It's Her Party, and She'll Kill You If She Wants To

Oh, Night of the Demons. You sure are a pretty terrible movie, and I tried so very hard to hate you, but I just couldn't. I don't know what kind of spell you cast over me, and I'll be embarrassed when people find out about us...but I can no longer hide our love.

Wha? Oh, uh...yeah...hi there! So...Night of the Demons, the 1988 flick directed by Kevin Tenney, starring everyone's favorite B-movie scream-n-show-yer- boobs queen, Linnea Quigley. Uh huh. You caught me, reader...I saw it for the first time last night, and I liked it. Lawd help me, I liked it!

10 obnoxious teens- well, 9 teens and Ms. Quigley, who's actually quite a bit older than the rest-gather together in Hull House, a disused mortuary, for a Halloween party. During the party, Angela (Mimi Kinkade) decides they should all try to do a "past lives seance". Angela's the school weirdo, you see, and is thus tapped in to all things supernatural. Is she a witch? Maybe, but you should just think of her as a pre-goth Goth. Anyway, during the seance, everyone in the room must sit facing a mirror and stare at Angela's reflection, concentrating very hard. The mirror will turn black, and then everyone will see a vision of what Angela was in a past life. Well, everyone stares...the mirror turns black...there's a vision of a monster that looks like the offspring of a giant praying mantis and Fin Fang Foom...and the mirror breaks. That's never a good sign...but I am so trying this at my next slumber party! When the mirror breaks, a green cloud starts floating around, noises abound, and it gets really cold in the room. Is Hull House haunted? Not quite, explains Angela. The noise, the stink, and the chill can only mean one thing...Hull House is possessed. What's the difference, you ask? Did you even know a house could be possessed? Me either. But you see, in a haunted house, the spirits are simply those of dead people, wandering around. In a possessed house, the spirits have never been alive- they are demons! Still doesn't make much sense, right? No matter, because that's all the explanation you will get for anything in this movie.

Suzanne (Linnea Quigley), the all-pink clad boy crazy bimbo in the group, inadvertently sucks in some of the green smoke and gets all grody-looking and possessed. She's now a crazed demon, hell-bent on killing her friends. What's that? Was that Evil Dead I heard rolling in its grave? You betcha!Well, just about everyone ends up possessed, either by getting attacked or...kissed. Some live, some die, and there's a whole lotta chasin' going on.

So just what is it I liked about this movie? It's alot of fun, for starters. Tons of 80s cheesiness, and not a lick of sense. The characters are total stereotypes, we don't care about any of them, and the acting was so bad throughout that I often wondered if it was terrible on purpose. In fact, right from the animated title sequence- which I really dug- I wasn't sure just how firmly in cheek this movie had its tongue planted. The makeup effects are pretty stellar throughout, though, I have to admit. The demons are appropriately nasty looking, and once Linnea Quigley gets topless (shocking, I know), she does something with a tube of lipstick that really just needs to be seen to be believed. And you know, sometimes even the worst movie can sneak up and surprise you with an effective scene. There's a really creepy sequence with a possessed Angela, dressed in her black bridal gown, floating down a hallway toward the viewer that just knocked me out. Maybe I'm easy, but it was a great shot in a bad movie.I guess I'm not the only person who had a good time watching it- Night of the Demons has spawned 2 sequels. If you're looking for some completely brainless 80s fun (and I do mean brainless), look no further. And if you like it, I won't tell on you, I swear. I give it 6 and a half out of 10 prostehetic Linnea Quigley boobs.