Casting certainly isn’t among the faults of this flick with scream legend Brinke Stevens and FX wildman-turned-actor Tom Savini receiving top billing. In all probability, their involvement is the ONLY reason Demon Lust even found distribution. Its most obvious failings are technical. Poor camera work. Laughable sound. But in B-pictures all that nonsense gets a pass. The amateur filmmaker is warmly embraced. And even so-called "bad" movies are almost always entertaining to the CineSchlocker. However, what can never be tolerated is B-O-R-E-D-O-M.
The movie: What might make this flick bearable is to keep a running total of film cliches. Feel free to try that at home. A prime example would be Cecil (Harold Keller) an adult man-child who celebrates his birthday by stargazing with a new telescope and "accidentally" spies a nekkid lady next door (Ms. Stevens). There’s also Tony and Nick a pair of dim-witted pals who, you guessed it, owe the mob a lot of green (Edward Lee Vincent and Zander Teller). To get it, our heroes decide to burglarize the nekkid lady’s house while she’s got her clothes ON and is out picking up strange men at bars. Only her house looks like it was decorated by Alice Cooper — with pentagrams on the floor and a python in her living room. This discovery sours the robbery, of course, which is good because she decides to bring home a date to ravage — to death. Yes, just at that most critical of moments, she transmutates into a shrieking beastie and claws the poor fella to death. At least that’s what appears to happen, as it’s hard to tell with the cheesy video effects and the camera jerking around. Demonic killers need a quirk to set them apart from the riffraff, so Brinke’s dark angel goes to the trouble of fashioning clay sculptures of her victims’ heads before ushering them into the afterlife. Spooky, huh? Look for Savini as mob enforcer Eddie "The Goose" Rao who bloodies squirrelly little Nick with a YO YO!
Notables: 10 breasts. 10 corpses. Peeping. Coupon clipping. Refrigerated finger. Heimlich maneuver. Foot chase. Juggling. Multiple diddling. Heart ripping.
Quotables: Joey Santorello is something of an Ugly American, "This is the U.S. of f@#$in’ A. We don’t respect anyone or anything here. If you want respect, go back to Italy!" Later he tells another fella before a bar fight, "You better practice falling down!" Amanda knows what she wants, "COME HERE AND LICK MY FACE!!!"
Time codes: Drug-induced bizarro sex fantasy (14:20). Savini joins the picture (19:55). Brinke’s first closeup (35:40). Snake eats a mouse (1:00:30). Ms. Stevens mounts Tony in the, ahem, climatic finale (1:19:30).
Final thought: Strong performances by Stevens and Savini fail to rescue this utterly baffling flick.