Angles on Angels

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Angels and I go back a long ways.  They were mentally part of my childhood, as I suspect is true for many.  When I reached upper-level undergraduate work, I did an independent study on angels with a professor who didn’t provide much guidance.  About the only thing I recall from that class was reading Billy Graham’s book on angels.  Not exactly an academic authority.  In these times of modern Thomas Aquinases, plenty of scholars look at angels from various angles.  I suspect the task of writing a Very Short Introduction on them was taxing.  Although the word count was about 10,000 higher, I had trouble reining myself in on The Wicker Man.  There was so much more to say!  Of course, many academics are preferring shorter books these days.  In any case, angels.

After a brief history of angels, attempting to define them, considering the main ones individually, then looking at the collective as a hierarchy and according to various roles—messengers, guardians, warriors, David Albert Jones then looks at fallen angels.  Having written on this myself in the tragically overpriced Nightmares with the Bible, I found Jones’ approach here to be of interest.  Throughout Jones tries to give equal time to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  All three traditions have angels, but Muslims approach demons very differently.  Djinn aren’t fallen angels.  But then it’s time to move on to the conclusion.  Brief books like this are good for making a reader hungry.  Some decades after angels had a resurgence in pop culture, academics arose to explore them.

I enjoy getting a different perspective, or angle, on angels.  It’s so easy to assume that our parents taught us correctly about the layout of the spiritual world.  Culturally, unquestioning acceptance is rewarded (it’s clear that even demons know that).  But looking closely at things, even if just for a brief time, offers a chance to learn something new.  Personally I learned new things about Dionysius the Areopagite, Joan of Arc, and Hells Angels.  I also couldn’t help but think that such a little book written by anybody else would’ve had different nuggets included.  That’s one of the problems with picking up a short book on whose subject you’ve already done quite a bit of reading.  I do it for information, but beyond that, for finding new angles.  I can’t imagine ever learning everything there could possibly be to know about angels.  And we go back a long way.

Late Night

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If you lived through the seventies, Late Night with the Devil will take you back a bit.  It’s one of the more creative possession movies I’ve seen, but what really makes it stand out is the insider winks plentifully on offer.  Jack Delroy is a late-night variety show host wanting to top Carson.  His ratings have been up and down, and he decides to make his 1977 Halloween episode his ticket back into the game.  His guests that night include a psychic, a James Randi-like debunker, and a parapsychologist and her demonically possessed charge, Lilly.  A character resembling Anton LaVey, Lilly’s father, had raised her to be a child sacrifice to the demon Abraxas.  The broadcast even mentions Ed and Lorraine Warren, as well as The Exorcist.  Someone knows what the paranormal scene was like in the seventies.

The psychic has authentic contact with what he believes is Delroy’s deceased wife and while the debunker, well, debunks him, the psychic nevertheless dies after a mysterious attack.  Delroy insists that the parapsychologist summon Lilly’s demon, while on stage.  The debunker claims that what the audience saw was a case of group hypnosis, but the demon finally attacks, killing everyone but Delroy and Lilly.  Toward the end the layers of claimed deception become so deep that it’s difficult to know, at first, how to interpret the ending.  Or whether you are supposed to “believe” the climatic demonic attack, of if you’re supposed to conclude that it was part of the mass hypnosis.  What is certain is that religion is front and center in this horror, but the demon ensures that in any case.

The taped pieces between segments of the show make it clear that this is all about ratings.  Indeed, Delroy sacrificed his wife’s health and life to try to break into the lead.  The real demon here is capitalism.  The desire to be on top has outweighed every other and hints are given throughout that Delroy isn’t as innocent as he pretends to be.  Still, the main thing is that the movie gets the paranormal seventies in America just about right.  The disturbing implication is that people are suggestible to the point of not being able to distinguish reality from manipulation.  That pall hangs over the entire movie plot as well as the ending.  This kind of meta critique isn’t intended to detract from what is really quite a good horror movie.  It is believable in the context of the world it devises, and that world includes demons.

Yes, Yes

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You had to’ve seen this coming.  Ouija: Origin of Evil, with a different director and writer, and the same producer, pulled off the better prequel/sequel.  I don’t give that accolade lightly.  Now, I’m not a professional film critic, and I like to say nice things whenever possible, but even sequels/prequels that professional critics do say are better often find me in disagreement.  In this case I stand with them.  And I have some ideas, apart from natural talent, why it is so in this case.  The problem with ouija, and spirit boards, is that you have no way of knowing who or what may be answering your questions.  In the first movie we just know it’s someone with bad intent, and we need to wait until all the twists are finished to find out who.  The second begins with the premise that we already know who, but we want to know why and how.

