Night of the Demon (1980)

Night of the Demon (not to be confused with Night of the Demons from 1987) is one of those movies you either enjoy or despise. It's pretty typical of the multiple murders in the woods type movie the 80's had many of. There are no Oscar caliber performances here, though I'm sure the title alone will tell you that. Professor Nugent and several of his students set out into the woods in pursuit of a legendary creature said to prowl the area. Enter Bigfoot, some strange townspeople, some of whom worship the Bigfoot creature, and one hermit lady who had been raped years earlier by the creature.The whole story is told by the professor who, as it turns out, is the only survivor of Bigfoot's wrath besides Wanda the hermit lady. The doctors and the cops listen to his story and ultimately decide he's crazy.If you happen to be an aficionado of the 80's horror genre, you could do better than this, but you also do worse.

This movie is all kinds of bad. Why a 4/10? Because it's totally salvageable as a riff-fest.A professor takes his students to a remote area of woods to validate some Bigfoot claims. They manage to find him and tick him off. Prof survives to tell the tale.Along the film's twisted path, we encounter generic victims. Among the first is a pair of hot & heavy lovers. As he's killed, she's emoting. And over-emoting. And even goes beyond 'scenery chewing' status.There are flashbacks involving stories of other victims - that are randomly thrown into the main story's progress.There's "Crazy Wanda" a survivor who they try to hypnotize into telling her tale - AFTER rescuing her from being ritualistically murdered by some townsfolk. Yes, you read that right.The lighting is, at times, horrible. The plot is drawn out to the point I kept losing interest & pausing the movie. However, for the time, the kills are original (and graphic), and the sound is decent.The randomness of the plot & some sub-par acting allows for fun times with friends. I've seen plenty of horror films that don't even have that entertainment value. However, as a study in the genre, this one misses more than it hits.

I've heard about this one for years, and now that I finally got to see it, I must say that it lived up to its reputation as a nasty little Bigfoot movie.Over the year, many people have turned up dead in a certain part of a forest. Professor Nugent takes a group of students into the woods to check out the Bigfoot creature that may be behind the carnage. There's also some sort of devil-worshipping cult running around, so it's possible they're the killers instead. Or maybe it's Crazy Wanda. It's pretty obvious that at least some of the deaths are attributable to Bigfoot, so there's not that much of a mystery. But the overall story is simple and effective, the kids are fairly tolerable, and the gore is a total hoot! Yes, this is the movie where the biker loses his manhood to Bigfoot while relieving himself in the woods. But there's so much other delicious gore, and the rather shoddy transfer of the film I saw works to make the effects look better, if that makes sense. And one great trick the movie uses that more movies should - a lot of the kills are told in flashbacks. That way, we can keep our relatively small cast and not worry about them meeting up with others in outlandishly contrived situations and still get lots of extra victims. I know I'll take heat for loving this one, but much like Crazy Wanda, I'm not gonna feel guilty about who or what I like.

Night of the Demon (1980)** 1/2 (out of 4) I'm not going to lie and try to pass this thing off as some sort of masterpiece but it's certainly one of the all-time campy horror movies. Professor Dixon (Michael Cutt), an expert at all things Bigfoot, takes five students to the woods to investigate some murders and soon enough they run into a bizarre redneck woman and of course Bigfoot eventually shows up. If you're looking for a well-made, brilliantly acted, heartfelt film that makes you think when it's over then NIGHT OF THE DEMON certainly isn't for you. If you're just looking for some gory, campy fun then this movie has pretty much everything you'd want plus much more. I'm a sucker for Bigfoot movies and this here is certainly one of the most memorable simply because of how silly it is and because of the fact that it has to be the goriest one ever made. I was really shocked at how much violence and gore was in this thing. We've got people being stabbed, hit with an axe, burned, raped, slammed, clawed and much worse and all of it comes with plenty of red stuff. There are some outrageous death scenes and while all of them are done with low-budget effects I still thought they worked quite well. And just wait until you see what happens to the motorcycle guy who pulls off to use the bathroom. The performances range from fair to poor and there's no question that there are a lot of quality issues. Just check out the error of the "witness" telling the story but when you see what happens to him at the end it doesn't match up with his injuries when he's telling the story. The screenplay really goes off the deep end once we start to get involved with the redneck girl but you have to give the director credit by throwing whatever into the mix and just seeing what happened. NIGHT OF THE DEMON is pure trash but it's oh so much fun.