Demon Lover Diary

I was caught up in the lore of DLD - until I finally saw it. It has a huge flaw, and it's not the purported ineptness of the narrative film-makers. It's the unethical and condescending, manipulative and immature behavior of the documentary film-makers, Joel DeMott in particular. She boasts early on that she's never been to the Midwest and that supercilious attitude carries her right into a disaster of her own making. This film is more about the breakdown of the documentary film than it is about the breakdown of the narrative one. I left DLD with no respect or empathy for Joel and Jeff. And I can't believe that anyone would rate DLD higher than American Movie in any respect. American Movie is better made, explores the psyche of the demented "true believer" much better, and actually says something honest about the world. DLD just shows how sheltered a young East Coast privileged girl can be, and how poorly prepared she is to make a documentary.

In a perfect world, this movie would have launched the reality entertainment craze...but was too far ahead of its time to do so. I saw it at the Walker Art Center around 1980 with the filmmakers present. The film is both hilarious and terrifying. Excellent. Somebody beg the filmmakers to do a video release.

This film is hard to get a hold of - the copy I saw on VHS was pretty bad but it still was amazing to watch. The reason I think this movie is better than American Movie is because by the time they decided to make a documentary on the struggling filmmaker in American Movie - hell, everyone has seen reality tv - documentaries were making money in theatres, it was no big deal to shove a camera in someone's face - nowadays people almost EXPECT it. But to do that back in 1975 was pretty daring and original and for this girl to show up with a camera on her shoulder and follow her boyfriend around as he tries to shoot this chaotic, low budget truly awful horror film is fascinating. It's Project Greenlight circa 1975 with a bunch of hippies running around disagreeing about pretty much EVERYTHING!!! Entertaining, frustrating, insightful. Seek this out.

Having first seen this movie at the old Thalia theater in New York when I was in high school, I still think about this film. Scary, funny, insightful. Anyone who wants to make a low-budget film should be forced to watch it. Someone please, please put this on video.

This excellent documentary follows a hapless young film-maker (Jeff Kreines) deep into suburban Michigan circa 1975 to film a wretchedly bad B-movie at the behest of a pair of clueless and somewhat deranged producers (Donald Jackson and Jerry Youngkins). The filming of the B-movie ("The Demon Lover") never really gets off the ground due to the inept actors and technical crew, which consist mostly of the producers' buddies and their ditzy girlfriends. The "actors" and "technicians" spend most of their time lolling about the set guzzling beer and making out while the producers quarrel with the Kreines over all kinds of nonsense. Tensions between the producers and Kreines mount, culminating in the hasty flight of the camera crew after... get this... a shoot-out with rock star Ted Nugent. This is a documentary, folks... I'm not making this up.

Jackson, the crazed producer and writer of "The Demon Lover," went on to make a number of B-movies with titles such as "Toad Warrior," "Guns of El Chupacabra" and "I Like to Hurt People." Ironically, the maker of this documentary (Joel DeMott) and Kreines made only one other movie that is listed in the IMDB. This is a sad testament to the triumph of monomaniacal persistence in the face of reason and decency.