The Ogre

In the late 80s, Lamberto Bava made a quadrilogy of Made-for-TV films. These include Graveyard Disturbance, Dinner With A Vampire, Until Death and The Ogre.

All are fairly similar, featuring a monster terrorizing people. As this is Italy, there is a bit of nudity, however unlike his earlier TV film, A Blade In The Dark, the gore is very minimal in these films.

The Ogre is the best of the lot, and feels the most like a real movie, coming off as a mix of latter-day Fulci with some Argento influences throughout. In fact, the script was reportedly the original draft for what would become House By The Cemetery, though it has more in common with House Of Clocks or Sweet House of Horrors (both TV movies as well). The child named Bob in this one is exponentially less annoying which is a plus!

The locations, soundtrack and the ogres makeup are all good. The story moves along well for a TV film, though a few more killings and a bit more action at the finale would have made this much better.

This is an Italian made for TV movie directed by Lamberto Bava, the man who directed the excellent Demons and its reasonably good sequel, however despite its title this is in no way part of the series. And for that reason I felt cheated when it was initially released on VHS, plus the fact that it is frankly a bad movie. Most of the "action" takes place at an Italian castle, this and the rural locations are nice, plus the Simon Boswell soundtrack is very good. Sadly the movie is slow, boring, the acting is wooden, there is very little in the way of blood or gore and Bava blatantly steals Argento's underwater scene from Inferno, only this time we get skeletons and ghouls that look like cheap Halloween decorations. As for the actor in the suit and wearing an Ogre mask, rubbish! Demons 3 The Ogre is a perfect example of the decline of the once great Italian horror movie.

A pretty blond horror fiction author and her family rent a house in Italy as a getaway. I guess being a horror writer is really lucrative, because this is some vacation home--the mansion looks like it would have its own zip code! It's all good-times until she goes down to the basement and realizes that it's the same horrific place that haunted her nightmares as a child. This "entry" in the "Demons" series isn't just another variation of the first film, which is refreshing. Apparently this Lamberto Bava film originally aired on television, but it doesn't really have a tacky 80s made-for-TV feel. It's only a sequel in name, and instead of demons possessing humans, we have a big man in a hairy mask (The Ogre?) terrorizing the family and their friends. Not a bad movie, but it gets sillier as it progresses. Still, I enjoyed it more than "Black Demons" and maybe even "Demons 2."

The American writer of horror novels Cheryl (Virginia Bryant) is a woman that has been tormented by nightmares since she was a child. She rents the Trifiri Villa in Italy with her husband Tom (Paolo Malco) and they travel on vacation with their son Bobby (Patrizio Vinci).

On the arrival, Chery befriends the local Ann (Sabrina Ferilli ) that offers her younger sister Maria (Stefania Montorsi) to babysit Bobby in order to allow Cheryl and Tom to have dinner with her.

Cheryl is writing her latest novel about an ogre that horrifies her in nightmares since her childhood and soon she finds that all her fears are coming true. Further the house is surrounded by orchids that attract the ogre and his victims. Now Cheryl has to convince her skeptical husband that they are in danger and must leave the place.

"La Casa dell'Orco" a.k.a. "Demons 3 – The Ogre" is an average horror television movie by Lamberto Bava but never the sequel of "Demons 2". Tom is an unpleasant character that does not support his wife and even throws away in the garbage parts of her novel without any respect for her work. The music score is great but the plot has a silly conclusion. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Demons 3 – O Ogro" ("Demons 3 – The Ogre")

This movie did take a while to get going, there are far to many subs plots in this movie, they focused on to many other things in the first 20 mins of the movie.

That where the thing start to really happen, it maybe little over the top and silly at times, which I wish they explained that scene.

I did enjoyed second part of the movie, a bit more then first half, I enjoyed the transformations was decent but not as good as the first.

I didn't really find this movie that gory, no were near as gory as the first and some of effects looks a bit off however there were some decent effects here and there.

The acting was not that great, I just found that fighting scenes with demons just silly not even funny.

5 out of 10