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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: October 3rd, 2023.
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Cast: Rod McCary, Jennifer Rhodes, Christine Taylor, Cristi Harris, Bobby Jacoby, Amelia Kinkade
Year: 1994
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Night Of The Demons 2 – Movie Review:
Made six years after the success of the original film, 1994's Night Of The Demons 2, directed by Australian filmmaker Brian Trenchard-Smith (the same man who gave us such classics as Escape 2000, The Man From Hong Kong and of course, Stunt Rock) begins at a Catholic high school lorded over by Father Bob (Rod McCary) and Sister Gloria (Jennifer Rhodes). As Halloween is fast approaching, the girls - Bibi (Cristi Harris), Terri (Christine Taylor) and Shirley (Zoe Trilling) - are looking forward to the dance, so is their roommate, meek Melissa (Merle Kennedy), who everyone calls Mouse. See, she's a bit timid due to the fact that not only did her parents kill themselves a year or two back, but she just so happens to be the sister of Angela (Amelia Kinkade), the girl who threw the party in the first movie that started all of this trouble.
At any rate, the girls are out on the tennis court one day and Sister Gloria catches one of them monkeying around with one of the boys and that's it, they're grounded. No dance for them. So when Shirley gets an invite from Rick (Rick Peters) for a house party that night, she talks her friends into sneaking out with her to go. Little do they know that the party is going to be held at Hull House and that demonic Angela is still there, more than happy to take on all comers brave enough to voyage inside. When it's found out that the girls have left, one of the boys (Bobby Jacoby), with an unusual interest in demonology, eventually convinces Father Bob and Sister Gloria to do something but when they arrive at the house, they realize just how far gone things are...
Right from the early stages of the film you more or less know what you're getting into with this one. When the movie begins, a pair of missionaries knock on the door of a very familiar and seemingly abandoned old house. No one in their right mind would try to evangelize here, but that doesn't stop our intrepid soul savers from giving it their best shot. Of course Angela, in human form, opens the door and lets them in but they don't last long, before you know it she's done here thing and we're off and running. Where do we go from there? To the school where we see the boys standing around in their underwear peering and leering through a set of binoculars at the girls undressing in front of the window across the way. No more than ten minutes in and we've already been delivered the requisite sex and violence we expect from a movie like this.
As trashy and dopey as it all is, however, Trenchard-Smith's sense of humor shines through and makes this one a lot of fun. It takes a lot of clichés to the extreme, running with them so that they're no longer just a cliché but instead the basis for some amusing gags in the film. A good example of this is the character of Sister Gloria, the typically stern nun who wanders the hallway with a ruler in her hand. She doesn't just use this to slap students as, say, 'the Penguin' in The Blues Brothers does, but actually takes it with her to Hull House and uses it to fence her demon opponents. The same sort of ridiculous extreme applies to some of the sex scenes in the movie as well. When Rick reaches for a possessed Shirley's exposed knockers, they morph into hands and assault him and during a rendezvous in the back seat of a car Angela uses her hand to 'massage' Terri's boyfriend, though he initially thinks it's Terri doing the deed and not the demoness.
As such, the movie doesn't play too seriously, nor does it try to. It's straight enough that some of the gore scenes still pack a bit of a gooey punch and it does conjure up some tension and some atmosphere throughout but the performances and the characters all take things very much over the top. At ninety-five minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome, it's nicely shot and features a pretty decent score (some Morbid Angel is used in a party scene!) and it has a few fun cast members who are all obviously having a good time with the material. It's all ultimately very ridiculous but also a whole lot of gory, trashy fun.
Night Of The Demons 2 – Blu-ray Review:
Night Of The Demons 2 arrives on a 50GB region A Blu-ray disc with the feature presented in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen taken from a new 2023 scan of the 35mm interpositive. Picture quality is really strong. The colors are reproduced really nicely and three’s stronger depth and detail than we’ve seen in the past. There are no problems to note with any compression artifacts, edge enhancement or noise reduction problems, and while the transfer retains the natural film grain it should, there’s virtually no print damage here to note at all.
The main audio option for the feature is the original English language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track with optional English SDH subtitle options provided. Audio quality is also really good. The dialogue is clean, clear and easy to follow and the track is free of any noticeable hiss or distortion.
