Night of the Demons 2 (1994)

"High-schoolers throw a Halloween party in a mansion haunted by a young demon."

You've probably guessed it already from my last post, but this week is "Night of the Demons" week for me. Although I don't particularly like any of these movies, I thought it was about time to get them all out of the way so that I never have to watch the stupid things ever again.

"Night of the Demons 2", directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (of "BMX Bandits" fame), is arguably the best of the 'Night of the Demons" sequels but it's still not a very good horror film and is very much a product of the '90s when nobody was really watching serious horror anyway.

In 1994, everybody was into vampires of one kind or another and, of course, Brian Trenchard-Smith wasn't silly enough not to notice the trend. The trouble was that he chose to work many stupid bits from "The Lost Boys" (1987) into "Night of the Demons 2" while, obviously due to his own nationality, also homaging a certain New Zealand movie - Peter Jackson's "Braindead" - from a couple of years earlier.

So, instead of being a real horror movie, once again "Night of the Demons 2" fell flat on its face into the horror-comedy genre and we all know how much I hate those. It's lamentable that it could have been a very good film if it had been treated more seriously or maybe had a bigger budget rather than equalling that of original.

I suppose what gives this movie a special place in a lot of horror fans' "guilty pleasures list" is the abundance of nudity and the softcore sex scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by all the hot actresses including Cristi Harris, Christine Taylor (yes, the one married to Ben Stiller), and Zoe Trilling (from "Amityville: The Evil Escapes"). I'm not going to say anything much about their acting since nearly all the actors in this were only eyecandy, but they weren't too bad.

In case you are thinking that it's all boobs and blood, "Night of the Demons 2" does have a slightly better story to it than the first movie, a lot of teen romances going on, and, of course, a nun who "kicks ass for the Lord" even more than Father McGruder.

Sister Gloria, played by Jennifer Rhodes, was easily the most famous member of the cast at the time and was still kind of hot for her age. Is it wrong to fancy nuns who wear make-up and lipstick? Maybe that's why they don't. You'd think that someone would have pointed that out during the filming but, like so many other goofs, plotholes and flaws, I doubt that anyone even cared.

Things which stood out for me in a really bad way were Merle Kennedy's awful haircut, the cat scene which promised something very evil (but, fortunately, didn't go that way), the demonic Angela (once again played by Amelia Kinkade who looked too old for the part) failing at being sexy, and, because it was trying to be "The Lost Boys" at the end, the demons were now very much vampires who could be defeated in the same ways.

Squirt guns and balloons full of Holy water, crucifixes, sunlight, and even an overused offer of self-sacrificing substitution lifted from "Salem's Lot" (or "The Exorcist" to give credit to the original source) really hammered home the lack of originality throughout this very commercial pulp horror product.

The practical effects were okay. For those who loathe CGI, there was even some early use of that too but certainly not of the same calibre as "Jurassic Park" from the year before. It was cheap, nasty CGI which really jumped the shark (or the snake) especially right at the end.

Even though I pretty much hated 90% of "Night of the Demons 2", it was actually quite watchable. I didn't have to switch it off a couple of dozen times and come back to it, and I'm quite proud of myself for making it through in one sitting. I was going to put it in "The Dungeon" but, in fairness, it belongs in the "Just Average" category due to the time it was made. There were far less entertaining films which came out in 1994, and, unfortunately, I've seen those too.

Ichi the Killer (2001)

"Yakuza boss Anjo disappears with three hundred million yen. His loyal gang members, lead by the masochist Kakihara, start a search, but their aggressive and gory methods worry the other yakuza gangs. Kakiharas most frightening counterpart is the mysterious Ichi, a psychopathic killer with a dark childhood secret, who is controlled by a retired cop."

Having just wasted the last two hours of my life watching this utter drivel, all I really want to do now is use every expletive under the sun to describe how appallingly shit "Ichi the Killer" was. As amusing as that would be, it isn't my style and wouldn't really be all that informative for anyone who hasn't watched the film.

Yes, I know that it was made in 2001 and special effects have improved since then but honestly this was like some kind of unintentional comedy. All the spurting blood effects which were obviously copied by Quentin Tarantino for "Kill Bill" just threw me right out of the action such as it was. The characters were all beyond ridiculous and the negligible plot did very little to hold my interest. It seemed to be nothing but set pieces of gore and violence just for the sake of it.

You should all know by now that I'm certainly no prude and I'm also one of the least artistically-minded horror movie reviewers on the internet but I do like a good story and sympathetic characters. I wasn't looking for some big, thought-provoking work of art with "Ichi the Killer" but I was expecting to not be bored out of my mind by it.

Honestly, how do all these Takashi Miike fanboys manage to delude themselves and other people that "Ichi the Killer" is so fantastic? Apart from one of the prostitutes who kept switching from English to Japanese, there wasn't even any worthwhile heterosexual eyecandy in the thing!

Yes, Takeshii Miike fanboys, I'm calling you out! This film is GAY! It's so homoerotic that I'd put it up there with David DeCoteau's "Leeches". Of course there's nothing wrong with any of that particularly if a gang of misogynistic, genital-torturing Yakuza floats your boat but it did nothing for me.

I pretty much hated every minute of this film from the title appearing in a pool of sperm to the ending which I couldn't understand. I'm not being racist but at least two of the actors looked almost identical and I really couldn't tell who was doing what to who or why. Was the blond one only blond so that he could be more easily identified by a Western audience? And what was up with his cheeks being sliced open and clipped together? I didn't get any of it and couldn't even be bothered to follow what was going on after a while.

Suffice it to say that I did work out that a "Muscle Mary" cop called Jigii had brainwashed crybaby Ichi into killing the Yakuza for him somehow using post-hypnotic suggestions but the rest of it, including all the torture, just washed over me like some really cheap and unpleasant predecessor to "Horsemen" (which I also had the misfortune to watch through Netflix a little while ago).

I suppose a lot of people would credit "Ichi the Killer" with kicking off the whole "torture porn" wave of over-the-top gory effects-driven movies which ruined the 2000s for everyone. Gruesome scenes do not make a horror movie if they come without any emotional investment in the characters. Since there were no "good" characters in the film at all, what was the point? People who enjoy crap like this would probably get off watching cockfights or a couple of pitbulls tearing each other apart with just the same feeling of moral detachment.

I have honestly never hated a film as much in my life as this one. There are no merits to it at all. Without doubt, "Ichi the Killer" is simply the worst kind of poorly written and directed pulp. It was at least an hour too long as well. Avoid!