Demons 2 4K UHD+Blu-ray

Italian Horror legend Lamberto Bava’s ‘Demons’ rigorously revivified horror in the mid-80s no less emphatically than fellow movie maestro Stuart Gordon’s ’Re-Animator’, so a sequel was not only inevitable but an inevitably divisive prospect, and just like AC/DC, you always have to deliver something ostensibly new to eager fans, but resolutely keeping the winning, day-glow formula relatively undiluted. Remarkably, the talented Bava not only maintains the hyperbolic hysteria that abounded so bloodily in the original but manages to keep the overall integrity of the ‘Demons’ brand slimly intact as well! In an austere, seemingly impregnable Ballardian Tower Block a broadly sketched demographic of characters brutally have their upwardly mobile lives diabolically descended into sinister, throat-shredding torment by the Videodrome-esque return of these exquisitely evil, disgustingly pus-seeping, razor-toothed, death-dealing demons! The curiously innocent-looking birthday party for pretty protagonist Sally Day (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni), a singularly overwrought young lady, is to be ghoulish ground zero for the hellacious flesh-filleting, body-melting carnage that gorily ensues after her polite soiree is impolitely crashed by a maniacal, plague-bearing demon. And once this eldritch contagion spreads quite literally through the bloodily besieged building, director Bava delivers up an inimitable, fantastically violent, doomily claustrophobic, pyrotechnical display of demented deviltry any serious fan of gruesome apocalyptic 80s horror could have hoped for. Bluntly put, ‘Demons 2’ (1986) is a bloody great splatter movie. The excitingly paced film’s production values are exemplary, both the delightfully garish, neon-splashed styling and gruesomely realised creatures are truly horrific hell-raisers, and since no one watches gonzo Italian splatter movies for the nuanced acting, I shall instead bestow glowing, Neon-hued praise upon Mr. Bava’s many uniquely inventive approaches to horror/fantasy filmmaking which engenders many a well conceived shriek-inducing set piece. And the sepulchral, Gothrock-enshrouded score works remarkably well and the uproariously welcome return of eternally bellicose, magisterially moustachioed, sleek-headed figure of cult demon-killer Bobby Rhodes was a marvel to behold once more!