Editorials
‘Demons 2’ – Why the Italian Horror Film Is a Must-Watch Before ‘Evil Dead Rise’
The wait horror fans had been enduring for a proper glimpse at the latest entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise, had been torturous, but a first-look image was finally unleashed this week. We also have an official synopsis, and it sounds like a good time. Essentially, the Necronomicon unleashes the Deadites for some mayhem in an apartment complex.
Now, without even so much as a teaser for the film by the writing of this article, we don’t know what the “Evil Dead in an apartment building” idea will look like. Going by the synopsis alone, I can’t help but feel that the upcoming Lee Cronin film may have taken some inspiration from an Italian cult classic – Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2 – in which demons invade a high rise apartment building and quickly start turning everyone they come across into one of their horde. What for? Well, what else? To take over the world!
Son of legendary filmmaker Mario Bava, Lamberto’s Demons is one of the most well known and beloved Italian horror films of the 80s. Demons 2, released less than a year after the original, never received as much adoration as its predecessor. It has been looked at more favorably in recent years, however—and with good reason. It’s a rock solid sequel that takes the concept of the first one and reinterprets it in a new way – kinda like how Evil Dead 2 is a quasi-remake of the first film. Hmm, the Evil Dead comparison doesn’t just stop at the general premise. Movies are awesome.
In Demons, the invasion takes place in a movie theater. It utilizes the film-within-a-film concept where, in the world of Demons, the characters are watching a horror film about the release of a plague of, you guessed it, demons upon the Earth. The film within a film acts as a conduit into our world for evil to break through.
In Demons 2, the theater is replaced by television. The first film ends with the realization that the invasion was not contained to the movie theater, but is indeed an apocalyptic event. Demons 2 establishes that Demons was just a movie and the sequel to that movie is what’s airing on television which many of the characters in Demons 2 are watching.
Still following? Good.
You could say that Demons 2 is actually kind of meta before being meta was the cool and hip thing to do in horror. These meta aspects are mild, though. I don’t think Bava is commenting on the tropes of horror cinema so much as he is making a comment on the isolation modern living can bring and the reliance on the television screen to pass the time or comfort us.
The high-rise apartment that the entire film takes place in is modern (well, 80s modern), sleek, and comes with perky amenities of higher end apartments. There is a spa, expansive gym, and even in-house catering. Various characters we follow are all watching the Demons film on TV. One such character is Sally. It’s Sally’s birthday and she’ll cry if she wants to. What’s the most central component of a birthday? Why, it’s the cake!
Sally’s cake is the key to understanding the subtext of Demons 2. The film opens with close-up shots slowly moving over bloody kitchen utensils. But ah-ha! It’s not blood, silly! It’s red preserves! We’re seeing the finishing touches being put on Sally’s cake. Luscious red berries are gently placed on the perimeter, dripping their juices down the sides. It looks an awful lot like blood and it’s the one detail that interrupts the perfection of the confection.
The cake represents the high-rise as well as Sally. It’s rich and pretty. The berries are Sally’s guests. They surround Sally and emphasize her luxury. Sally is an unpleasant person. She is quick to anger, thus making her most vulnerable as the host for the demonic evil. One of the most iconic shots of the film features the cake in the foreground. Sally, newly possessed, opens her bedroom door and is shrouded in darkness, backlit by eerie lighting as she approaches her cake.
All hell quickly breaks loose as she “demons out” and attacks all of her guests and friends, infecting them in turn. Just like the red juices from the berries that adorn the cake, Sally’s demon blood runs from her body and through the interior of the high-rise. Sally and her guests are now disrupting the surface level perfection of the chic apartment building.
Demons 2 isn’t quite as perfectly paced as the first film, nor does it have the same amount of Grand Guignol showmanship, but it’s hardly a dry affair. Blood flows aplenty, and once the horde is running about the building, the film is one fun set piece after another. It’s also an incredibly well shot film, with cinematographer Gianlorenzo Battaglia bathing it in a cool, industrial aesthetic. He and Bava are even able to recapture the magical shot of the demons walking up the steps in the first film with an equally awesome shot of the demons, eyes aglow, walking down a hallway.
Fan favorite actor, Bobby Rhodes, returns in Demons 2 as a new character. This time he is trading out his shady pimp character for the more heroic bodybuilder, Hank. Bava gets in on the “tiny terror” trend by tossing a rubber puppet demon that is an obvious play on Gremlins and Asia Argento also makes her feature film debut as Ingrid.
Demons 2 is an utter delight of a sequel. It’s stylish as hell and still retains the same anarchistic glee of the original, even if it’s not quite as gory. There is also some fun subtext to dig into if you want to look for it.
Italian horror is often discussed for how out there and seemingly nonsensical it is, which does a disservice to the real stories the filmmakers are telling. Just because these films don’t adhere to more traditional narrative trappings doesn’t mean they aren’t about anything but the blood and guts.
Demons 2 is not like Sally’s birthday cake; there is more to it than the frosting.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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