Demon Lover Diary

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.

Interesting documentary about the making of the pretty lame "The Demon Lover". Both films are curious to watch one after the other. What is pretty good in this one is the level of self exposition of the filmmakers of the documentary -they are the central characters: not the movie, not the filmmakers of "TDL", but the crew of the documentary. That level of exposition make these cinema verité obsessed crew look really silly and not committed at all with the project they are participating in but only concerned about the material they can take from that film for their own purposes -some sort of parasites or something. The cool part is that it comes out without an intention from the documentary crew to look that way. It's at some point naif and at some point kinda creepy and remind me a little to the crew of "Cannibal holocaust", documentary filmmakers that will do as much as they can to complicate things in order to get their stuff. It's kinda sad to see them complaining like they are mistreated genius (I mean FOR Christ! the cinematographer talks like he's Greg Toland or something and the photography and camera work of "TDL" is the cheapest crap ever!!), and talking crap all the time against a couple of directors -pretty weird guys, truth to be told- that risked everything to make their dream come true. I should agree that it's good for anyone who wants to make an independent movie mostly if you learn that you should take good care what kind of egos you bring to your set, and that "friends" sometimes can be sometimes first to stab you at the first chance.

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 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.

This is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. People compare it to "American Movie," which I loved, but this film really gets some in-depth interactions behind the scenes of an indie film. All the backbiting, infighting, feelings of frustration after years of hope and planning. If you like this, I also recommend "Driver 23/The Atlas Moth" by Rolf Belgum, as well as the Half Japanese documentary "The Band that Would be King" and the Wesley Willis documentary "The Daddy of Rock and Roll." Just make sure you don't have any sharp implements around while watching the first and last ones, especially if you are an independent musician or filmmaker, it may hit pretty close to home.