But it goes deeper than that.  The first movie left religion out completely.  The prequel scoops it back in by the shovelful.  And if you want to make a movie about ouija work, you need to have demons.  To begin with, the family previously in the house is Catholic.  The kids go to Catholic school.  The headmaster is a priest who wants to help the family.  He quotes the Bible (Holy Sequel, anyone?)  He recognizes that the entity isn’t who it says it is.  Although showing demons is always a bit of a dicey proposition, the prequel opts for the preferred look from the period, and show them only dimly.  It still has to work with the world built by the original, which leads to a strange backstory of a Nazi in the basement operating on homeless people, but you have to work with what you’re given.

So the second movie is scarier and better made.  It didn’t earn as much as the first one did, though.  The idea hadn’t, I don’t think, been tapped out.  Rather, I think once you’ve laid out the premise, viewers have to be enticed back.  If a subject is mishandled, it does require extra work to convince viewers that the next experience will be better.  The critics, however, immediately saw the difference.  You really don’t have to know the story behind Ouija to see this movie, but it definitely helps.  It earned enough that unofficial sequels were released before the official prequel.  One of them only by a matter of days.  It pays to get it right the first time, and if you’re working with a naturally religious topic for your horror, you shouldn’t be afraid of religion.

Yes, Maybe

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The truth is, only experts and professionals can really keep up with horror films.  As the most successful genre of, well, genre films, there are tons of them.  I completely missed Ouija when it came out about a decade ago, despite the fact that it did well at the box office.  The only reason I watched it now was that a friend sent me a list of horror films from a reputable website that recommended the prequel to Ouija, but I felt that I needed to see the original before finding out what happened behind the scenes.  The original didn’t fare well with the critics and it’s pretty clear why.  The story, although it has twists, isn’t really convincing and the acting is off at times.  (Five teens left alone to watch a haunted house while their parents just take off for weeks at a time?)  Still, it’s atmospheric, and it plays on a scary theme.

I must confess that ouija boards frighten me.  I consider myself both rational and skeptical (in the classic sense), but there’s just enough doubt with spirit boards.  I’ve never owned or played with one.  (Interestingly, the movie was funded in part by Hasbro, the current seller of the game.)  In fact, when I discovered the Grove City College yearbook was called Ouija, I was a bit put off.  (By the time I graduated they’d changed it to The Bridge.)  Although GCC wasn’t really traditionally gothic, like most colleges it had its share of ghost stories.  Even in conservative Christian country things go bump in the night.  And while most stories told about tragedy after using an ouija board are unverified in any way, still…

So, the movie posits a deceiving entity that kills teens who contact it.  I suspect I need to watch the prequel to find out why.  It does manage to have a few scares, but it’s mostly about atmosphere.  I agree with Poe on this point—atmosphere’s often the point of a story.  Although the critics are right (who discovers a body in the basement and goes to an asylum for advice instead of notifying the police?), some of us do watch horror films for this kind of haunted house experience.  And while I’ve got Poe in the room, the threat to young ladies is there.  One thing missing, though, is any talk of religion.  No Ed and Lorraine Warren warnings of demons.  This is a straight-up nasty dead person who likes to kill those who want to communicate with their dead friends.  It does create a mood.  And it cries out for a prequel.

Some Body

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Many period movies are reevaluated and found better than originally critiqued.  (It feels strange to write that about a 2009 movie, but that was a decade and a half ago.)  I’d read about Jennifer’s Body before, but the title put me off from watching it.  Then, of all places, the New York Times recommended it last year during one of their autumnal forays into the horror genre.  Interestingly, it’s a possession movie with a few twists.  Demons are quite malleable monsters, of course.  So Jennifer and Anita (Needy) are best friends.  Jennifer is the girl all the guys want, and Needy, well, isn’t.  One night they go to hear a band at a local bar, and Jennifer leaves with them.  We later find out—spoilers about to appear—that their intention is to sacrifice a virgin to Satan to help them succeed as an indie rock band.  Jennifer’s no virgin, though, and demonic transference took place—i.e., Jennifer is possessed although the band gets their boost.

