Pick for the Weekend: Night of the Demons 2 (1994)

– Night of the Demons 2 is the movie for the weekend. In this section every Saturday or Sunday Celluloid Dimension picks a movie for the weekend. The selections are preferably underrated movies or neglected movies that we think should get more attention. Have fun with these recommendations. –

Night of the Demons 2 (1994) Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith

This farcical sequel to Night of the Demons raises the stakes with more juvenile profanity, this one is hornier and gorier than its predecessor, thus the parodic Night of the Demons corpus here is implacable and immodest. Prolific direct-to-video specialist Brian Trenchard-Smith helms the festive demonology of this economical sequel that takes place six years after the supernatural tragedy at the notorious Hull House on Halloween night. The best filmmaking strategy this film has is to transpose the limited setting of its predecessor to a more accessible and multitudinous field in order to easily render a concupiscent hyperbole of the innuendos that made the pornographic lens of 1988’s Night of the Demons so unforgettable. That instrumental scenario is a Catholic boarding school, where Melissa (Merle Kennedy), Angela’s diffident sister, attends and is bullied by a bevy of luscious girls. The sassiest girl in the dormitory, Shirley (Zoe Trilling) decides to throw a ghoulish Halloween party at the Hull house, the guests are her two loyal female friends and two athletic boys from the same boarding school, both of whom are coaxed by the girls’ voluptuous carnal allure to go. You would think that the unholy phenomena that occur after attending this morbid party would be the same as the event that transpired there six years ago, however, the scheme is far more invested in being a humorous rather than a horror piece, thereby subverting many of the narrative pathways of the first film.

To begin with, if in Night of the Demons the motivation of the fiends was exclusively soul-devouring and to demonize the material realm, then in Night of the Demons 2 the motivations are dramatically modified. Here not only the sexual hormones of the teenagers are uncontrollable, but the demons are also just as sexually ravenous as they are. If you thought the original movie resembled a travesty of a softcore commercial, then just wait until you see this one because here the filmmakers’ only boundary is that of its direct-to-video format. In the midst of this blasphemous orgy, there’s the salvific, sinners’ tormentor nun Gloria (Jennifer Rhodes) -a badass soldier of God who puts all her might into protecting the chastity of her students – battling against Angela’s (Amelia Kinkade) horde of monsters.

Undoubtedly, Rhodes’ hilariously pious performance as sister Gloria is the film’s best asset; but the tawdry performances of the sultry trio of alluring girls are no slouches either. The B-movie glitz may be a detriment to the gore vigorousness of some of its more violent set pieces – the atmosphere isn’t consistently gripping and admittedly the salacious indulgence overshadows the thematic domain of demons haunting the living – but the unabashed attitude is always the most suitable for this sort of dichotomous exercise. The directionality towards the sleaze and the comedy blatantly jettisons the devilish metaphysics of the first installment, yet I reckon that’s the smartest move it could have made: discarding the erratic and exploiting the absurdities. Night of the Demons 2 can be seen as both a metaphorical spoof on teenage sexual guilt and an allegorical joke on nineties profligacy. Either way, I’ll take this sequel any day over Kevin Tenney’s Night of the Demons.