42) Demons 2 (1986)

 "The blood dripping from the ceiling...I touched it!"

Director
Lamberto Bava

Cast
David Knight - George
Nancy Brilli - Hannah
Coralina Cataldi Tassoni - Sally Day
Bobby Rhodes - Hank
Marco Vivio - Tommy

I've somehow consistently gone back to Italy for horror movies in the last few months without conscientiously doing so. That's certainly not a bad thing, of course. Italian horror film makers have come up with some classic movies.
If the horror movies from Italy I've watched lately have taught me anything, it's that Italian horror directors sure love blood, guts, and the gruesome.
Well, I've turned to this Italian horror movie simply because it's a sequel to the 1985 movie Demons (Demoni in Italian) which is my seventh review on this blog.
While Demons sees an infestation of possessed people among movie-goers trapped in a movie theater, part two has the infestation occur within an apartment complex. It's a classic premise that I personally enjoy. Such a scenario provides several points of view in a horrific situation, with more for the audience to pull from, and more opportunities for the movie makers to get creative.
Unlike the first movie, part two is set in reality where Sally Day (the actress who played Liz in part one) is one of the main characters in the sequel. But she's portrayed by a different actress - not the real Sally Day. I think if I tried to explain this further, it would lead to confusion.
The first movie is referenced in the beginning of this sequel. This time, the token horror movie I mentioned in my review of part one, with four teenagers searching for a grave that was playing at the theater, is now on TV. Most of the tenants in this apartment have it turned on.
Only this time, it's presented as a documentary rather than a movie. Then in turns into a movie. This aspect is completely misguided. But everyone watching it is glued to the screen.
The movie within the movie is changed somewhat in part two. This time, the teenagers sneak into a deserted city and stumble upon the rotted corpse of a dead zombie person pinned under some debris. The corpse is revived accidentally when blood from one of the teens drips onto it.
The demon chases the teens and attacks a few, and then draws its attention to Sally - one of the apartment tenants - who's watching all this unfold on TV.
Sally, who has been hosting her own birthday party, locks herself in her bedroom because her boyfriend didn't show up.
She has the TV on while her guests try to pursued her to come out and join in the fun.
We're treated to the demon's point of view from the other side of the screen. He tries to force his way through the glass. The special effects here are impressive.
Before she knows it, the demon is in the room her.
When she comes out, the audience is treated to quite a gorefest as Sally transforms into a demon with her teeth falling out, green bile splattering, and acid blood dripping and sizzling on the floor.
The blood seeps through the floor and into apartments below. In no time, other tenants are infected and transforming into demons. No one is spared if affected. Even one of the tenant's dogs turns.

Nancy Brilli and David Marotta

Also, a young boy named Tommy becomes into a raging demon with a worse fate befalling him afterwards.
Those infected join together to hunt down other apartment tenants.
A group of survivors are locked in the apartment's garage, where a fitness coach named Hank (played by Bobby Rhodes who returns from part one, but in a different role) is trying to call the shots and figure out a way to escape.
Somehow, all the doors and exits in the apartment are locked so getting out is nearly impossible - an aspect taken from the first film.
This movie is a showcase of gore with a story that tries to be like the first movie, but with barely enough differences. And somewhere in the middle, the writers remember they need a central character. So, they go with the most vulnerable yet unlikely character.
The majority of the movie's budget surely went towards the make-up and visual effects, particularly the scene where the demon attempts to push its way through a television screen. Its an early computer effect as far as I know. It's memorable, to say the least.
The director clearly wanted the audience to get a lot of close looks at the demon make-up with all the lengthy closeup shots of the demonic faces, especially Sally's, in all their frothy, foaming, grimacing, bleeding, dripping glory. In fact, the poster displays nothing but the movies best effects. It's right there!
Also, the dog's transformation was a little more comedic that what was probably intended. Still, when I think about it, this effect must have taken a lot of time and patience to accomplish as they used a real dog in makeup for the scene.
To the movie's credit, when it comes to scares and gore, Demons 2 doesn't pull any punches. The effort to scare and gross the audience out is very apparent. The movie tries hard to pull off a little more than the first. And for that, it deserves applause.
In my youth, I definitely would have found this movie terrifying with scenes I have no doubt would have locked themselves into my memory for years to come if I had watched in my youth.

