Synapse Films
4K UHD Release: August 13, 2024 (following 2021's LE)
Video: 1.66:1/2160p (HDR10/Dolby Vision)/Color
Audio: English and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo and 5.1 remix (both versions)
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Run Time: 88:22 (Italian cut), 91:02 (unrated English cut)
Director: Lamberto Bava
Note: While significantly re-written, I am recycling the majority of my older Blu-ray review. If you're only reading this to get my opinion on the new 4K UHD and extras that weren’t available on the standard edition Blu-ray, kindly skip to the Video and Extras sections.
There’s a scary movie on television and the residents of a luxury high-rise building have their eyes glued to their sets. Unfortunately for a young birthday girl, an eternal demonic evil is released through her TV and partygoers soon find themselves fighting an army of murderous monsters! Acid blood, demonic dogs, possessed children, and rampaging zombies wreak havoc for the trapped tenants! (From Synapse’s official synopsis)
Demons (Italian: Demoni, 1985) was a vivid work of pop art splatter designed to please the widest horror audience possible and its monumental success helped propel producer/presenter Dario Argento and director Lamberto Bava to significantly higher levels of fame. Obviously, they had to make a sequel, they had to make it quickly, and it had to be even more commercially viable than the first film, which had a somewhat limited theatrical rollout in America due to being released unrated (according to Travis Crawford’s commentary on this disc, Demons got an VM-18 rating in Italy, which was also seen as commercially limiting). This film would be submitted for an R rating and cuts to violence would be made where necessary. Appropriately titled Demons 2 (Italian: Demoni 2; aka: Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns), this second film was thrown together in record time – filming began only seven months after Demons hit theaters – and released almost exactly one year after its predecessor.
Given the lack of time and care put into any part of the production process, the resulting movie was predictably slapdash in comparison to its predecessor, disappointing audiences and prompting critics to focus negatively on the film’s lack of inspiration, and Bava’s dependence on slime and increasingly rubbery special effects. Demons 2 was dumped on the wayside, resented even by fans for not expanding upon Demons’ apocalyptic finale, in which the demon plague overtakes Italy while victims are trapped in the cursed theater. The TV movie that unleashes the curse this time around is a docudrama about the country rebuilding after a demon apocalypse, offering minimal consolation. However, in the decades after their initial releases, the two Demons movies became a nearly inseparable pair for a generation of home video viewers.
A decade away from a lukewarm theatrical roll-out, the tide turned in the sequel’s favor on DVD, where the MPAA mandated cuts were finally waived and Bava’s preferred Italian version was made readily available to fans outside of Italy. Personally, I’ve grown to appreciate what Bava did with this thankless, cash-in project, to the point that I might even prefer the sequel’s pluck to the original’s superior technical artistry. Demons is already a minimally-plotted and wholly derivative geek-show spook-a-blast, but Demons 2 manages to further simplify the narrative and characters, while also amplifying the callbacks and references.
Demons owes an obvious debt to George Romero’s zombies – the demons are basically a running, shape-shifting variation on the idea of contagious living death – and both the concept and aggressive energy levels were influenced by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (1981). In fact, if Argento hadn’t been involved, Demons probably would’ve been sold as a sequel to Evil Dead in Italy, given the number of unrelated films that were retitled La Casa to trick audiences into thinking they were related to Raimi’s film (funnily enough, 1993’s Army of Darkness wasn’t one of them). Demons 2 recycles the premises of its predecessor and all the movies it was already aping, then piles on another jumble of allusions to everything from the Alien movies (the demons now have acid blood and can burst from chests) and Joe Dante’s 1984 comedic creature-feature Gremlins.
