea Quigley) have decided to throw a party for some of their fellow classmates at the old Hull House funeral parlour nearby. Having been closed for many years, following a series of brutal murders there, they think it will be the perfect setting for them.

So having broken in and set everything up, the guests soon arrive and the party gets underway. Everything is swinging along nicely, until one of them suggests that they have a séance, which is never a good idea in a horror film. Particularly one set in a funeral home on Halloween night.

Anyway, having tried contacting the spirit world, with seemingly no success, the guests notice shortly afterwards that Angela and Suzanne have started to act a bit strange. Soonafter, a hideous transformation takes place and the two begin attacking the party guests one by one, who subsequently go onto to become possessed themselves, and pretty soon the remaining guests are fighting for their lives.

Aping the basic plot of "The Evil Dead" to good effect, Linnea Quigley and Amelia Kincade are aptly cast as Suzanne and Angela and I found this to be a really fun film. I will admit that when the cartoonish intro credits came up at the start, I did wonder what I had let myself in for. But as the film got going, it soon won me over and to a large extent, the films low budget sort-off ads to its charm, which had a very "Roger Corman" feel to it.

This film may have passed you by, as it had a very limited theatrical run back in the late 80s, but its pretty easy to get hold of on Disc. If you enjoyed "Return of the Living Dead", then you should like this, as it has a similar vibe and also stars Linnea Quigley.

Overall Marks : 6/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Had the film been released nationally, instead of regionally, they reckon it would have been one of the highest grossing horror movies of the decade. As it was, it still did extremely well theatrically given its limited distribution, grossing $3,109,904. More than triple its budget.
• Scream Queen Linnea Quigley also starred in "Return of the Living Dead", "Silent Night, Deadly Night" and "Pumpkinhead 2 : Blood Wings".
• The film's budget was $1,200,000
• The film was released on video in the US in both an uncut unrated version and a cut R-rated version, which heavily toned down the blood and nudity. All current US Disc releases are uncut.
• Director Kevin Tenney also directed "Witchboard" and "The Cellar".
• The sounds of an arcade machine heard in the convenience store were actually from an Atari 2600 home video console version of Pac-Man, as opposed to the actual arcade machine.
• Amelia Kinkade, who plays Angela, was aso a dance choreographer and performed her own routines for the scene where she's doing an erotic dance at the party. She is also the Niece of US TV actress Rue MacLanahan of the Golden Girls fame, who actually visited her on set during filming.
• Linnea Quigley met her future husband, special effects artist Steve Johnson, on the set of the film (sadly they divorced in 1992).
• The building used in the film was actually on a busy street, not in a secluded area as it appeared in the film. So they had to do some careful camerawork to make sure no other buildings were in shot when filming outside. Sadly, the building was pulled down sometime in the 1990s and there's now a supermarket on the site.
• The old UK video was of the unrated version, but was cut by the BBFC by 4s to shorten the scene of the man's throat getting cut with a razor. The original UK DVD release was of this same cut version, but the special edition released in in 2011 was fully uncut.

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