Demon Wind (1990)When I first started watching this movie, I was half expecting to see some Japanese anime'. Wouldn't this be the perfect title for one? But, alas, no sharp cartoons with schoolgirls in short skirts. This is, instead, a real clunker junker of a movie with absolutely nothing going for it. The title is even just dead wrong - this is not a Demon Wind, more like a Demon Fog. The word 'undead' was used though so I thought well, good - some zombie action. But even after watching it I was confused by the lack of information about the plot - there's not much in backstory, at least not anything that's explained so I went ahead and checked the wiki page and found..... a paragraph. Gee, the movie was that good, huh? Yeah, so good several of the actors/actresses changed their names and more than a couple are uncredited (Including Lou Diamond Phillips that I do NOT remember seeing anywhere...) So I'll have to mostly go on my notes and try to keep it in order...
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| Burned to a crisp, hanging for decades, still perfectly intact. |
It's 1931, not because the movie says so, wiki does. Sorry about that. You see someone burning on a cross outside a farm. Who it is is never said nor any explanation why they are being burned. We see a woman named Regina who has so deftly mixed together a plethora of Catholic pictures, candles, crosses - you get the idea - together with some real demonic mumbo jumbo. Good mix, she would have done well in Haiti. She is attempting to barricade her door against demons (A little wooden cross on the door should have done it, right?) but when she seeks help from her husband George he instead spits vanilla pudding out of his mouth (at least I hope that's what it was), turns into a demon himself and kills her.
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| I'm Cory and these are the friends I'm getting killed today. |
Now we jump to a young guy named Cory (Eric Larson - you don't know him and probably will never see him again) with that 80's blow dried and hair sprayed look. I hated him on first sight. He is searching for the 'answer' to the mystery of his family. Why the hell would he want to? He's obviously well off, his family dumped him anyway, so get on with life and forget about it - I certainly would (oh sometimes how I wish I could). But he's movie-stupid so he's going to try, even if it gets everyone he knows killed. And he certainly seems to bring everyone he knows. Why that is also is never explained but I know that one - it's movie progression. Take a bunch of young people you already want dead, put them far away from help or a cell phone signal (not sure they had those in 1990 yet), and kill them off one by one. Since there's only him and his girlfriend Elaine (also very heavy use of blow dryer, hairspray and makeup, although I think Cory has more eyeliner on than she does) I guess he needed more bodies so he invites everyone he can think of to come with him. Nice guy.
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| Give grandma a kiss... |
He explains to his girlfriend all the backstory we're going to get: He didn't know his parents, and just now found his father (looked like he was in a home or hospital) - who killed himself the day after Cory found him. Again, nice guy. Parents don't want you and kill themselves when you show up. Doesn't that give you a clue? His grandparents were Regina and George who disappeared, and the only reason his father lived is he was in an incubator at the hospital at the time. Oh, this just gets better and better. Cory is hell-bound (sorry) and determined to find out what happened to them? Why? There's absolutely no motivation there anywhere. We have no idea where they are, only that it's green, hilly, there's one dirt road and absolutely nothing around anywhere - no trees, no animals, nothing. Their plates said California but I don't think that's where this movie took place and they don't say either. Neither does wiki. And we don't care. So we have a total of eight young blow-dryed people eager to run to the middle of nowhere for this guy to look at a farm. Yeah, that's plausible (rolls eyes).
They stop at this diner/gas station in the middle of this nowhere. I mean there's nothing for miles around, no one lives there, but we have an open business here? Jeez. I can't even say anything about that, it's just too... dumb. Cory recognizes the place - he keeps having those 'I'm naked and standing with a book in front of this gas station' dreams we all have - wait, we don't? Oh, then he's really screwed up then. The owner of the gas station keeps telling him there is no farm and he has to leave. He's movie-stupid so hints and outright threats aren't going to work. Instead he drags all his 'friends' up to the end of this dirt road (And if it's the end, WTH is this business doing here anyway? Just hanging out for the farm?).
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| Dammit I'm undead and still don't have clear skin. |
They get there and the farm and a small barn are in ruins. The door and doorway are intact (convenient) so instead of just looking around (he could walk right through the place, it's rubble) he opens the door - to see an intact farmhouse inside, looking just like it did the night his grandmother died, but only we are lucky enough to know that. One by one the little buggers make their way inside, each eager to get the movie over with I guess. That's when the Demon Wind - err I mean Fog - envelops the house and the voices start. And the demons come calling. No undead people yet though dammit and the movie is almost 40 minutes in. At 42 minutes the first one is killed (yup, the 'demons' ARE the undead, which doesn't make any sense. You're either an undead zombie or a demon, there's no such thing as an undead demon. Oops, sorry, logic kicked in, I'll try to contain that.). They rush out into the fog (smart) to get away but their cars won't start. And when they try to hoof it back to the mysterious 'business in the middle of nowhere', the fog magically takes them right back to the farm. The only good thing is that they are protected by a shield that prevents the demons from entering the house. What shield? Why didn't it protect his grandmother and grandfather? Oops, sorry, logic again.
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| Who am I? Uhh... just some guy. Or girl. You won't know. |
The shield soon fails (aha, okay) and one by one his friends are turned into undead demons (just typing that is oh so wrong) and he has to either kill them or keep them out of the house. There's a pair of daggers, only two of a seven-piece set (probably attempting to refer to the daggers of Tel Meggido, Israel, said to be able to kill the Antichrist - also used in the movie The Exorcist) so only two get permanently whacked, since the daggers melt with the demon. That's not very smart. But it fits perfectly into this movie. Oh, for you The Walking Dead fans who wondered about Herschel's shotgun of endless rounds? Yeah, he got it from one of the guys in this movie, cause his shotgun must have fired without reloading at least twenty times. Pretty damn good. Anyway... Finally Cory finds a book written by his grandmother (Didn't help her, why should it help him?) and with his girlfriend (the only non-undead demon left) starts reading the damn thing. Duh, double duh, triple duh. Somehow the book makes him become a 'temporary' demon (oh, that's just fantastic) and he squares off with the 'main' demon, a wet, sorry mess of a costume (no wonder the guy wanted to be uncredited).
Oh, the guy at the gas station? A Catholic priest (hey, I'm not picking on Catholics, that's just how these movies go) but apparently one who's gone to the dark side (sorry) and is in 'charge' of the undead demons. Yay. Okay back to the epic, umm, battle. They head butt each other for a while, wrestle like little girls, but finally what 'kills' the demon (we're told, not proven) is a passage from the book his grandmother could have used but didn't. Some silly verse makes the demon use the typical 'noooo' sound and disappear. Cory becomes 'normal' again - he is now back to being a regular douchebag who just got all his friends killed. He and his girlfriend take off in the now-running car back to the gas station to confront the waitress in the diner (Didn't mention her? Sorry, she just wasn't memorable) who is also a demon. The book itself shoots lasers at her (or something) and kills her, uh, again. The end.
I didn't even mention the part of the little girl pointing a stick at them in the beginning turning out to be the last demon they missed at the end, or the three little girls who show up in the middle for no damn good reason at all or that the barn was the true source of the evil because... oh I forget why but I think you'll forgive me - because this review is over and you don't have to think about it anymore.
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