Everything is then couched in an homage to David Cronenberg’s Shivers (aka: They Came From Within and The Parasite Murders, 1975), in which a state-of-the-art high-rise traps its tenants during a contagious monster outbreak. Some might argue that a scene of a demon pushing his way out of a television is also lifted from Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983). Unlike the wink-and-nod postmodern horrors that followed Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), Bava and his four credited co-writers don’t acknowledge these associations in any metatextual way. They intended the references as tribute, but, before filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino had turned referential tribute into a mainstream cinematic language (noting that tributes have been the basis of many important artistic movements), it would’ve been easy to dismiss Demons 2 as a cynical rip off, especially given Italy’s long history of cynically ripping off pop culture artifacts. In retrospect, Bava’s mimicry of other filmmakers isn’t particularly offensive, though his tendency to pay homage to himself is, at the very least, sort of lazy.
Despite coming up short in terms of planning, cash, and general time to get things done, Demons 2 is still slicker than almost every other mid-’80s Italian horror release. The MTV sensibilities – rhythmic editing, extreme camera angles, and strobing neon lights – are cranked to eleven to match the louder, more pop-friendly musical soundtrack. Battaglia’s cinematography is also decidedly prettier, which might understandably annoy fans of the original film’s grottier, grimier, and gorier appearance. Pacing is also better, but continues to be an issue, as in the case of the first film, the excesses become numbing going into the final act. The scenes taking place outside of the high-rise are particularly superfluous, dragging down the otherwise speedy momentum, and even otherwise entertaining scenes, such as a pregnant woman’s endless battle with a screeching demon Muppet (a nod to either Gremlins or perhaps Dan Curtis’ 1975 TV movie, Trilogy of Terror), tend to overstay their welcome.
In the end, Demons 2 is simply more of everything – more effects, more locations, more action, more fire, more crashing cars, more gunshots, more nonsense, more dumb dialogue, and more fun. Your mileage may vary.
Bibliography:
Spaghetti Nightmares: Italian Fantasy-Horrors As Seen Through the Eyes of Their Protagonists by Luca M. Palmerini & Gaetano Mistretta (Fantasma Books, 1996)
Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 by Roberto Curti (McFarland & Company, 2019)
Video
As mentioned, Demons 2 struggled outside of Italy, but was almost always tied to Demons on home video where it bloomed. Following its North American VHS run via Imperial Entertainment, it first appeared on DVD courtesy of Anchor Bay Studios’ unrated, non-anamorphic, 1.63:1 disc. Following a number of other non-anamorphic releases from other territories, Anchor Bay put out an anamorphic, 1.66:1 disc in 2007. Arrow UK released the first Blu-ray version in 2012, followed in 2013 by Synapse Films, who first made it available only as a two-film, limited edition Steelbook, before issuing a barebones variant later. Arrow and Synapse then debuted their own 4K UHD versions in 2021 as limited edition, two-film collections that combined Demons and Demons 2. This review pertains to the new 2024 standard edition, single-movie 4K reissue.
From what I understand (and I could be mistaken), Synapse and Arrow’s Blu-rays and UHDs were created using the same restoration of “original vault materials,” though the companies didn’t collaborate as directly as they did for the collector’s editions of Phenomena (aka: Creepers, 1985) and Tenebrae (aka: Unsane, 1982)(edit: according to a social media post, the two companies did, in fact, collaborate). I don’t have the Arrow collection on hand for a direct comparison, but trustworthy sources indicate that the transfers are basically identical. The images on this page are taken from Synapse’s earlier Blu-ray, which illustrate the basic look of the film, but aren’t really indicative of its improvements.
Once again, the extra resolution punches up detail and tightens edges without overloading sharpness levels, but the more impressive improvement is seen in the grain and other textures. In fact, the film grain here might be even better than the Demons 4K disc. As far as I understand, Demons 2 has always suffered from wobbling and jittering during certain sequences and these have been largely corrected. I still noticed some wiggling wide-angle edges, but nothing compared to the full frame shake of earlier versions. The HDR boost and lack of digital compression help limit the problems posed by Battaglia’s excessive use of strobe lighting and smoke effects, as well as producing deeper shadows and brighter colors. And speaking of colors, the palette here is closer to the previous Blu-ray than the 4K Demons palette was to its 1080p counterpart, just more vivid.
Note that there are two cuts available on this disc – the original Italian cut and the slightly different US theatrical cut. Both versions are visually comparable.
