Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE DEMON (1981)

Whether it's because yes, I'm still in the grip of this grippe or whether it's because it is simply his nature, RNGesus did me a kindness this week by selecting The Demon, a South African slasher curio that stars 50-pack King Cameron Mitchell as a psychic ex-Marine. It is the pleasures of life such as this that will see me through this time of plague.

Dig a little and you'll see that The Demon has a plethora of dates attached to it: 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985...for simplicity's sake I'd call The Demon a relic from The Age of Macramé, but a few in situ pop culture cameos put its filming squarely in 1979: namely a marquee showing The Amityville Horror and disco dancers getting TF down to the Lipps Inc tune "Funkytown" (which, incidentally, still slaps). The rest is a matter of release dates and the such, and I leave those kinds of decisions up to the courts, thank you very much.

By the way, those disco dancers are getting TF down at a place called Boobs Disco and I don't know...things weren't perfect but surely society was a little better when your average white folk got TF down regularly, sublimating their troubles by stepping all over a light-up floor instead of all over the lives of everyone else? 

Anyway. A heavy-breathing, hulking maniac breaks into a suburban home, ties up the mother and puts a plastic bag over her head, then absconds with the teenage daughter. The mother survives, but when police have no leads on the daughter after two months, the parents do the only thing they can: they call for the services of retired Marine Colonel Bill Carson, psychic. 

Move over, Sylvia Browne

Carson humbly explains his ESP powers ("Sometimes I get feelings--vibes, as the kids would call them") and gets to work touching objects in the daughter's bedroom. He sketches a few of his related visions and the dad somehow decides they are a good enough lead to go searching for the maniac, whom Carson super helpfully describes as "less than a man, and more than a man."

Most movies would follow this main plotline that features their main star, but not The Demon! Writer/director Percival Rubens dedicates the bulk of the film to a B-plot concerning a teacher I christened 1979 Amy Poehler (Jennifer Holmes) and her cousin as they navigate their love lives while sort-of being stalked by our resident Less-n-More Than a Man. 

Yes indeed, The Demon likes to show off both its Black Christmas influences and its Halloween influences. I'm not really complaining.

Nor am I really complaining about that bulk of the film that many a viewer would likely call "boring." I'm not saying I'm not calling it that, necessarily, but I didn't hate it. In fact, I was rather curious to see how the two plotlines would converge.

Spoiler: they do not! The only thing linking them together is our resident Less-n-More Than a Man, who seems to choose his victims at random. Of course, the majority of his victims are women and his motivations seem to come down to "woman-hating." 

While this and the random excuses for nudity put The Demon squarely into the realm of typical slasher stuff, the film does manage to hide a few surprises up its billowy sleeves. Rubens wisely employs a restrained hand when it comes to showing our Less-n-More Than a Man, but unfortunately this is your standard Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection transfer; The glimpses we do get of the killer are often too dark to really enjoy. It's a shame because he sports some bitchin' gloves that are like Giallo Freddy Krueger specials and I wanted to see 'em in action.

I don't think The Demon rises even to the level of Great Value Slasher, but its surprises and left turns and last ten minutes push it to the level of Hey Maybe Slasher Aficionados Should Check It Out. That's something, right? I mean, a psychic Cameron Mitchell! Boobs Disco! Not even the mighty Halloween can boast that stuff.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: COVID (2025)

I thought I might be able to take a dip in the Mill Creek this week but it is not happening, I am sorry to say. I felt a bit better yesterday but I feel a bit worse today, and I know it's only been a couple of days but time has been very amorphous and I now fear I will be trapped in this forever. 

Time has been very amorphous because, you know, quarantine fugue. But it also owes to the fact that I am not engaging in usual home activities: movies, books, games. Besides reading two chapters of a book, literally the only thing I have done is watch Vanderpump Rules.

If you don't know, it's a Real Housewives spinoff that follows the lives of the young folk who work at the West Hollywood restaurant SUR, co-owned by Lisa Vanderpump, formerly of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It's been airing since 2013. 

I never indulged (though Housewives friends have long told me to) because what care I for the exploits of the young? Besides, knowing there are 11 seasons of it to catch up on is awfully intimidating. Well, something in my brain decided that the time was finally right, and while I am certainly not going to say I'm grateful for catching Covid, I will say that I am grateful to myself for using Covid as an excuse to indulge. It is magnificent.

So when I am not wandering aimlessly around my apartment or ordering more supplies, I am watching VPR. Time has not only been amorphous, it truly no longer has meaning. 

Here is a selfie of me between episodes, calling the grocery store to demand they SEND MORE ONIONS.

"Stacie," you are surely thinking, "We barely tolerate your Real Housewives asides, references, and blather. This tolerance will absolutely not extend to Vanderpump Rules, so please don't start."

Don't worry, I won't! I only mention this at all because check this out, it's relevant, I swear.

So in season 2, Tom Sandoval's band has a ~~big moment~~ opening for Martha Davis and The Motels at Lake Arrowhead, a mountain resort east of Los Angeles. What I was not expecting was this:

1) Yes, their band is called "Pierce the Arrow." No, I don't know what that means.

2) Yes, I took a vertical video of my TV in the moment! Leave me alone, I have Covid.

3) REGGIE BANNISTER??? On my Vanderpump Rules??? Introducing acts at Lake Arrowhead????? 

Well knock me over with a ponytail! 

It's the most random cameo of all time, surely. 