Then Jennifer has to eat people (high schoolers, of course) to survive.  She eventually tells Needy all of this, and her friend researches the occult and realizes her former friend is seriously dangerous.  And she decides to stop her.  I won’t give away the ending (it was only 15 years ago), but I will say that the overall result is somewhat unusual for a demon movie.  There’s plenty of religious imagery, but nothing really explicitly showcased.  For example, Needy’s mom has religious paraphernalia around the house.  There are no clergy in the story and Needy teaches herself what she needs to know about dispatching demons.  In other words, it’s a strangely secular possession movie.  And in the end demonic ability leads to justice.

The critical reappraisal is largely based on the feminist message and complexity of female relationships in the movie.  Both written and directed by women, those aspects aren’t unexpected.  And the movie is a horror comedy.  The funny parts tend to come from aspects of the dialogue since the acting is played straight.  This isn’t so much a scary movie as it is a smart one, which is probably why the Times critic recommended it.  Demons aren’t always scary monsters in horror, and what you end up being afraid of here is that the relationship between Jennifer and Needy might end since it seems to be the foundation on which two young women’s lives are built.  Is it a good movie?  Well, it’s not bad.  I tend to lean on the side of the reappraisers—it still has something to say. 

Night or Curse

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You just never know.  I’ve read lots of books about horror movies, but clearly not enough.  The field only gained academic respectability in recent years, but once the flood gates opened…  So I use my limited time off work both reading and watching horror movies—trying to catch up on what I’ve missed.  Lately I’ve been reaching back to the early stuff, movies from the forties and fifties.  Some of these are what we’ve been led to expect.  Others are not.  I’d heard of Night of the Demon (its American title is Curse of the Demon) but my sources suggested nothing remarkable about it.  As soon as I began watching, however, I realized that this story adapted from M. R. James would be worth the time.  This despite the fact that the monster is shown early and isn’t that great.  (The director, Jacques Tourneur, lost out on this one.)  After I saw it I read that it is considered by many the greatest horror film of all time.

I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I would say that it is very good and, as I learned, extremely influential.  So much so that I was rather stunned after a casual weekend viewing.  The story is about a Satanist whose true motivations are uncertain.  Those to whom he gives runes copied from Stonehenge are killed by the demon we’ve already seen.  The story plays out as a conflict between skepticism and belief—the supernatural is real, but alternative explanations are offered—you can see why the obvious demon scenes are so controversial.  The film makes effective use of jump startles and stingers.  And it’s one of those movies that, in its day wasn’t really appreciated, but reassessment polishes it as the gem that it is.

Proving later influence, such as the wind storm in The Omen, is difficult without a director revealing their sources, like a magician, but others are perfectly obvious.  Kate Bush’s song “Hounds of Love,” plays a clip of a line from the movie.  Richard O’Brien’s lyrics for “Science Fiction/Double Feature” (famous because of the Rocky Horror Picture Show) make reference to Dana Andrews passing the runes.  That line had always puzzled me.  And now I discover that I’ve been missing out on a foundational piece of horror history.  When friends recommend movies, not surprisingly, they tend to be relatively contemporary ones.  The thing is, to appreciate what’s popular now, one must do one’s homework.  And that might must mean hunting down the oldies.  You just never know when you might come across one worth the effort to find.

Cryptid Caper

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I don’t recall how it got on my fiction reading list—I probably saw it on Goodreads—but I picked it up because it was short.  And surprisingly, multiple copies were in Barnes and Noble.  Since James Daunt bought the chain out it has definitely improved.  In any case, Hunter Shea’s To the Devil, a Cryptid looked like it might be a fun romp, and if it turned out that I didn’t like it, well, it was short.  Ads in the back keyed me in that this was a part of a series of horror novels about cryptids.  Besides, I like to support publishers that aren’t part of the big five.  I’d just finished reading a five-hundred-pager, so something under two was very welcome.  The title seems to riff off the horror flick To the Devil a Daughter.  As much as I try to keep up on my cryptids, I was unfamiliar with the Goat Man.  And I did like it, by the way.