Audio
Like their Blu-ray, Synapse has fitted this UHD with the original English and Italian dubs, both in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio, and both with 2.0 and 5.1 remix options. I don't know if Demons 2 was remixed specifically for its US release (via Artists Entertainment Group) as Demons had been, but, if such a thing exists, it would probably only pertain to the R-rated cut.
Most of what I said in my Demons 4K and Blu-ray reviews applies here – much of the cast is speaking English on set, so, even though few of them dubbed their own performances, the lip sync looks more natural. Also, the 2.0 stereo track is simply a better mix than the 5.1 option (the ghost center channel actually separates the dialogue better than some mixes with a supposedly discrete 5.1 mix). The stereo channels have more to do outside of music this time as well, both in terms of layered noise during the action scenes and the insertion of directional effects for the sake of atmosphere. The demon growls/screams are also stereo-enhanced to give them a more dramatic, otherworldly impact. The horrible screeching of the mini-demon occasionally fuzzes out at the highest volume levels, but I believe this is an intended extreme quality. The music, including Simon Boswell’s Simonetti-esque, but more Gothic rocky electronic score and another collection of ‘80s metal and pop singles is, once again, the primary audio element and sounds fantastic.
Extras
Commentary with Travis Crawford – The late critic, author, and festival programmer, who, sadly, seems to have passed away about a year after recording this 2021 track, explores the wider careers of the cast & crew (having known Asia Argento personally, he talks about her for quite a bit during the first ten or so minutes of the track), the film’s initial negative reception, the history of the franchise and faux sequels, attempts to downplay gore to score a teen-friendly rating, the various movies Bava borrowed from, and the history of evil televisions in ‘80s horror films.
Together and Apart (26:36, HD) – Critic and author of The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema (McFarland and Co., 2021) Alexandra Heller-Nicholas discusses space (as in locations and our proximity to others), technology, meta-filmmaking, self-awareness, and social rituals in both Demons films.
Archival extras
Creating Creature Carnage (20:29., SD) – Except from a 2012 interview with special makeup effects artist Sergio Stivaletti, who talks about trying to match the trendy transformation effects of ‘80s Hollywood horror on a modicum of the budget, designing other effects for both films, and being offered the director’s reins on Wax Mask (Italian: M.D.C.: Maschera di cera, 1997) after Fulci passed away.
Bava to Bava (16:43, SD) – Argento collaborator and Contamination (1980) director Luigi Cozzi gives a Cliff’s Notes lesson on the history of Italian horror.
Demonic Influences (10:22, HD) – Federico Zampaglione, the director of Tulpa: Demon of Desire (Italian: Tulpa - Perdizioni mortali, 2012) and founder of the band Tiromancino talks about the Demons films and later collaborating with Lamberto Bava.
The Demons Generation: Roy Bava Discusses a Legacy in Lacerations (34:50, SD) – In this 2013 interview, Lamberto’s son and Mario’s grandson Roy Bava looks back on his father’s movies, his collaborations with Mario and Argento, and the making of Demons, all of which he witnessed over the years, while growing while up on set.
The New Blood of Italian Horror: Sergio Stivaletti and Michele Soavi from Demons to Dellamorte Dellamore (6:15, HD) – A quick discussion with Stivaletti (from the same 2012 interview) concerning Soavi’s post-Demons career.
Screaming for a Sequel: The Delirious Legacy of Demons 2 (15:59, HD) – Bava talks about his father, Argento, Soavi, quickly developing a sequel to Demons, Demons 3 becoming Soavi’s largely unrelated The Church (Italian: La Chiesa, 1989), and not getting credit for his contributions to that film.
A Soundtrack for Splatter (27:08, HD) – In the final interview, composer Simon Boswell chats about originally working with “members of Goblin” (I think he means Simonetti alone) on Phenomena, only to have his tracks not make the final film, stepping into a main composer role on Demons 2, also working as the film’s soundtrack producer, which he used as an excuse to steer Argento away from metal to dark British pop, and his other horror scores.
Italian and international English trailer
The images on this page are taken from Synapse’s BD – NOT the 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.
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