Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

A different way of telling a story

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

This is such an unimpressive movie from Lucio Fulci. It's one of the more difficult to find, being somewhere after his golden years, but before his TV series flops, but it's not worth hunting down a copy.The plot concerns atrocities that happen in a convent many years ago, in which some seemingly evil nuns are brutally executed and crucified. These past horrors come to light (again) in modern times when a long sealed ancient church vault is opened up by a young researcher.The film has a very slight plot, and doesn't do well with it. The film is shot almost entirely in soft, fuzzy focus, with light leaking all over the place, which is very annoying, even if it is (presumably) intentional. The story seems to vaguely show it's lead heroine, played by Meg Register, being possessed by the long dead evil nuns and taking revenge on various members of the village, but none of this is clear. The sealed chamber of crucified nuns looks good when first glimpsed, but the rotting bodies appear and disappear sporadically, and Meg Register briefly flits between looking like herself, and transforming into one of the evil nuns, all of which is presumably intended to generate fear, but which fails miserably.Various murders take place. Because this is a Fulci film, and people want to know, I am going to tell you what happens - but this obviously means SPOILERS... One guy gets stabbed and his head ends up being pulled out of the water on an anchor (?) Another lady, a sort of psychic, get's attacked by her own cats who pull her eyes out. Looks very fake. Another man is attacked by slabs of meat hanging in a freezer. He only had to leave the freezer, but he doesn't. After some meat bashing, he collapses onto a table and someone pulls out his tongue and nails it to the table. as you do. The final murder is the best, worst and most bizarre at the same time. A young couple lose their son, and the father searches a forest for him. he catches a glimpse of the boy being dragged off by a nun! Then suddenly - the father is strung upside down in a kind of trap! How? The son trips on a wire and the father's whole body is split into two halves! This is REALLY badly done, the fakeness is extremely obvious. It's still rather disgusting though. That's it for the main gore.Eventually the film limps to a close as the villagers invade the sealed up crypt, and in a feeble ending they confront the ancient evil. Boring, boring, boring. Please don't be encouraged to seek this out based on the descriptions of gore I have detailed above. They are all laughable and do not rescue the film from being extremely lame. A sad entry in the late career of Fulci. Not as bad as his TV efforts, but worse than "Manhattan Baby", and that's saying something

"Demonia" of 1990 is one of the last films by Italian Horror/Gore deity Lucio Fulci, and while it certainly ranges among the man's lesser achievements it is still a stylish little film that should be enjoyed by his fans. The film's main problem is that it is a bit of a mess, and that it truly pales in comparison to most of Fulci's other achievements, even becoming a bit boring in some parts (which is a very rare fault in a Fulci film). Yet the film is interesting in its Fulci-typical style and atmosphere and features several truly creepy moments as well as some spectacular gore-scenes. What also makes the film worth checking out is the fact that the master himself has a role - Fulci plays a police Inspector. The storyline is actually very promising Horror-material: In 15th century Sicily, a Covent of nuns who are suspected of conspiring with the devil are lynched by angry villagers. Five centuries later, Canadian archaeologists come to the area and are met with hostility by the superstitious locals. The locals fear that the strangers and their archaeological work might raise the demons of the past; and their worries are not entirely unfounded... Overall, the film has a promising premise but the execution is too messy. Yet it is recommendable to Fulci fans, as it does include many moments of pure creepiness. The master does show his talent for haunting atmosphere, and once again proves that his moniker "The Godfather of Gore" is justified. While "Demonia" should entertain many of my fellow Italian Horror buffs, it might make others roll their eyes. My advice to fellow Fulci-fans: check it out! Others, never mind.