There are some suspenseful scenes where the audience knows a demon is lurking nearby, but the movie doesn't use any music. This small detail makes the film a bit more chilling as there's no indication whether we should be scared something bad will happen, or when it'll happen. The anticipation still plays out.
Horror movie legend Dario Argento, who was a writer and producer for Demons returns for the sequel. Argento's name is attached to some horror classics such as Phenomena, Innocent Blood and Suspiria. 
The visuals are great in this sequel, especially the shots of demon-possessed tenants peering over ledges and down dark hallways dark with glowing eyes reminiscent of the scene in Salem's Lot with Geoffrey Lewis as a vampire sitting on a rocking chair in the dim light. 
For fans of true horror, this is a decent sequel to the successful first movie. It tries to give more than what we saw in the first. And it pulls it of rather well.

Demons (1985)

41) Grizzly (1976)

"Bears don't eat people." "This one did!"

Director
William Girdler

Cast
Christopher George - Michael Kelly
Andrew Prine - Don Stober
Joe Dorsey - Charley Kittridge
Joan McCall - Allison Corwin
Charles Kissinger - Dr. Hallitt

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, you got out of the water because a giant man-eating shark was swimming around. So, instead you thought it would be safer to take a nature hike through a national forest as an alternative excursion.  Well, think again. Why? There's a man-eating grizzly bear lurking around, and eating people, and doing some bad bear things!
It's blatantly obvious that the 1976 movie Grizzly is a rip-off of the more popular movie Jaws which was released the year before. Even the posters look similar. Just compare them. The Jaws poster has the shark, bearing razor sharp teeth, lurking underneath the unsuspecting female swimmer. On the poster for Grizzly, the bear with its razor sharp teeth, looms over the unsuspecting female camper.
I first watched this movie shortly after I had started my endeavor through 1,000 horror movies. That's what this blog is all about. Grizzly was originally going to be my sixth movie. I kept dozing off trying to get through it.
But this silly ol' bear kept popping into my head, so I attempted another viewing.
The National Philharmonic Orchestra scores the opening shot as a helicopter flies over the treetops of a national forest. The pilot tells his guide that the forest below has been pretty much untouched since the Native Americans lived within.
The forest is currently in its busy vacation season as tourists and campers roam the main area of the park. Meanwhile, two female hikers are taking down their campsite when a grizzly mauls and hacks one of them to death. The other girl runs for her life and hides in a shack where the grizzly tears through the walls, leaving her no where else to go.
When the mangled remains of the girls are discovered, the Chief Park Ranger, Michael Kelly (Christopher George) is determined to find the bear and destroy it. Other grizzly deaths take place.
Meanwhile, Park Supervisor, Charley Kittridge (Joe Dorsey) thinks it's Kelly's fault the attacks took place as Kelly was responsible eliminating bears from out of the forest.
As attacks continue, including the mauling of a young boy and the death of his mother, time becomes crucial as Kelly and a team of hunters try to find this bear. Though Kelly doesn't appreciate the number of hunters roaming the forest as he believes they'll just kill any animal they come across.
All the while, Kelly and Kittridge argue back and forth about keeping the park open to campers, and how to locate and take down the bear.
It's revealed that grizzlies don't live in this particular forest as they were purposely eliminated from the region. But somehow, this one remains.
Kittridge wants the park to remain open for camping while the deaths of campers and hikers is obviously reason enough to close the park.
Split second shots of the horror scenes make it so the audience can't get a good look at the gore. It's a good way to disguise a low budget. The elusive bear kills. Experts can't find this giant bear. It kills again. Rinse and repeat.
Grizzly definitely piggybacks off the success of Jaws. The similarities are uncanny.
The grizzly survived an attempt at regional extinction. So, its presence in this National Forest is very peculiar... just like Jaws' presence in that particular beach of Amity Island was peculiar.
A park ranger has to endure a battle of the wills against a greedy supervisor ridiculously lacking enough emotion to close the park as that would lead to loss of revenue. He allows campers to continue camping in the park despite the number of deaths. It's a plot point reminiscent of Mayor Larry Vaughn's desire to keep the beach open in Jaws. Like Vaughn, who feared Amity Island's economy would suffer by closing the beach during the summer, the supervisor fears the same sort of thing at the hight of tourist season. And both won't consider the reasons presented by the experts.
The movie uses lazy special effects and repeated footage of the bear that resembles stock footage to attempt to terrorize the audience.
It makes little sense that the movie initially conceals the bear until midway through the movie. Why? We know it's a grizzly bear. Presumably, everyone in the audience knowns what a bear looks like. It doesn't have any physical abnormalities designed to scare the audience. It's just a menacing, hungry, normal looking grizzly standing at 18 feet tall (according to the poster.)
Aside from sinister music (like Jaws) and point-of-view shots as the bear sneaks up on naïve vacationers (again, like Jaws), there's not a lot of scare tactics here except for a lot of shots of screaming faces. It's drab, predicatble, and lacks much originality and imagination.
For those who love man versus deadly nature films, maybe this movie will appease on a Friday night. Otherwise, it painfully tries to be Jaws while trying not to be so. 
If anyone out there thought the shark looked fake, there are a lot of scenes where the grizzly looks even worse.
On a side note, there is one interesting factor about this movie. The poster was designed by comic book legend Neal Adams.
Grizzly vs Jaws? Now that would be epic! I'd watch that.

40) Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Don't go messing around with teachers

Director
Dan Curtis

Cast
Karen Black - Julie, Millicent, Therese, Amelia
Robert Burton - Chad
George Gaynes - Dr. Chester Ramsey
Tracy Curtis - Tracy

I've heard of Trilogy of Terror several times, primarily from other horror movie reviews. And the reviewers pretty much all say the same thing about it.
I happened to stumble upon a copy of Trilogy of Terror at an antique store in Council Grove, Kansas. Obviously, I snagged it as finding a copy in the wild (from what I understand) is difficult.
With all the reviews and comments I've heard from other horror enthusiasts, I wanted to see this for myself. For some reason, this movie has a cult following.
It first aired on the ABC Movie of the Week back in 1975. Now some have gone so far as to call Trilogy of Terror one of the best TV horror movies of all time. I hope Duel and Salem's Lot are included in that "all time" list as well.
As the title suggests, this anthology movie is made up of three stories. All of them feature actress Karen Black.
In the first story, Julie, Black plays English teacher Julie Eldridge who's the quintessential college professor - hair pulled up into a bun, horn rimmed glasses, no makeup, earthen colored dress and black shoes. Underneath her humdrum appearance is a gorgeous woman who has attracted the attention of one of her students, Chad (Robert Burton.)
He has weird fantasies about her and tells his buddy, Eddie (James Storm), about them. Eddie discourages Chad from romantically pursuing his college professor. Chad, however, has too much interest in her to follow his friend's advice.
During one particular class, Chad catches a glimpse of Julie's thigh and decides to throw all moral restraint out the window.
He stalks Julie at her house later that night, and watches her through a window as she undresses.
The next day, he asks her out to a movie. First she declines, but later accepts. While he's chatting her up, he mentions he has an interest in photography.
They go to a drive-in movie to see a vampire flick. Of course! How sensual! During the film, Chad offers to buy her a soda at the concession stand. He spikes her drink with something unknown making Julie pass out.
He drives her back to a motel, checks in as husband and wife, and takes several photos of her in provocative positions dressed in revealing cloths.
When she wakes up, she's back in his car parked in front of her house.
Julie thinks she just fell asleep during the movie, and has no memory of what he put her through.
Chad develops the pictures in his dark room, and shows them to Julie the next day.