So, the real Goat Man is mostly associated with Maryland, but in Texas, where the novel is set, there is the Lake Worth Monster.  This seems a good fit for the cryptid part (whether intentional or not I don’t know).  A bunch of kids messing around with Satanism decide to sacrifice a goat in the woods where a Goat Man cryptid is said to live.  Something goes wrong and the goat fuses with a guy trying to break up the ceremony and mayhem ensues.  Lots of bodies torn apart in this version of the Lone Star State.  Still, the story is fun.  I’ve been writing cryptid fiction for years, and this may be a targeted demographic, but that doesn’t prevent this from being a good horror novel.  Particularly interesting is the resolution.  I’ll try not to give too many spoilers, but the next paragraph reveals something.

How do you stop a demonic, bulletproof Goat Man?  You call in a priest to do an exorcism.  The truly remarkable part of this is that the priest is treated sympathetically.  None of the characters are religious.  And of the two main young people who survive, you really don’t expect them to be found in church.  The story isn’t intended to be believable, of course.  The Goat Man is an urban legend.  Urban legends are often difficult to tease apart from actual cryptids sometimes.  Cryptids remind us that there’s still more to be discovered in the world.  And I may have just discovered a series of stories that work for a quick fix.

Demons and Gremlins

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Gremlins have an ancient pedigree, whether they know it or not.  Credited with airplane problems during the Second World War, these meddlers in technology had an older cousin in the demon named Titivilus.  Titivilus was a demon said to be responsible for errors in the works of scribes.  Long before the printing press hit Europe, manuscripts were copied by hand, of course.  Anyone who works with Bibles, for example, knows that no ancient manuscript exists without errors.  But scribes copied more than Bibles, and anyone who has tried to copy an entire manuscript knows that errors always creep in.  (When I was a college student I tried to get my local church back home to set up a Bible-copying station so that when hungry parishioners were leaving the service they might stop and copy a verse.  This was to show how errors appeared in biblical texts.  The experiment took place but results were disappointing—full of errors but we didn’t get past the early chapters of Genesis).

However that may be, having a demon to blame for things going wrong proved to be mighty handy.  The tradition lasted well into modern times.  In the days of manual typesetting the young printers’ apprentices were called “printer’s devils.”  Demons were blamed for spilled cases—capital letters were kept in the upper case, and minuscules in the lower case—and other mishaps.  It may be a stretch, but such a demon interfering with humans trying to accomplish something important, led to ideas such as gremlins.  Most of us, I suspect, don’t like to confess that we’re sometimes clumsy or sleepy and make errors.  One of my notebooks is all crinkly because I knocked a nearly full water bottle over onto it while trying to catch a bug in my office.  ’Twas no demon, just haste making waste, as it does.

The idea of someone not human to blame is compelling.  All the more so because sometimes we are the legitimate victims of circumstance.  Life offers many opportunities to wander, unknowingly, into situations that might not turn out so well.  We don’t have minds well equipped to see the entire picture.  Even if we could the universe, we’re told, is infinite.  Who doesn’t make mistakes because of limited knowledge?  And sometimes those mistakes can eat up years of your life.  Doesn’t it seem more likely that a demon or gremlin lurks behind an all-too-human error in a judgmental world?  I’m sure that, for most people, if we knew better we wouldn’t have done it.  So we invent our demons.  We sometimes even give them names, and thus Titivilus was born.

Image credit: artist unknown, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

A Different Legion

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Religion and horror can play well together.  They can also be unevenly matched.  Although Legion has been on my list since shortly after it came out, my impression after having watched it is that the angels are strangely corporeal.  Their fights are physical with very little supernatural involved.  I suppose that’s why it’s generally classified as “action,” but the premise is one that suggests a bit more supernatural would’ve been welcome.  The writing suffers from any number of ailments, and the ending leaves you wondering just how good God is supposed to be in this telling.  I suppose a plot synopsis might help.

A pregnant waitress in a remote diner is nearly at term.  The Archangel Michael has come to earth in Los Angeles (get it?) and has armed himself to protect this unborn baby.  He comes to the diner where the owner and his son, his cook, and four customers are holed up against what they think is a demon attack.  Michael eventually reveals that the arriving hordes are not demons, but humans possessed by angels.  God has decided to wipe out the human race again, this time with angelic mercenaries.  If the waitress’s baby survives, however, the world will be saved.  So there’s lots of shooting, and although a white guy dies first, the only two Black characters are the next victims, of course.  To kill angels, it turns out, you have to shoot them.  Who knew?  In the end, which pits Gabriel against Michael, it’s revealed that God was testing the loyalty of his angels by giving them this task.  Mindless obedience, God thinks, is wrong.  If people have to be killed to prove it, so be it.