In XVth century church group of nuns committed a religion blasphemy. All women preformed satanic rituals and wild orgies with strangers, who later vanished in a mysterious circumstances. Of course it had an effect. One of the nuns gave birth to a child, which was immediately burn. People who lived nearby church had enough and decided to crucify wicked nuns. A few centuries later group of archeologists started to do the research nearby ruins of church. This fact made locals very suspicious and unfriendly, because of superstition of murdered nun's revenge. It's question of time when sinner's ghosts came back to get their death toll.Fulci always goes from one extreme to another. Once his movies were full of suspense ["Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes "] or gore ["Zombie Flesh Eaters"]. Demonia is a try to mix these two. But, it's failed. Fulci tries all of his suspense tricks such as eye close-up, sudden zooms and creating orinirique atmosphere. But it makes this film worse. Close-up looks really poor and zooms are very annoying. Oh, we can't forget about music. Sometimes it honestly can build atmosphere but it's only one scene. In other ones, especially in ruins where we hear drunk organist's symphony it's driving insane. Gore also lets down. There are only two scenes, of which one is typical for Lucio (eyes scratched out by a cat)but second one - tearing man apart - really satisfied me. The biggest flop is main character and strictly speaking acting. Her looks brought me a lot of fun. For example, in scene where Paul (leader of archeologists) says to her that they must leave her look is wonderful! It's similar to kid's look when they are forbidden to eat sweets/play computer games/whatever. But all of these are nothing when we compare it to the ending! I have seen many bad movies, but it's first really PA-THE-TIC ending in my life. There is nothing better than view of burning nun in company of soap opera's music! As for me, it's probably top bottom of Lucio Fulci's movies and it's a little pity, because the plot is quite good.

Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci (1927-1996) did a great amount of atmospheric and wonderful Spaghetti horrors during his prolific career, his masterpieces being Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979), The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetery (1982) and Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) among many other more or less interesting and noteworthy films from the horror or other genres. His masterpieces have wonderful soundtracks by composer Fabio Frizzi, great cinematography by Sergio Salvati and the kind of surreal and infernal ultra gory imagery that will stay inside the mind especially when experience for the first time. But his career has the other side, too, these ultra braindead cheapies that are so painful to watch especially if one appreciates the director at all.Demonia is Fulci's attempt in the nunsploitation genre, at least kind of. It has a historical background as a bunch of Sicilian nuns were brutally killed in the convent as they had practised something the others judged as evil and satanic. This is shown as a flashback, just like in his The Beyond, but so much less effectively and it comes clear in this very beginning that even the gore effects are very bad and stupid in the film. Then we jump to the present day as some group of archeologists search for treasures from the historic times (if I'm correct, the mentioned nun killing took place in the sixteenth century) and naturally neither the villagers nor the raising evil spirits like this too much and soon the bloody killings begin...as well as all the possible errors and negative sides a film can have.There are hardly any positive things to be said about this piece of cinematic garbage. None of the Fulci magic is left. Some of the dream sequences and close-ups of frightened eyes remind me distantly of Lucio Fulci but still, there's nothing in the imagery that would save the film. The ending has some nightmarish scenes and images as the nuns return from the beyond, but The Beyond shows how great that kind of scenes can be. The music is also horrible and probably taken from a commercial or something like that. It doesn't create atmosphere and terror as Frizzi did but is there in order to make the silent scenes not to look so dull, which they still are as well as the whole film. What's there is the graphic gore and very boring 80 minutes.The film almost gives a new meaning to the phrase "dead boring" as it has some laughably long dialogue sequences which almost force to stop the viewing. The characters are uninteresting, but fortunately don't over-act too much, the plot is nothing too special (but could have been interesting if made by Fulci ten years earlier) and every single element in the piece screams in tired pain as does the viewer too. The film also looks very amateurish as if done by a bunch of amateurs and it is no wonder this didn't even have a theatrical run in Italy.The gore scenes are also very bad and the effects don't even look real as they did in the classics, created by Gianneto de Rossi. They are quite sadistic and graphic at times, the "body splitting" and tongue impaling, being the most memorable examples, but still they are not as haunting as in the earlier films that were also effected by the soundtrack and visuals. Now there's plenty of gore but hardly any impact. They show more than Deodato did in Cut and Run, for example, but as everything around the scenes sucks, it is hard to take the horror shocks too seriously. The butcher house sequence, however, is a pretty nasty as an idea and has some interest in it, too, and that is also easily among the film's "most interesting" parts. And the guy really has a tongue that makes Gene Simmons look green in comparison.Demonia is a very, very bad film even as a fan of Lucio Fulci. It has practically nothing to make it worth recommending, only those very few distant things mentioned above and I think it is rather impossible to watch this film again. It is so bad, as unfortunately was the state of Fulci's career when he was forced to make films like these. 2/10 and very barely so.