Karen Black and Robert Burton in the story Julie  from Trilogy of Terror.

Horrified, she threatens to contact the police. Chad, however, threatens that if she contacts police, he'll tell the school board that she seduced him among other lies. He then demands she submit to his all his requests.
This goes on for a while until Julie turns things around on him.
It's a story, perhaps, a little ahead of its time as it brings the horrific issue of date rape to the surface.
The second story, Millicent and Therese, is about sibling rivalry. Millicent (also played by Black) believes her sister, Therese (Black, again) is way too seductive and loose. Therese is also a practitioner of Voodoo and black magic. So, to Millicent, her sister is an evil that needs to be stopped.
To take care of her sister once and for all, Millicent uses a talisman Voodoo doll.
The family doctor, Dr. Ramsey (George Gaynes - Police Academy, Punky Brewster) knows the truth about Millicent and Therese, and his discovery at the end reveals to the audience just who these two women really are. It's a classic story, and plays out well. The only "horror" aspect in this tale is the Voodoo doll.
These first two stories aren't necessarily terrifying or even scary. They're more suspenseful than horrific. But that doesn't make them bad by any means. Both are still entertaining to watch, turning the cliché elements into classic television.
The last story, as those critics mentioned earlier have pointed out, is where the movie makes an impression. It's were the horror comes out. It's what audiences remember most about the entire trilogy.
That story, Amelia, is a one-woman performance featuring Karen Black yet again. This time she plays Amelia who lives alone in her apartment.
She comes home with a freakishly ugly looking Zuni warrior fetish doll she purchased at an antique store as a gift for her boyfriend - a collector of antiquities.
The wooden Aboriginal-looking doll is dark with piercing eyes peering through a menacing brow, wiry black hair, sharp glaring white teeth, a metal spear in its hand, and a gold chain around its center.
An attached scroll reads that the doll contains the evil spirit of a warrior called "He Who Kills" and the gold chain keeps the spirit within. Should the gold chain be removed, the evil spirit will be released.
After looking the doll over while on the phone to her overbearing mother, Amelia sets it down on the coffee table as she leaves the room. She doesn't notice the chain accidentally fall off.
When she returns, the doll is missing. And Amelia soon finds herself being chased by the screaming entity that possessed the doll.
The creature in this feature doesn't hide in the shadows for long. Once it's out for all to see, it comes out blazing.
I can see why this movie has a cult following. The doll is terrifying to look at, and to see what it's capable of doing is a scare-fest for sure. Its face and screams are unforgettable - the stuff of nightmares.
Critics I've heard say this movie will getcha at the end. And that's certainly true. The ending - the final story - makes the movie.
Also, Black is memorable in playing four roles. She plays each differently in an expose of her acting talents. Surely it placed her in a well-deserved spot among horror movie icons...scream queens.
Watching Black in her multiple roles in a single movie is like watching a magician perform a trick seldom, if ever, seen before, leaving the audience wondering how they did it.
She had since went on to act in a long list of other horror movies, most notably her role as Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. She also starred in Alfred Hitchock's final movie, Family Plot. 
Richard Matheson, who was a writer for this movie, has written many notable works such as The Shrinking Man, I Am Legend, The Legend of Hell House, and Duel. He also wrote for television, including Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. One notable episode of The Twilight Zone Matheson wrote was Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. He was a talented writer leaving his indelible mark on the horror/ SciFi culture for all time. 
I didn't know there was a part two until I watched part one. The stories in this trilogy are all based on his short stories.
It's an entertaining movie proving TV horror films can be done well with good writing and no ridiculous jump scares, cheesy acting and lame plots.
To horror fans, and then some, Trilogy of Horror is a classic. To others who haven't heard of it, it's worth checking out for a movie night.