On the night of Halloween, ten teens decide to go to a party at an abandoned funeral parlor. Hull House, rumored to be built on an evil patch of land and underground stream, is the place. While starting the party, the teens gather around a big mirror to perform a séance... big mistake.

This is pretty much one of those 1980s horror films that immediately achieved cult status, right along "Return of the Living Dead". That combination locked Linnea Quigley in as the scream queen of her generation, or at least her decade.

Director Kevin Tenney, previously known for "Witchboard", really struck gold with this hit. The cheesy plot, terrible acting and more make it fun in the classic "so bad it's good" way -- something I mean with all due respect.

I could have easily predicted pretty much everything that was going to happen in Kevin Tenney's "Night of the Demons". The main purpose of the flick is of course to see scantily clad babes, and two scenes with Linnea Quigley* affirm that; I would have definitely done what the convenience store clerks did! Cathy Podewell as the main character also looks quite sexy as Alice (and this ain't gonna be no Wonderland for her!**),as does Mimi Kinkade as the leader of the Halloween party.

Anyway, this is definitely one that probably influenced the logic of "Scream" (i.e., the rules for horror flick survival). Very much intended to appeal to teenage boys. And that's what makes these flicks so great. I certainly recommend it.

Be careful the next time that you eat an apple.

PS: Contrary to the explanation of demons in this movie, I learned the original definition a few years ago in a class about ancient Greek literature and culture. The word comes from the Greek "daimon" (divinity). But Christianity spread to Greece, and the proselytizers believed that anything non-Christian was evil. Therefore, when they heard that the Greeks worshiped "daimones", they decided that the latter were morally bad. Hence the modern connotation.

*You may remember Linnea Quigley from "Return of the Living Dead" as the woman who dances nude...and then the zombies turn her into a snack.

**I'll be eager to see what Tim Burton does with Lewis Carroll's story in his movie version to be released next year.

A bunch of mostly obnoxious and grossly unappealing teens go to a creepy, remote, rundown old mortuary located nearby a cemetery to attend an anything-goes all-out Halloween party being hosted by freaky occult-obsessed oddball Mimi Kinkade and her vacuous, boy-hungry bimbette friend Linnea Quigley. The loutish, profane, beer-guzzling, sex-happy dipstick dimwits hold a séance as a joke (very bad idea, 'cause the desolate old dive is naturally said to be haunted by demonic spirits). Of course, that ill-advised séance awakens those decidedly grumpy and hostile evil spirits, who gruesomely kill and possess a majority of the kids, turning them into ugly, fanged, clawed, boil-faced murderous ghouls who wreak the usual grisly havoc throughout the duration of an especially long, dark and harrowing night of pure terror.

Yep, this is essentially your umpteenth vigorously graphic and unrelenting wall-to-wall cheap shock-ridden "Evil Dead" rehash, replete with closed-off, there's no easy way out claustrophobic single self-confined setting, outrageously excessive splatter set pieces, an incessantly pounding hum'n'shiver synthesizer score, a total sense of gloom'n'doom-laden grim nightmarishness, and vibrantly in-your-face manic careening cinematography (the expected headlong rush-inducing hyperactive hand-held camera-work, smooth, sinuous tracking shots, crazily tittled camera angles, even the camera on a dolly doing a gracefully gliding 180 degree figure eight). Fortunately, Kevin S. Tenney's slick, assured, stylish direction keeps the extremely threadbare and derivative proceedings thundering along at a speedy clip; moreover, Tenny gives the film an attractive polished look and effectively creates a certain crudely energetic and enthusiastically grotesque spooky ooga-booga carnival funhouse atmosphere.

However, Steve Johnson's marvelously gory and imaginative make-up effects are the true star of the show. Bloodthirsty highlights include disgusting fat slob Hal Havins (who played a similarly irritating obese a**hole role in the immortal "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama" around the same time) having his tongue bitten off, Quigley shoving a whole tube of lipstick in one of her breasts (yow!) and gouging a guy's eyes out while she's making love to him (double yow!),a libidinous teen couple getting offed while doing exactly what you think in a coffin (the chick has her neck snapped while the dude has his arm chopped off),Kinkade setting her hands on fire, and, in the film's single most nasty scene, a mean old man has his throat slit from the inside out after eating an apple piece laced with razor blades. The trashy'n'thrashy rock score likewise smokes. And then there's Kinkade's incredibly wild, sexy and uninhibited demon dance, a sizzling number accompanied by a flickering strobe light and startling jump cuts that Kinkade choreographed herself. Okay, so this overall doesn't amount to anything more than a completely mindless and pointless, albeit quite nicely mounted and enjoyably vulgar hunk of blithely sleazy fright flick junk, but if you're in the mood for entertainingly brain-dead lowbrow horror scuzziness this cheerfully crass and juvenile dross does the trick just fine.