As the son of Italian horror legend Mario Bava (Black Sunday, A Bay of Blood), Lamberto Bava had enormous shoes to fill as a filmmaker, but he learned the tricks of the trade from two of the all-time greats. In addition to working closely with his father on several of his works, he also served under another revered Italian horror maestro in Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red) as assistant director on Inferno and Tenebrae. The Bava progeny made several good movies throughout his career, but his undisputed crowning achievement is 1985’s Demons. Produced by Argento, the film updates the elder Bava’s stylish sensibilities for the high-octane, blood-thirsty 1980s.
Written by Bava, Argento, Dardano Sacchetti (The Beyond), and Franco Ferrini (Phenomena), the plot begins when an ominous man in a mask (future director Michele Soavi, Cemetery Man) gives Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) free passes to a movie preview. She drags her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo, A Cat in the Brain) along to the Metropol cinema in Berlin for the event. They hit it off with a pair of flirtatious preps, George (Urbano Barberini, Opera) and Ken (Karl Zinny, Delirium), and sit down for the mystery movie. On screen, a group of friends discover Nostradamus’ tomb containing a metallic mask that is prophesied to contaminate the world by turning people into demons.