"Black Demons" review

Black Demons (1991)
AKA Demoni 3

Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Writing credits Umberto Lenzi Olga Pehar

Keith Van Hoven.... Kevin
Joe Balogh.... Dick
Sonia Curtis.... Jessica
Philip Murray.... Jose
Juliana Texeira.... Sonia

A smorgasbord of actors end up at a house in Brazil. The troubled brother of the good girl resurrects the dead. He is obsessed with the Macumba and wants to party down with voodoo. Black magic leads to Black Demons. Six dead slaves rise from the grave to have their revenge.

First, let me say something good about the movie. The DVD cover for this flick was great. It has a drawing of a guy on his knees in a graveyard. Standing in front of him are various members of the living dead. There are seven zombies on the cover while the movie makes a big deal about there being only six. A small, nitpicking point but it's still a cool comic book-like cover. It sucked me in. There were a few scenes of carnage in this movie. Not enough to get overly excited about, but they were there. They had one effect where they popped a girl's eye out and let it dangle from her skull. Popping eyes are good.

Unfortunately, this movie is pretty bad. If there was an excessive amount of gore, I could have forgiven any other defects. But there is not nearly enough of the red stuff so I have to give "Black Demons" the finger.

Where did they get this cast? It was the most jumbled mix of misfits ever assembled. I understand there are budget limitations for a B-movie but give me a break. The bad brother was American. His sister was half English. She was dating an Englishman. They stayed at a house with three people of undeterminable accents. The man who ran the house could barely speak English. I had no idea what he was saying half of the time and the filmmakers conveniently let him do most of the talking. Genius!

Basically, "Black Demons" problems can be summed up in two words: NO MONEY. No money for pretty girls to run from demons. No money for nudity although I'm not sad about that since the cast was uniformly unattractive. No money for excessive zombie gore effects. In conclusion, no money for a movie yet they went ahead and made one anyway.

Umberto Lenzi has made some great horror flicks. "Nightmare City" is one of my favorites. That was exciting and gory. "Black Demons" is a loser.

SCORE: 1 out of 4 eye-poppingly bad movies