Halfway up the hill, so let's celebrate with -
NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980) – Christ, I’d forgotten how mental this one is; it’s tempting to list all of NOTD’s many bizarre flourishes, but I’d need a separate thread. It’s a grindhouse take on Bigfoot that made the Nasty List back in Thatcher’s Britain, but, like ‘Don’t Go Near The Park’, it’s much more of an assault on ordinary common sense and logic than public decency. You get a flavour of what’s to come right from the start, when an unhappy camper’s ravaged arm stump flaps in the soil and sends blood spurting into a nearby footprint... a BIGfootprint, geddit? The credits roll over that little scene, which you wouldn’t expect to set the tone for the entire film, but it does. NOTF becomes a blur of ultra-stiff performances, woodland scenes set to prime seventies easy listening music or screeching electronic noise, and absolutely bizarre kills – forget about the dick-ripping that everyone mentions, what they should be talking about is the bit where Bigfoot seems to murder two knife-brandishing girl scouts by slamming them together until they stab each other to death! Quite literally unbelievable. Even the quieter moments let the craziness seep in – witness the strange fireside seduction of one camper by another, as relayed by badly framed close ups of their faces and a finger pushing a chess piece. OK, you had to be there, but the point is, there isn’t really much in NOTD that resembles even partial sanity. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its longueurs, and it would be probably more accurate to say that it alternates between boring stretches of nothingness and unintentional psychedelia. But the slow motion, entrail-whirling climax will linger on in your mind, even as the rest of NOTD fades like a bad dream
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