Diagonaldi Very well executed

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

d_m_s When I started watching The Demon (on a poor quality VHS rip on youtube) I was initially surprised at how enjoyable I found it, considering the IMDb score is so low. As the film went on and I was still enjoying it, I began to think it could only have such a low score if it all went terribly downhill towards the end.Well, it does.The first hour is pretty interesting and engaging. I found the desperate couple employing an ex-soldier with ESP to help find their daughter and the killer and intriguing set up and I equally liked the 2 female school teachers when the story switched over to them. There were, of course, many flaws in this low budget affair but for the first hour it was a good watch. Some freaky suffocation scenes and a mysterious, almost supernatural, killer also added to the entertainment level.However, the last 30 minutes or so ruins the whole thing. Firstly, for some reason there were 2 parallel story lines in this film. One was the parents of a missing girl who hired the guy with ESP to find the daughter and killer. The other was about a schoolteacher who keeps seeing the killer hanging around outside her school. Now, I thought the 2 story lines were going to tie up somehow but they didn't. They were just 2 separate story lines only liked by the killer. This gave the film a completely unfocused feel – who was the main character supposed to be? Who was the film about? Towards the end, when the father finds the killer but gets killed, and the mother – completely randomly and illogically – shoots the ESP guy they hired, it all starts to fall apart. You suddenly realise that these 3 characters were completely unnecessary to the plot as they did nothing! The fact that the film introduces this ESP guy early on, then has him killed when he's not even done anything, reveals poor writing, a lack of focus and just a completely pointless character and subplot.Then for the rest of the end sequences, it's the killer in the house of the school teacher, chasing her around. It ends with a ridiculous scenario that results in the woman killing the killer, involving her spraying a shower in his face. The she stabs him, he dies and the credits roll. No idea why he went after her or who he was or anything. Odd.

Andy McGregor Actually, although it fits that sub-genre and quite clearly is attempting to copy the associated clichés and tropes, technically no such slashing or gore actually takes place. Obvious similarities to other movies aside, clearly some attempt was made to be even a little different in it's structure and approach. Suffocation, the masked killer's preferred M.O., actually comes across very effectively and gives the film at least a hint of originality. His preference for stalking and terrorising young, pretty girls is fortunate from a voyeur perspective and so occasionally we are treated to a bit of nudity, purely exploitatively of course!To say Cameron Mitchell was under-used in this film would be a huge understatement; his untimely and inexplicable end comes all too abruptly to have felt the remotest emotional investment in his character. Not that we do with any of the array of The Demon's victims, who all act frustratingly random and stupid, although somehow ironically this propels the action further by giving it a bizarre and unpredictable quality.Shots of apparent action in complete darkness and cut-aways of waves crashing on a beach only hinder the already confusing and disjointed plot; it was seemingly structured and edited by a mad-man! And don't get me started on the insane script!Overall, what this movie lacks in technical value, appears to gain in atmosphere and individuality (which helps a bit considering it's a shameless Halloween rip-off). It's not a terrible movie, it's just not that well done.

gpeltz I am not going to call the film "deep" but there was definitely more to it, then meets the eye. You have read the previous reviews, I take it; Nudity, no motive, too dark, yadda yadda! True enough, some of it for the better (bare breasts) some for the worse, "dark and hard to see". I thought the film decent and moody. 1) Why the sea ? Brooding waves hitting the coast, water symbolizes emotions, there they come crashing in the dark. It may not work because of the repetition, but it is a "poetic" touch. I thought at first that the demon might have had some watery significance, but as with many other visual keys thrown into this film, it was, if you will pardon the pun, a red herring. Those who think this film was mindlessly thrown together are mistaken. They compare the film to Halloween. The similarities are there, but not so pronounced. More to the point, the film plays more like Hitchcock; The unexpected death of a protagonist midway through, the misleading direction of both the plot and the cinematography. For example, The killer at first is presented as a possible pedophile, and later there there are lots of shots with children.Did you notice how often the director used the devise of pulling away from the subject at the end of a scene, and focusing on some window or door, as if one would expect to see something the actor missed. The end was particularly intriguing, Major time to bale if you don't want to read the spoiler, but in truth its the point of my review;Re-track the last five minutes, yes the nudity was a positive aspect, it showed the vulnerability, of the heroine, just as in Psycho. Being naked with a killer chasing you is the worst of ones fears. But then something peculiar happens, The stalker does not kill her when it had many chances. Mary is emboldened, and lures the killer onward, she actually turns off the lights in the room she is in, This seems to break the lore of horror film logic. Whats more, she is not terrified, even after finding the body of her friend, she has a plan. I have replayed three times the last minutes of the film, here I look for the demon to reveal himself. He breaks into the bathroom, and is taken off guard by the water, Mary uses the opportunity to stab him in the neck, she spins him around and throws him into the water filled tub, she is not screaming, In fact she is flushed with her victory, and then she sees something, and she starts to scream, we get a shot of the killer in the tub with the scissor in his neck, then we get a shot of his face, only this time we see he is wearing a mask. Mary shrieks and runs out of the house screaming as her friends car pulls in the driveway. One more shot of the killer, this time there is just his mask, with darkness where the eyes should be, was he a supernatural demon after all? flash on the titles. Very good,a most interesting, obscure little film.

Coventry Percival Rubens' "The Demon" is one of them late 70's low-budget horror oddities of which you can't help wondering why the hell it was ever made. What director, in his right state of mind, comes up with a completely illogical story about a malicious killer with unexplained motives and a heroic copper who gets killed even long before he's face-to-face with his nemesis? And this describes just a small part of everything that is wrong with the film's screenplay. There's a sadistic killer on the loose in a small town. He wears gloves with claws attached to them, yet he exclusively kills his victims by choking them with a plastic bag. He always seems to walk in the shadow, has the size of a giant and never speaks a word. Is he really a demon…or just a frustrated outcast who never received any motherly love? He seems to be after the local kindergarten teacher and her gorgeous cousin but why is anyone's guess. On the other side, we have an ex-cop gifted with psychic powers looking for the killer. Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace", "Nightmare in Wax") truly makes a fool out of himself here, pretending to be in contact with higher forces and sniffing a missing girl's pillow for clues. He's smart enough to predict his own death, yet he doesn't take any efforts to prevent it. As you can see, the plot is one giant MESS and there's absolutely nothing that makes the slightest bit of sense. The only positive point I can raise is that "The Demon" benefits from a neat morbid atmosphere and an occasional flash or sheer suspense. It's also quite sleazy! The two lead girls regularly strip all their clothes off but this doesn't seem to influence the madman in any way. On the contrary, he's more interested in tearing apart the dressing gowns than in naked female bodies. Like I said, it's a bad bad bad BAD film…but curiously intriguing at the same time.