The theme of the messianic baby stays intact but goes nowhere.  At the end it’s unclear if the angel attacks are still going on, but the waitress and her boyfriend, along with the baby, drive around heavily armed, ready to fight.  Did the angels get the message that they are being tested by God or are they, like many Republicans, simply following the “leader”?  Seeing the title and knowing nothing of the story, I had assumed this was a movie about demons.  The “Legion,” of course, is angelic but there’s not a lot transcendent about them.  Even the use of wings (which are bulletproof), makes this feel like Dogma without the humor.  I knew religion would be involved in this horror, but I didn’t know how poorly it was played out.  Still, it would fit into Holy Sequel, if it ever happens.

Demons Again

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Exorcism is sexy these days.  I fully understand why $100 books on it escape attention, but I’d been looking for Richard Gallagher’s treatment since 2016 when I learned that he was writing it.  Demonic Foes is, however, a little disappointing.  As I am wont to do, I tried to find information on the author only to discover that he appears on many webpages but really has no online presence himself.  He teaches as Columbia but his page there is minimal as they come.  The book, which I suspect easily caught an agent’s eye (see my opening sentence), is a rambling tour—very roughly chronological—through the author’s experiences with and thoughts about demons.  I’m left puzzled, however, about why he maintains the secrecy around his priest mentors, although they are dead.  Believe me, I understand withholding names, but if you’re trying to convince people, we need something to go on.

There are some interesting, and scary cases here.  But Gallagher also gives nods (somewhat skeptically) to Malachi Martin, but also to Lorraine Warren, and Fr. Gabriele Amorth.  At times he easily moves between movies and actual events.  His writing style at times obfuscates, unintentionally, I expect.  Before too long it becomes clear that, as a Catholic, the author distrusts anything occult, paranormal, or parapsychological.  At one point he suggests assuming spirits are demonic until you can prove otherwise.  At the same time, he suggests possessions are rare.  I’m left wondering about a number of things.  There’s no bibliography and his knowledge of the ancient world isn’t that of a specialist.  Even his history of demons doesn’t address the nuanced issue of how Christianity came to understand demons as the New Testament seems to.  He gets some facts wrong about other religions.

I’m no stranger to cobbling books together while working full-time and trying to hold daily life together.  You can hire book coaches (if you afford them) and not all editors are willing to tamper with money.  (Trade publishers do what they do for lucre, don’t you know.)  Demons are a controversial subject.  The tired orthodoxy of demonizing other religions still holds for some, and it seems to here as well.  This rambling book raises more questions than it answers: which exorcisms did the author witness?  Why are non-Catholics said to have rosaries?  Why are verifying names kept secret?  If wanting to convince people, why are so few dates or precise places given? I appreciate what Gallagher is trying to do and I agree with him that we need to avoid dismissing demons because they don’t fit a scientific worldview.  As he admits in the epilogue, he holds a traditional view of what demons are.  I’m left wondering what we might find if science would take the paranormal seriously.

Upon Further Occlusion

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Admittedly the source is GBN, but the headline is irresistible: “Nasa ‘quietly funding’ theological conferences amid ‘demonic’ UFO fears.”  Essentially an interview with Nick Pope (no relation to “the Pope”), the story posits that NASA has been spending on theology because of fears that UFOs might be demons.  Nick Pope is a recognized ufologist, but the story doesn’t state where he acquired the information on NASA’s spending habits.  Pope did work for Britain’s Ministry of Defence, and has had a long-standing interest in UFOs.  And some US congressional members have stated that they believe said UFOs are demons.  I’d still like to see some documentation, however, before accepting that NASA’s paying for conferences in a discipline that’s on decline in academia.  Seems a little difficult to believe.

It also seems like this would be a more exciting theological conference than the one I attend.  Perhaps even stranger than UFOs is the use of the word “theology.”  In British English the word tends to mean what “religious studies” means in these (still) United States.  American English understands theology to be a distinct part of religious studies—the discipline that is occupied with philosophical questions within a specific tradition.  The one probably most familiar is Christianity, where historical theology and systematic theology are often on seminary curricula.  I’ve noticed more and more Jewish and Islamic theology cropping up in recent years.  I always take pains to say I’m not a theologian (in the American sense).  Maybe it would just be easier to consider UFOs.

