The Demon (1979)

[Hellbilly]

Filmed in South Africa and pretending to be American, Percival Reubens (who?) The Demon is a weird little "supernatural" b-slasher with hardly any blood and gore at all ...



... but it's a fountain of great cheesiness, cliches, bad (over) acting and stupid dialogue.

but let's start from the beginning:

After their daughter was abducted (by "The Demon") a couple hires a private investigator (Cameron Mitchell) who's also gifted with ESP (Extra Sensory Perception)
To get things started, the psychic P.I. takes a look around in the girl's bedroom, has a fit and throws himself on the girl's bed and takes deep sniffs from her pillow How's that for a start?

In the meanwhile "The Demon" (some normal looking dude) is randomly killing people by pulling plastic bags over their heads and/or slashing/strangling them with a clawed glove (this was 5 years before NOES).

Time to meet Mary, a young blonde Kindergarten teacher who's having visions of "The Demon" while singing nursery rhymes to the kiddies.
Time to meet Jo, Mary's cousin, also a teacher who's having visions of "Dean" - her latest love interest

I had to mention this because a great deal of this film is about Jo and Dean's sappy love story. They exchange idiotic dialogues plus you get to see them giggling together in a rowboat, or him taking pictures of her in his apartment etc.

Anyways, to speed things up a bit: after the missing daughter (mention above) pops up (as a skeleton w/ wig) in a treetop the dead girl's mother shoots the P.I. between the eyes , Jo gets killed by "The Demon" which leads to the final showdown between The Demon and Mary ... Whew!

After one hour of psychic mumbo jumbo The Demon finally picks up and heads into slasher territory, yay! The last 10 minutes are fun to watch since Mary decides at one point to get rid of her clothes to play a little topless (!) cat-and-mouse game with the killer!

Yup, and that's about it.
You may ask why the Demon was stalking Mary? or why Mary had visions of the Demon? or why the mother shot the pillow sniffing Psychic? or who the fuck the Demon was? his story? his background?
Who gives ....
Except for the ending The Demon is not a good film - but it's full of unintentional humor - which made it appealing and a "fun" watch after all - at least for me.

Really

The Demon is available on DVD from Diamond Entertainment.
The transfer is full screen, not very sharp, weak colors and has it's share of grain. Audio is 2.0 mono and there are a few bio's included as extras.