Horror Movie Review: Night of the Demons 3/Demon House (1997)

The 3rd & final movie in the Night of the Demons turned up in the UK under the name Demon House for reasons that escape me. Maybe they thought a 3rd in the series wouldn’t interest a late 90’s audience sick of Halloween/Friday the 13th sequels.

Trying to distance the 3rd Night of the Demons movie from the rest makes even less sense when you consider that the story references the Hull house history & stars Angela with next to no clarification as to who she is for those who’ve never seen the first 2.

Pretty dumb huh? Well hold onto your hat as that isn’t the last dumb thing….

The movie opens with a cop on watch at Hull house…take note, a clearly different & much nicer looking Hull house. He runs into Angela who promptly kills him with his own badge…it’s cool & timely reminder that she isn’t one to be messed with.

We are then introduced to our fodder…driving around in a beat up van driven by the nerdy Orson, the bad-boy Vince, his nasty girlfriend Lois, the mysterious Nick & the stereo-typical Reggie. Elsewhere local cheerleader Holly & her shy friend Abbie are getting dressed to go out to a Halloween party. This is a great excuse to cram some nudity in but does allow for some character development as it becomes clear that Abbie is jealous of her friend’s good looks.

Our motley crew of demon meat are cruising around in the van when they come across Holly & Abbie who have broken down at the side of the road. They pick them up & it becomes painfully obvious that Holly is into Nick & Abbie is attracted to Vince’s bad-boy antics. Seriously…it’s not very subtle.

They stop of at convenience store where Reggie tries to buy beer with his brothers ID. The shop owner is having none of it & pulls a shotgun on them…I felt he may be over-reacting here. Vince interferes & grabs the gun…2 policemen enter & a shootout occurs resulting in a cop being shot (wearing a vest) & Reggie being shot (not wearing a vest).

They escape in the van & end up hiding out at Hull house against Abbie’s wishes as she knows about the underground stream. A nice detective due to retire that night at midnight (I laughed a lot at that) starts to track them realising that they aren’t cop killers.

From this point on Angela shows up & slowly turns the group against each other using her feminine ways before making them demons as well. Cue awkward dances, sex scenes/references that make little sense & some nice gory moments.

All of this makes an enjoyable watch as long as you’re willing to detach your brain…completely. It is extremely tough to not laugh at the idiotic dialogue (“You’re on the law… and it’s time to pronounce sentence”) mixed with even dumber character decisions. I don’t care how horny you are, some chick appears from nowhere & manages to suck a bullet out of a gun barrel should have you running for the hills not sucking face with her.

The movie is littered with these moments & it becomes a real chore to ignore the stupidity of it all regardless of the deaths.

Angela really decides to ramp up the variety in how she dispatches her victims with 2 of the best seeing a tongue pushed out through the back of a head & a arm becoming a poisonous snake. It’s wacky to say the least…

The cheese factor gets ramped up in the final 15 minutes & results in a bloated & comical ending which goes some way to explain Angela’s motivation…as if we needed any.

A throw-away horror that never really makes any effort to better the 2 films that came before. The silly dialogue & even sillier character behaviour is difficult to ignore at times & it affects the pacing of the movie. It also goes a bit heavy on the sex & nudity at times but the death sequences are fun.