Image credit: George Stock, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

There’s no doubt that theology gave us demons.  One of the points I was trying to make in Nightmares with the Bible is that that’s not entirely true.  Demons came first, and theology later.  People have, historically, always believed there were other entities that behaved with intelligence.  Generally they were more powerful than mere humans.  It was really only around the time that Christianity began that such entities were coded as purely evil.  Those who posit that UFOs are demons really aren’t up on their theology, which makes me wonder what kinds of conferences NASA is spending its money on.  If it is.  This seems plausible because the government often spends on things that are unexpected.  I personally would like to see a bit more of it funneled towards education, but I’m just one voter.  In any case, if there are such conferences, and if they’re British style theology, please put me on the mailing list.

One Demonic Night

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I only discovered after watching Night of the Demons (2009) that it was a remake.  Eventually curiosity got the best of me and I had a spare moment to watch the 1988 original.  It’s still kind of a bad movie, but it is scarier than the remake.  It’s also a horror comedy, but the emphasis is a bit more on the horror here.  A group of ten high schoolers go to Hull House, which used to be a funeral home, for a Halloween party.  When the power goes out they decide to have a séance.  Unbeknownst to them, however, there is a real resident demon.  This demon gets passed on through kissing, and it animates the kids who’ve been killed along the way.  Although the final girl is pretty clear from the beginning, in a usual twist the only surviving guy is African-American, the son of a preacher.

The concept of demons here is explained as entities that were never human.  This is the explanation Ed and Lorraine Warren used, often without making reference to fallen angels.  Since the demons are using the physical bodies of the kids, they can be stopped by locked doors, but killing them doesn’t really help, since they keep coming back.  It seems that there’s really just one actual demon, a dragon-headed entity that lives in the crematorium.  Rodger, the Black man, brings the element of religion to the story.  He objects to the séance in the first place, and suggests that they pray as he and Judy, the final girl, are attempting to escape.

In-between all this is sandwiched the gore and violence that make it pretty typical horror.  The humor involved, however, makes it less intense than a typical slasher.  Although I didn’t walk away thinking this would be a favorite movie, I could see why it’s garnered a cult following.  As is often the case, the original is better than the remake.  For one thing, it understands that religion seasons horror quite well.  Demons are, by definition, religious monsters, at least traditionally.  And the two “good kids” who survive are uncomfortable with messing with spiritual forces to begin with.  Judy just wants to go to the dance, after all.  The movie went on into sequels as its cult fandom grew.  If I ever do a sequel to Nightmares with the Bible I’ll need to include this franchise, I guess.  For a sleepy weekend afternoon, there are worse bad movies to watch.

Don’t You Sleep

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Sleep is pleasant but it’s such a vulnerable time.  Something deep in our animal DNA tells us to find a sheltered place to do it.  That vulnerability is compounded by demons.  So claims Slumber.  While not the most original story, it’s pretty effective for a while, but then holes begin to appear in the plot and you find it difficult not to keep asking why the problems weren’t addressed.  Let’s take a step back.  Doctor Alice Arnolds lost her younger brother to a demon when they were children.  This demon, called Mare, causes, well, nightmares.  These nightmares lead to sleepwalking and ultimately death.  As a doctor specializing in sleep disorders, Arnolds helps others scientifically.  She’s come to believe that her brother’s death was because of natural causes—the supernatural doesn’t exist.

Okay, so sleepwalking is creepy, and the idea isn’t a bad hook.  Then Arnolds meets a family of four, all of whom sleepwalk with nightmares.  The demon’s target here is their young son, who reminds Arnolds of her lost brother.  At the sleep clinic the monitors show something odd, but circumstantial evidence points to the father as the guilty party.  But here’s where the big hole appears.  Once Arnolds becomes convinced something supernatural is happening, she decides to handle it herself, at the family’s home.  Even when it’s clear they’re out of their league, nobody calls the police or even an ambulance, let alone a priest.  Instead they rely on a janitor’s father whom they’ve just met.  They try to keep the boy awake until they’re endangering his life, then they fight the demon in their dreams.  There is a kind of twist ending, and the production values are good.  

The demon, which Arnolds researches on Wikipedia, is a notsnitsa.  Why this Slavic demon targeted both her brother and the family under distress isn’t explored.  The connection is made with “the night hag”—a folkloric demon that attacks in your sleep and is generally explained as sleep paralysis.  This is not a possessing demon.  In the film it’s said to be parasitic, and the sleeping victim acts out what the demon tells it to do.  The lack of any religious tension hurts this movie.  As does that lingering question—why not call in some kind of expert?  Either sacred or secular will do!  I won’t ruin the ending of the movie, but I’ll warn those tempted to watch to come armed with a great deal of suspension of disbelief.  You’re gonna need it.

