Demons at the Door

I actually rented this terrible excuse for no budget film because I saw it advertised on Fangoria Magazine. Being a big fan of the magazine, and of good low budget film making, I try to never have too high expectations when watching Indie flicks.

This however was worse than I ever expected! I am about as positive and forgiving a person as anyone can ever meet, but even I can't find anything good about this movie. The plot, the acting, special effects, camera work, everything about this movie is just an absolute catastrophe! What in the world can possess anyone to create something this lousy! I just can't explain any of the above to myself. I was actually embarrassed for the people involved in this project simply because I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this disaster...

To top things off - the director of this movie is an effects man for SOTA - a special effects company that in the past has done fantastic work. I figured no matter how bad the movie would be - at least it would have that going for it --- boy was I wrong! I've seen low budget flicks from three decades ago that had better effects than this - I think someone with no experience and a "do it yourself" make-up effects instruction book from the seventy's could've done a better job! You've been warned - stay away from this vile wreck! It really is the worse movie ever made!

Dogs and horror. Think of Cujo. That seems like a pretty good combination, if done correctly of course...of course. Well, it seems someone forgot to mention that to the cast and crew of Demons at the Door. Well, let me be fair, it wasn't until after they had completely given up on this project that they gave the spotlight to Fido, so I guess that saves them some humiliation...I guess. Another combination that seemed to have waved bye-bye to this movie way before the beginning were acting and directing. Well...I can't be sure if it was the acting or the directing, maybe it was both, I can't honestly tell. I can be sure about casting though, nice job on the Middle Eastern, very believable????? Seriously, the guy was whiter than Commando Comedian. And please tell me what those demons were doing that the film kept showing over and over again. You remember, the ones that looked liked they were involved in an aerobics class. Were they trying to be scary or looking to dance with each other??? I go with dancing, because they didn't stop doing that the entire movie. ("" just mentally add those quotations in every time I use movie/film from now on) Even when the main "actor" was shooting them, all they did was dance back and forth. Damn you Castellano for shooting up a perfectly benign demon dance party!! I think what had happened was that the crew had accidentally tapped into a taping of "Richard Simmons does Hell Live" and decided to edit it into their movie for lack of content. Will Richard Simmons do anything?? Speaking of Hell, how the hell did this movie get into Blockbuster?? Is the director the VPs cousin?? Oh, and please tell me you didn't actually pay that dominatrix to be in your movie, that was by far the most horrible scene I have ever seen...ever!! I will be permanently scarred for the rest of my life, and I constantly have nightmares that the Weapons of Mass Destruction is sitting on my face!! You have succeeded in one thing crew/cast members of Demons at the Door. You have lowered that bar so much for B horror movies that anyone can now make them...seriously. I am not joking. There is now no limitation for someone wanting to making a movie. No special effects?? No problem..use windows Paint, Demons at the Door did.

Ok, first of all, this b-movie is very very bad. I don't know what kind of a retarded bunch of lobotomized apes could ever conceive this utter sh*t, but what the hell, what's done is done, and I'm here to review this piece of crap.

The film starts with this prologue with a corny voiceover and Star Wars like words against a space backdrop (the voice and the words aren't even synchronized!) The story is very lame, basically telling about the war between Lucifer and God and how Lucifer is banished to hell, and then comes this Eye of Satan (or what have you) which supposedly frees the Devil and his demons so that they can enslave mankind (Is it just me or does this sound like Lord of the Rings)

Anyways, we cut to some place in a CGI Middle East where archaeologists dig for this eye of satan, something goes wrong when some very typical Islamic terrorist (which is a white guy, funny eh?) shoots a coupla scientists. The gate of hell is opened and a bunch of demons are released (They look like a cross between Predator AND Alien, not the kind of demons I had in mind)

The whole movie is just about how 2 macho marines and a female scientist (funny that they are always young twenty-something females with big tits) kill the demons.

This movie is terrible, but not a complete waste of time though, because there are some scenes which will leave you rolling on the floor laughing, such as the rapping devil and the black marine ripping each other off, funny how most of the demons and the monsters act like foul-mouthed thugs (there was a lot of "yeah i'm gonna F**k your daughter like how I f**ked the Blair Witch) The end of the movie is completely ludicrous and amusing, but I won't give it away.

The CGI in the movie is amongst the worst I've ever seen in any film, mini-series, pc game or flash animation. Some of the stuff could be done on microsoft paintbrush, but this altogether adds to the humor when you point out its utter trashiness. At some point (or most) I feel really bad for the director for creating this, or anyone involved for...umm, getting involved. But in the end it was a joyous experience. I give it a * out of *****, i would have give it a 0 if it didn't make me laugh this hard, which this film succeeded in doing.

ps. can't believe i wrote so much for this crap.

I've got to do something about my obsession with ultra-low budget cinema. For every Death Bed, there's at least a dozen Demons at the Door, and after this brain-frying example of cinemasochism, I really have to wonder if it's worth it.

DatD starts out with an expository scroll letting us know how Lucifer got in trouble with God and got himself thrown out of heaven, and now rules hell as Satan and wars against God and Man (just in case any of that is news to you). Oh, and there's a fancy macguffin which will give Satan the power to move about freely on Earth. But don't bother paying too close attention, 'cause were gonna cover this material at least three more times in dialogue.

In fact, repetition seems to be the watchword for DatD scripters. We get the same dialogue, situations, attitudes, and effects, over and over. Spraying your characters from head to toe with green demon goo can be campy fun the first time, but it gets old fast.

The cast is no particular help, either. Even if they could collectively act their way out of a paper bag, the characters they've been given are confused and unlikeable. Let's see, we've got the Marine sergeant who's locked in an eternal pissing contest with the rest of the world, his sidekick who serves little real purpose other than to receive racist insults from the demons, a bland and uninteresting scientist, the scientist's daughter, who starts out weak, useless and uninformed, but then halfway through the movie suddenly transforms into Super Ninja Archaeologist. And there's the Archangel Uriel, who you think would be more help, but who abandons everyone else to their fates after the first reel. Way to go, Forces of Good!

In the end, the movie gives up any pretense of making sense, veering off into a bizarre harrowing-of-hell sequence that I hope was intended to be funny, but it's not, really. Just kinda stupid and pathetic, like the rest of this film. One to avoid.

This movie sucks. It was not funny (like some of you are saying), and it is most definitely not scary. The acting sucks, the effects SUCKED, and so did everything else. The music didn't help much. It seemed as if they just had a soundtrack of one band and played it throughout the movie. Let me give you some examples of why it sucked: It has the Aqua Team Hunger force floating objects effect It's graphics of the monsters are worse than Evil Dead's. The acting was not good at all. A monster tried to have sex with a girl (which wasn't funny, just stupid) There was 'cool' music playing during dull scenes etc.. I recommend that you avoid this movie at all costs.