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.