Demonic Night

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There’s a type of film—I don’t have the vocabulary for it—where the action is loud, brash, and in-your-face.  Colors are often lurid and, in horror, gross sounds are emphasized.  I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s the style used with Night of the Demons.  I didn’t realize until after I’d seen it that it was a remake of an earlier film by the same name.  The one I saw was the 2009 version.  I’d just finished a book about demons, and I was looking over Amazon Prime and what I could watch without spending any more money.  Well, I did learn something.  But first, a little plot reveal: a group of friends are going to a Halloween party in a haunted mansion.  Mainly they’re looking for controlled substances and uninhibited sex.  The party hostess has rented said haunted mansion for the night.

Once they get there the final girl, Maddie (and you can tell from the beginning that she’ll be the final girl) starts to realize that there seem to be supernatural forces at play.  The cops show up and break up the rave, but seven kids remain behind since they’ve been locked in.  They find a hidden room where the bodies of six previous victims have decomposed.  This leads to the possession of the woman hosting the group and these demons are transferred either by bite or sex—they are sexually transmitted demons.  So, naturally, all the friends except the final girl fall victim.  These demons dissolve in the sunlight unless they get seven victims, so when Maddie makes it through Halloween night, the demons are defeated.

What makes this moving interesting is the type of demons on show.  These seven demons are so bad that they’ve been kicked out of Hell—they don’t follow the rules.  This made me think.  Logically, no demons in Hell follow the rules.  The root of the word “pandemonium” means “all demons.”  If none of them obey rules, how can any be kicked out for breaking rules?  Laws and rules are what preserve any civilization.  Those who use their money and power to flaunt the law are, in their own way, demonic.  These demons are kept at bay by spells written on the walls of one room in the house.  Those rules they must obey.  Is this a parable about free will?  It doesn’t seem sophisticated enough for that.  Night of the Demons is one of those fast, loud, lurid movies that need a monster.  Demons, which have no basic form, seem to be purpose made to fill such gaps.

Cinematic Demons

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It was because I read The Exorcist Effect.  I realize that there are lots of movies that I could’ve watched for Nightmares with the Bible, but with limited time, limited budget, and limited social contact, I made choices without all the data.  I guess no one ever has all the data, really.  In any case, I could’ve discussed The Crucifixion.  I’ve been taking a bit of a break from exorcism movies, but since this one was based on a true story I’d not heard before Exorcist Effect, I decided to give it a go.  Although highly fictionalized, the movie crew did pick up on significant details from the case of Maricica Irina Cornici, who died after an exorcism in Romania.  The framing story is that of Nicole Rawlins, a journalist who wants to learn the truth.

In fact, the story is really about how Rawlins comes to faith after confronting the demon Agares.  Rawlins has guilt over being an atheist, unable to convince her dying mother to try new treatment and then by letting her die with the knowledge that her daughter has no faith.  In Romania Rawlins drives around a lot and, in one of the most difficult to accept aspects, everyone freely gives information.  Sister Adelina Marinescu, the victim, we’re led to believe, picked up a sexually transmitted demon in Germany.  Her brother, and friends, even the bishop, all freely share their opinions.  Rawlins develops a crush on the local priest, Fr. Anton.  He wants her to regain faith since, as an atheist, she’s an easy target with a demon on the loose.

It turns out that the demon was actually transmitted from a possessed priest, who got it from a possessed farmer.  It then passed to Sister Adelina and from her to Rawlins.  Her possession becomes apparent on the farm of the original possessed man and Fr. Anton performs an unplanned exorcism to save Rawlins from the same fate as Sister Adelina.  Rawlins comes to believe; she saw her mother during a brief moment when, it’s implied, Nicole died.  The film has a rather convoluted plot and many scenes where logic seems to break down, but it is certainly a passable horror film.  Rawlins earns sympathy as the lead, and the Romanian setting is a nice (if historical) touch.  The local festival “like Halloween” adds intrigue.  The movie didn’t rock the critics, but it seems like it works for what it is.  And if I even write a follow-up to Nightmares, it will definitely be included.