“The Demon” (1979)

Studio:
Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Jennifer Holmes, Craig Gardner, Zoli Marki
Directed by: Percival Rubens
Rated: R
Running Time: 94 min.

Synopsis: A killer is stalking a number of people, mainly young women. A psychic who is hired by the parents of one of the killers victims is sent to track him down.

REVIEW

Chris Woods

A horrible slasher film that has more confusing and stupid parts then it has scary ones. The films start off with a man breaking into a home by the ocean and ties up a woman and kidnaps her teen-aged daughter. Most of the scene is very dark and you can hardly see a thing and unfortunately most of the movie is like this. The woman husband’s gets home and finds his wife tied up but alive. The two decide to hire a psychic, played by genre actor, Cameron Mitchell, to find their daughter, hopefully alive, and her kidnapper. Mitchell with cowboy hat at hand, enters the daughter’s bedroom and touches items of hers. He starts to have flashbacks and visions of the girl getting attacked. Mitchell then starts sniffing her sheets and sounds like he’s having an orgasm when he smells them. Way over the top. He vows to the parents that he will find her.

Meanwhile, a young schoolteacher is being stalked by the same guy. Watching her teaching her class and spying on her when she’s in a department store trying on a dress. In typical slasher movie fashion the woman sees the man for one second then gone the next when she alerts someone about it. There are a few shots of the killer roaming the city, which happens to be some town in the U.K., I believe. We never get a good look at him. Most of the scenes with the killer are not scary or suspenseful at all and again very dark where you can’t see a thing. There are a few people that he runs into that he ends up killing, like a hitchhiker and a few people from a bar. As all this is happening, Mitchell is just driving around in his car looking around the city, but never finds him.

Another thing about the film, they reuse tons of shots through out the movie. Lots of wide shots of the city or close ups. Mitchell goes back to the parents and tries to give hope to the father but tells him his daughter might be dead. He gives him some drawings that he drew that he took from visions that he had. The pictures are of a man and the building he might be staying at including the name. Also still going on in the story are the schoolteacher and her cousin trying to live it up in the city. The films starts to follow the cousin who’s going out with some millionaire’s son. All he tries to do is get in her pants, but she plays hard to get. Most of all these scenes in the film are useless.

The father happens to find the building from the drawing Mitchell gave him. He confronts the killer but ends up getting killed. Another way too dark scene and things happen really fast to soak it all in. Well here comes the most ridiculous scene of the movie, Mitchell goes and pays his respects to the mother and apologies for getting her husband wrapped in all this. Then the wife starts bitching at him then pulls out a gun and shoots Mitchell in the head. Nothing is explained after that and the film never goes back to the wife. I guess she was just pissed off cause the psychic caused even more trouble then helped them.

The rest of the film stays with the schoolteacher. They’re a few moments of suspense where they are knocks on the girl’s door and when she goes to answer it no one is there. Other moments where the killer stalks the schoolteacher’s cousin and her boyfriend while they’re on a boat trip. Finally at the end the schoolteacher goes out with her boyfriend as the cousin stays home and invites her man over for a late night skinny dip. The killer happens to show up that night and murders the two. When the schoolteacher gets home at first she doesn’t notices anything is wrong. She starts to get ready to take a bath when she goes into her cousin’s room and finds her dead. She quickly calls her boyfriend for help but is cut off mid call when the killer appears. He starts to chase the woman around the house. The boyfriend, thinking there’s something the matter jumps in his car to rescue his girl when his key breaks when he turns on the car. Geez, can this movie get any dumber! Meanwhile the woman now appears topless when her robe just happens to fall off and she tries to escape through a window in the attic, but then the roof caves in and she lands in her bathroom. As the killer breaks into the room the woman stabs him with a pair of scissors and he dies. The end.

This awful horror flick was part of a 50 pack DVD collection and is not one of the better ones in it. If you come across this movie I suggest avoid it and watch something else.