A direct-to-video gore carnival, DEMON WIND starts off with a couple of carloads of young adults driving to the country at the behest of their friend Cory (Eric Larson). It seems that most of his family vanished from their homestead in 1931, and when Cory's father investigated the
disappearance a while back, he ended up an insane alcoholic. The kids arrive at the skeleton-strewn homestead and find it unnaturally preserved. Inside, one of the group (who obviously hasn't seen EVIL DEAD) reads aloud a bit of Satanic graffiti. That does it; a strange fog hems in the young
visitors, and as night descends the landscape crawls with overacting zombies. Cory's girl friend, Elaine (Francine LaPensee), finds a diary that reveals that one of the area's original settlers was a devil worshiper, engaged in efforts to bring the Evil One to Earth. Although the settlers lynched
the Satanist, demonic forces appeared and transformed the dead man's neighbors into zombies. Cory's grandmother, a good witch of some sort, was the last holdout; even now her residual spells hold back the zombies for a time, but they eventually zombify all the young interlopers except Cory and
Elaine. At this point Satan (or his son; it's unclear) shows up, ready to rule the world. When this bald, misshapen geek confronts Cory, our hero turns into an odd-looking alien (reminiscent of a Skinhead from MONSTER HIGH's Planet Polyester). Cory punishes the Evil One for his crimes against
humanity by kicking him in the groin. However, the Devil responds by making life more than miserable for Cory and Elaine before they read the last spell in the diary and incinerate their tormentor.
The major problem with DEMON WIND, apart from its existence in the first place, is its elimination of the only interesting characters early on. Jack Vogel and Steven Quadros play a pair of kung-fu-fighting, wise-cracking professional magicians who've come along on the expedition to use their
mastery of illusion to fend off Satan. In the film's best scene, the two look out a window, see a topless showgirl beckoning them into the night, and, turning to each, announce in unison, "Demon." Alas, they go outside anyway, get slaughtered, and show up later among the horde of putty-faced
walking dead, snarling tiresome one-liners a la Freddy Krueger. The rest of the cast includes the usual bunch of jocks, nerds, and banal types well-suited to be zombie chow.
Writer-director Charles Philip Moore shows some imagination, but in the end, the story simply gets away from him. What exactly is the creature that Cory becomes? Why didn't his grandmother's super-spell save her back in 1931? How many times can the protagonists die before it starts to affect their
health? After a while the unanswered questions become to much to take. Moreover, while the makeup effects by Lance Anderson (THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW) emphasize decay, the actors overplay their evil zombies to an almost comical degree, dissipating the film's shock value. (Profanity, nudity,
excessive violence.) leave a comment
