Main cast: Alvin Alexis (Rodger), Allison Barron (Helen), Lance Fenton (Jay Jansen), William Gallo (Sal Romero), Hal Havins (Stooge), Mimi Kinkade (Angela Franklin), Cathy Podewell (Judy), Linnea Quigley (Suzanne), Philip Tanzini (Max), and Jill Terashita (Frannie)
Director: Kevin Tenney

Let me tell you about Night of the Demons, a movie that bombed harder at the box office than a possessed cheerleader doing the splits, but somehow managed to claw its way back from cinematic hell when it hit video rental stores.

Remember those magical temples of VHS where you could rent three movies for five bucks and pretend you were definitely going to return them on time? Yeah, those places. This little gem found its audience there, nestled between Friday the 13th Part XVII: Jason Takes a Yoga Class and whatever direct-to-video Steven Seagal movie was poisoning the action section that week.

If you’ve ever wondered what peak 1980s looks like in horror movie form, congratulations – you just found your spirit animal. This flick is so aggressively 80s that it practically sweats Aqua Net and bleeds neon. The hair defies both gravity and good judgment, the clothes scream “I raided a David Bowie garage sale!”, and the whole aesthetic is basically what would happen if a Hot Topic store exploded inside a Halloween party.

It’s got all the genre staples too: gratuitous nudity that serves no purpose other than to wake up any teenage boy who might have dozed off during the exposition, and gore effects courtesy of the “let’s see what happens when we mix corn syrup with various household chemicals” school of practical effects wizardry.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a bunch of actors who are clearly pushing thirty trying their damndest to convince us they’re teenagers. These “kids” decide to throw a Halloween bash at Hull House, a place with a reputation more haunted than a Spirit Halloween store’s customer service department.

The party is organized by Angela Franklin, a Goth girl who makes Wednesday Addams look like a Disney princess, and her friend Suzanne, who’s basically hornier than a rhino in mating season. Because nothing says “great party planning” like choosing a location where people have literally died horribly.

Naturally, because this is a horror movie and subtlety died somewhere around the opening credits, our brilliant protagonists decide to hold a seance. Because what could possibly go wrong with summoning supernatural entities in a house that’s already supposedly crawling with them?

Spoiler alert: everything goes wrong, demons get unleashed faster than you can say “maybe this was a bad idea”, and suddenly Angela and Suzanne are giving their best auditions for the next Evil Dead movie. Everyone else becomes demon chow, because apparently demons are equal opportunity employers when it comes to possession and murder.

Now, let’s talk about Linnea Quiggley, the undisputed queen of 1980s B-horror. Even she looked at her character and thought, “I’m supposed to be a teenager? What teenager – one who’s been held back for fifteen years?”

Still, God bless her, Ms Quiggley was a consummate professional who knew exactly what these movies needed, and she delivered it with the dedication of a method actor preparing for Shakespeare. Every respectable horror movie of the decade wanted her, and she showed up ready to strip down and scream on cue like the absolute legend she was.

But here’s the thing: even when she’s fully clothed, Ms Quiggley has this magnetic screen presence that makes you forget you’re watching someone old enough to have voted in three presidential elections play a high schooler.

However, she gets some serious competition from Amelia Kinkade as Angela, who performs a demonic dance sequence so mesmerizing and genuinely creepy that it probably launched a thousand Goth awakenings across America. Seriously, this dance is responsible for more black eyeliner sales than a My Chemical Romance concert. Ms Kinkade commits to the bit with the intensity of someone auditioning for the Bolshoi Ballet, except instead of Swan Lake, she’s performing Demon Lake: The Reckoning.

The movie definitely owes a debt to Evil Dead – and by debt, I mean it basically photocopied Sam Raimi’s homework and changed just enough words to avoid getting caught by the teacher. But here’s the brilliant part: it never crosses the line into outright plagiarism because it’s got this wonderfully subversive sense of humor running through it. Even when the makeup looks like it was applied by a blind person having an epileptic seizure, the movie knows exactly how ridiculous it is and leans into that ridiculousness like a drunk person leaning into a karaoke song.

The film gleefully subverts horror movie expectations at every turn. The token black guy doesn’t die first – shocking! – and turns out to be the most levelheaded person in the bunch, which is like finding out the class clown is secretly a Rhodes Scholar. The Final Girl is telegraphed from orbit, but her jerkwad ex-boyfriend actually grows a spine and becomes genuinely heroic, proving that character development is possible even in movies where people get possessed by demons. And the obligatory fat comic relief character, while still painfully stereotypical, gets the movie’s best line: “Eat a bowl of fuck!” – a phrase so magnificently absurd it deserves to be cross-stitched on throw pillows.

The pacing moves along nicely, never getting bogged down in the kind of tedious exposition that makes you want to fast-forward to the good stuff. The jump scares actually work too, which is refreshing in an era where most horror movies telegraph their scares about as subtly as a marching band announcement. These aren’t the modern Blumhouse-style jump scares that build up for five minutes before unleashing a loud noise and a cat – they’re quick, effective, and don’t overstay their welcome.

If there’s one thing that’ll make you want to throw popcorn at the screen, it’s the Final Girl, who spends most of the movie being about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Throughout the film, she’s perfecting her screaming technique and waiting for the menfolk to rescue her repeatedly. It’s like watching someone play a video game on the easiest difficulty setting while complaining that it’s too hard. They could have given her literally any survival instinct — maybe the ability to run in a straight line, or not trip over her own feet every five minutes — but apparently that was too much character development for one movie.

Sure, Night of the Demons looks a little creaky by today’s standards, like your uncle’s old Camaro that still runs but makes concerning noises when you turn left. But the campy, corny charm that made 80s horror so endearingly ridiculous has aged like a fine wine, assuming that wine was stored in a haunted basement and occasionally possessed by demons.

This is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand what horror movies were like back when practical effects meant “let’s see what happens when we mix pudding with food coloring” and actors were hired based on their willingness to run through fog machines in their underwear. It’s a glorious time capsule of everything that made 80s horror both terrible and absolutely wonderful, and honestly, we could use more movies willing to be this gleefully, unapologetically ridiculous.