Extras start off with a new commentary with actors Cristi Harris, Jennifer Rose, Darin Heames and Johnny Moran. the four seem to be having a good time looking back on the movie and remembering what it was like to work on it. They talk about the first impressions that they got of the cold and dirty house where most of the movie takes place, running into some of the other cast members over the years, getting along with some of their co-stars, thoughts on the different performances in the movie, what they've been up to since the movie wrapped, memories of shooting specific scenes, the very nineties fashions on display in the movie, some of the makeup and effects work in the movie and more.
Carried over from the Olive Films Blu-ray, we also get a commentary track featuring the film's director, Brian Trenchard-Smith who is joined by David Lewis, the movie's cinematographer who makes it clear that he feels the transfer on the disc is too bright. The two have a good rapport here, joking about the quality of the picture, even quoting reviews of the film, but also managing to tell some interesting stories from the trenches. They discuss the effects, the cast and crew and shooting inside the Hull House location and they talk about some of the themes and ideas that are toyed around with in the movie, including the film's take on Catholicism. It would have been nice to see the trailer included here but Olive Films never seems to do that for whatever reason.
There are also quite a few new featurettes here, starting with A Tale Of Two Demons - An Interview With Directors Kevin S. Tenney And Brian Trenchard-Smith. This piece runs seventy minutes, so it's pretty in-depth and it covers how Trenchard-Smith came to direct the second film, what was used and not used in the sequel compared to the original film, playing with the horror movie formula when making the movie, memories of working with specific cast and crew members, what went into getting certain shots down right and what was involved in setting them up, how Trenchard-Smith deals with actors, the comedic tone of the film and some of the questionable morality of the movie, keeping the R-rating, some of the makeup effects featured in the movie, how and why Trenchard-Smith is intensely proud of the movie and loads more. It's a great talk and quite fun to listen to.
Trick Or Treat, Sucker - An Interview With Actor Amelia Kinkade spends twenty-five minutes with the actress, talking about how she was the only character brought back from the first movie, how excited she was to do another movie as Angela, getting recognized for her work on the first movie, liking the fact that her character had "old Hollywood glamor," how great Brian Trenchard-Smith was to work with, getting along with the other cast members, how arduous it was having some of her makeup done and a book she's written recently.
Red Curls And Screams - An Interview With Actress Cristi Harris is a twenty-one minute segment where she talks about how she feels the team did a great job in taking things to the next level with this second film, the humor featured in the movie, the audition process and how she wound up getting cast in the movie, how much fun she had working on the movie, how she's always scene as the good girl in her roles, how much she liked her character in the movie, what it was like on set, the trickiness involved in shooting some of the low-light scenes, what's happened in her life since the movie was made and her thoughts on the movie overall and its lasting popularity.
Monster Mayhem - An Interview With Special Effects Artist Steve Johnson is a lengthy forty-eight minute talk where Johnson talks about how he got into effects work, what the effects work was like during this period, the rivalry that existed between practical effects people and digital effects people, how effects work has changed since this movie was made and how the advent of digital effects work has transformed the industry, meeting and marrying Linnea Quigley, details on creating some of the effects set pieces for the first movie as well as the sequel, the importance of having communication with the director and how he feels about how his work turned out in the movie and about the movies overall.
A Sequel With Guts - An Interview With Producer Jeff Geoffray is a thirteen minute piece where he talks about how much he liked Brian Trenchard-Smith and how he came to work with him, how the sequel was made because Republic Pictures really pushed for it, the budget behind the movie and how it compared to the slasher movies that were popular at the time, forming Blue Rider Pictures, choosing the effects team for the movie, thoughts on the cast in the movie, the importance of the effects set pieces and how he feels about the finished movie.
Shout! Factory has also provided the work-print version of Night Of The Demons 2, taken from a VHS source and looking far less than pristine but watchable enough. This version runs 1:38:28 versus the feature version at 1:35:40.
Finishing up the extras on the disc is a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, one hundred and thirty minutes of dailies (taken from a time-coded tape source), menus and chapter selection options. It’s also worth pointing out that the first pressing of this release comes with a limited edition slipcover.
Night Of The Demons 2 - The Final Word:
Night Of The Demons 2 isn't a masterpiece but it is a fun way to kill ninety-five minutes. It's gory, it's funny and it's plenty entertaining and it's got decent enough production values that it's generally pretty nice to look at too. The Blu-ray reissue from Shout! Factory looks excellent and finally gives the film the proper special edition treatment that its fan base has been waiting for. Recommended!