I love Phantasm so much. Like I don't know if I'd put in in my top 20 ever--maybe my top 50? But I do have such feelings for it, mostly because it scared the heccccckkkkk out of me as a youth, so badly that were I to watch it now, I'd probably still be a bit unsettled at least. I don't know how someone watching it for the first time today would feel about it, but for me it'll always be a bit of a nightmare.

Okay that's the update from Plague Central. This has wiped me out, back to the couch...and VPR. Fingers crossed an uncredited Lance Henriksen shows up in the background at SUR as the youths tear into one another over today's betrayal.

Just what the doctor ordered

There has been something "going around" my li'l city and reader, I have caught it! It is some version of A Cold, but I have not been sick in years (nail polish emoji) and this Cold on Steroids is whipping my ass something good. I am vaccinated (and masked) to the high heavens (or the high hells, depending on which news channels you watch) and I know this does not make me impervious like John Travolta as the boy in the plastic bubble in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, but it does add insult to this injury. The same goes for my "treatment plan," which includes mainlining my late gramma's patented home remedy: onion sandwiches. (Great at driving away germs and paramours alike!) They ain't done shit except inflate my onion budget more than is reasonable!

(Edited to add: I tested negative on Friday but after noticing an actual fever I tried again a bit ago for funsies and sure enough, at long last I have finally been caught in Miss Covid's evil web. Fuck this shit! I'm so annoyed. Perhaps this--and only this, surely!--is the reason those onion sandwiches are failing in their duty.)

Last night, I sat upon my couch all wrapped up and a-wondering what to do with my time. I've been too tired to stay awake, too messed up to sleep; freezing cold and burning up simultaneously; trying to think with a head full of cotton wool and prone to bouts of vertigo. And then, in this time of trouble, Mother Tubi came to me, speaking words of wisdom:

Howzabout an early-aughties made-for-cable horror film that reunites LA Law alums Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey?

So I said sign me the eff UP and gave Disappearance (2002) a whirl and you know what? Mother Tubi never misses. 

I fully cop to the fact that all the onion fumes floating around my apartment may have influenced my already illness-addled brain, but I was so into this movie. Then again, it was written and directed by Walter Klenhard, who also wrote an directed another of my favorite made-for-TV thrillers (Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear starring Josie Bissett of television's Melrose Place) so chances are it literally is just that good.

Pater Harry Hamlin and step-mater Susan Dey are hauling the kids through the Nevada desert for a little family bonding time. They make a stop at a time-honored horror movie location: the dusty gas station with a vaguely menacing attendant, then have some lunch at another time-honored horror movie location: the dusty diner full of flies and sun-burnt weirdos. They are in search of a town called Weaver, a long-abandoned mining village that is no longer shown on maps. In an unexpected twist, the sun-burnt weirdos deny they've ever heard of this "Weaver," never mind that it used to exist.

But this doesn't stop our family, who fires up their brand-new Ford Excursion™ (this shit must have been sponsored by Ford, I swear, it feels like a commercial for the Excursion™ at times) and head down a long, dusty road deep into the desert--despite being warned to "stick to the roads, lads pavement." 

Why stick to the pavement when the Ford Excursion™ can handle any tough terrain

Sure enough, they eventually find Weaver, which indeed seems to be a tiny ghost town. They explore a bit, taking photos of musty, dusty buildings while noting that it's like all the people who live there...wait for it...disappeared. You know, food left on the tables, calendars from the 1940s, etc. They also find some footage that gives us a wee found footage moment of previous visitors to Weaver being pursued by someone...or something, dun dun dunnn.

Spooked, they go to leave but their Ford Excursion™ won't start. They stay the night in one of the buildings and I will admit: It was my turn to be spooked. In the middle of the night, Harry Hamlin grabs a flashlight and heads upstairs to investigate a noise down a dark hallway and it was a surprisingly effective sequence. I've said it time and time again, noises in the dark are all I really need for a horror movie to scare me and dagummit this worked. 

The next morning, the Ford Excursion™ is missing altogether. Was it stolen by a someone...or something? The group splits up, and Harry Hamlin and A Boy take off across the desert, hoping to find help back at the dusty diner. Things get a little weird from here with more and more added to the mystery. Susan Dey falls down into a mineshaft and is pursued by someone...or something: We get a lot of heavy breathing and POV shots, but we never see what exactly it is. A Boy disappears after cresting a sand dune. There's a rundown cemetery that looks like the one outside Goodsprings in Fallout: New Vegas but there are fresh graves. The dusty town clearly has a secret, so I just kept falling deeper and deeper under Disappearance's spell.

Ultimately there are a bunch of theories as to what is what. 

Is the mutated offspring of neutron bomb testing site victims living under Weaver like some kind of southwestern CHUDs? (Side note, in the pits of this grippe I can totally hear a commercial now, boasting that we should "Come try our brand-new southwestern CHUD sauce, only during 2-for-1 Fiesta Days at Applebee's!") 

Is it the ol' "haunted ancient Indian burial ground" gag? (That is literally what they call it, so don't @ me!)

Is it aliens?

In the end, I don't think it makes a lick of sense. But 1) Maybe my soft-n-silky smooth sickness brain simply couldn't parse what was going on, and 2) Whether it made any sense or not, I do not care.

Because I had a great time! The tropes at work, as well as a passing nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, mean it hits many a-beat you've heard before but you know what? That's okay In fact, that's more than okay when you are feeling like CHUD crud. Tropes? Susan Dey? Harry Hamlin? A Town with a Secret? That is pure comfort, a better balm than even onion sandwiches sorry, gramma) or the freedom and safety you feel while driving a Ford Excursion™. As always, Mother Tubi knows best.