We were all headed down to the Monroe Harbour Marina when the exhaustion overtook me. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever and our all night assault on the gang in the Museum of Schlock. I was hungry too. We stopped at a Long John Silver’s. I got a large Pepsi and the Chicken & Fish platter. I gave Edwige my hush puppies. She was appreciative. We waited for nightfall.

— To be continued. 

This week’s movie is 1986’s Demons 2 from director Lamberto Bava. I remember in the early days of the Internet how I discovered a review of Demons 2 on IGN or some similar site. The critic said he’d rather be drawn and quartered than watch Demons 2 again. Surely the movie can’t be that bad so let’s sink our teeth into this bad boy. 

The setting of our movie is a swanky apartment complex. We’re introduced to various inhabitants of this apartment complex such as a boy home alone while his parents are out partying, a prosti–I mean lady of the hour–who’s visiting a client, and a young teenage girl named Sally who’s having a birthday party. Sally is a bit of Pre-Madonna, hating her clothes and not wanting to come out her bedroom to greet her guests. And who needs to leave one’s bedroom when there’s a scary movie about demons playing on the television.

The TV movie features four college students visiting the ruins of a modern city. Seems that the demon infestation brought it to ruins. These kids are trespassing as it’s like going into the ruins of Chernobyl. It begins to dawn on me that this is taking place in the world of the first Demons movie. Our hero of that movie survived the demons of the movie theater only to discover the rest of the city had been taken over by demons. These moronic young people manage to accidentally resurrect one of the demons. Said demon attacks one of them, dooming her to become a demon, but then he curiously looks toward the TV screen.

Before we know it, the demon from the movie is trying to claw its way through the TV screen into Sally’s bedroom. I guess this means Ring wasn’t as original as I thought. When Sally joins her guests who are happily singing Happy Birthday, she grows claws through her fingernails and fangs shoots out from her gums. Before you know it, she attacks her guests, turning them into demons to torment the residents of this swanky apartment complex. Then demonic Sally drools blood through the floorboards, shorting out the electricity in the building and sealing everyone inside. 

The funniest group of residents are the bodybuilders on the first floor and their workout instructor, Hank (Bobby Rhodes), who is played by the same actor who played Toni the Pimp in the first Demons movie. I imagine that in this universe, this same character chose a different career path, but like Toni in the first movie, he orders around the hapless gym goers in an effort to set up a defense against the hordes of demons trying to break into the parking garage. They fail of course, but they get an A for effort in my book.

What else? There’s a demon dog, a demon kid, and a demon muppet to contend with. We also get a young married couple named George (David Knight) and Hannah (Nancy Brilli). To make matters more complicated, Hannah is pregnant which can be an impediment when fighting demons though she makes quick work of the demon muppet. Who will survive and what will be left of them? You’ll have to watch to find out. You can catch Demons 2 streaming for free on Pluto TV. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, episode 670, episode 686, and episode 687) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.