glad it's all ogre.

Every 31 Days of Horror deserves at least a wee bit of bonkers Bava.

Unfortunately I only have this to hand.

Sorry.

Demoni 3: The Ogre (AKA Brivido giallo - La casa dell'orco, Demons III, Demons III: The Ogre)
Dir: Lamberto Bava
Cast: Virginia Bryant, Patrizio Vinci, Sabrina Ferilli, Alice Di Giuseppe, Paolo Malco, Stefania Montorsi and an Ogre.

When childhood dreams become adult nightmares fear turns into reality!

 

 

It's a lovely sunny day in the gloriously grassy Italian countryside and bullyboy Tom (Fulci stalwart Malco), his downtrodden and frighteningly frumpy wife - and famous author of 'the horror' books to boot - Cheryl (Bryant from The Barbarian Brothers) alongside their little boy Jeff are busy driving to the castle they've rented for the summer holidays.

Cheryl, it transpires, has come to Italy to work on her latest book giving Tom and the boy time to enjoy themselves with a variety of manly pursuits like playing soggy biscuit and digging ditches.

Just like my holidays as a kid then.

The inbred locals tho' are a superstitious lot and are slightly irritated that a family of 'Americans' are renting out the castle, what with it having an ogre in the cellar and everything.

Tho' to be honest they may have mistaken the ogre for the cow that 'menacingly' stalks Cheryl in a kind of sub-Withnail And I type way at certain points during the films running time.

"Is it in yet?"

Anyway back to the plot (I know but needs must) which unfortunately spends the first hour following Cheryl's attempt to write inter-cut with endless scenes of the boys hiking (whilst Tom bitches a lot).

It's a wee bit like a better shot version of those special 60 minute episodes of Eastenders they show every so often when they're trying to stop one of the more popular cast members defecting to ITV.

Or whenever they felt like making Danny Dyer work for his money.

Don't worry tho' it does get slightly more exciting with the revelation that the small girl wearing the horrid nightie being chased by someone with hairy hands in the pre-credit dream sequence was in fact Cheryl as a child.

Sorry did I not mention that?

 

My bad.

Anyway, turns out she's been having nightmares about castles, ogres and cellars all her life which beats my recurring dreams about skeletons with swords riding fire breathing giant ants I guess.

But if that wasn't enough poor Cheryl is even more shocked to discover that the castle she and her family are staying in is in fact the same one from her childhood dreams.

Not only that but everything happening to them has already been written in her new book.

Bizarre.

She's not that shocked that she packs her family into their car and fucks off back to the States tho, obviously.

Cheryl: Tweedy.

No, she decides to stay at the castle, enjoying the wine and local sights knowing full well that the scary beast is out to get her and probably her kid too.

Honestly she's like the Italian horror version of Karen Matthews.

It's not too long before Cheryl begins to see evidence of the ogre milling about the castle for herself (footprints in the butter, toilet seat left up etc.) but as is always the way in these situations they all seem to disappear whenever she calls Tom to look.

 

Luckily (for us that is) mutilated bodies soon start to turn up in the cellar, then a giant pulsating snotter appears on the ceiling, Cheryl starts having 'those' dreams again and a strange man named Dario has begun to paint pictures of it all down in the village.

Sabrina Ferilli:
Fifty and frisky.

Apparently - according to a throwaway piece of dialogue spouted earlier - Dario and an incredibly dirty pillowed witch named Anna (Ferilli) are somehow linked to the ogre and the castle.

But not in a good way obviously.
You see, according to Cheryl's novel, (if you're interested) the monster will end up ripping the clothes off the witch in an satanic style rage of unbridled sexual fury before putting his 'orrible ogre organ in her peachy tanned arse.

Unfortunately we don't get to see this bit.

I did get the kids to draw some pictures of it tho' and may share at a later date if anyone's interested.

What we do get to see is Tom and the child getting lost while hiking (again), a fly getting trapped in Cheryl's typewriter and Tom and Cheryl having a bitch slap session whilst cooking supper.

Just try and imagine a really early episode of River City but with cheaper sets and minus the lovely Scarlett and her wayward cleavage.

Or a typical Archers episode.

And if all this soapy (tit) wank is getting too much to bear fear not, as the oft-mentioned but little seen ogre is about to make his grand entrance.

Decked out in a rather snazzy frill fronted shirt along with what look like cycling shorts, a Professionals era Martin Shaw wig and a pair of Lelli Kelly sandals, he cuts an imposing figure.

Probably.

Well put it this way, the beasts fashion sense is enough to turn Tom from wife slapping misogynist to spade wielding hero type and is scary enough to persuade Cheryl to finally mention that she knows how the story will end.

"Do you need any
scissors sharpening?"

Unfortunately tho' it won't end in a massive fleshy orgy of ogre on angry dad arse action but with Cheryl simply getting into her Jeep and reversing over the poor creature.

Three times.

 

And with the ogre dead everyone hugs and makes up.

Aaah...Lamberto Bava's never ending Demons saga, the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures.

After the stunning genius of the first chapter and the not as stunning but still brilliant Demons II, the brand name was shamelessly hijacked and shoddily stapled to any movie that seemed to fall into the distributors grubby hands.

A heart breaking romance?....called it Demons: the wedding!

Hellzaboppin' comedy? No problem! It's now called Demons: Pie fight!

An even more shoddy than normal Umberto Lenzi film featuring the ghosts of slaves with Rice Crispies on the faces? That'll be Black Demons then!

Scarily at last count there were over 16000 films bearing the Demons moniker with more to come, each more inept than the last but frankly a lot more enjoyable than most of the rubbish being churned out in the name of 'horror' today. 

And so the same fate befell this made for TeeVee movie.

But where as the first two featured men, women, children, dogs etc. being possessed by small slimy critters then proceeding to bite each other, this one features a man in a pound shop Halloween mask and lederhosen bumping into the scenery whilst covered in cheap red wine.

Some stunning make up fx yesterday.

On a brighter note it does feature the handsomely chiseled star of Lucio Fulci's House by The Cemetery and The New York Ripper, professional Italian sexy man Paolo Malco in the role of wife slapping, depression belittling Tom and mega-MILF Sabrina Ferilli, a woman with breasts so big they have their own time-zones a a witch so it can't be that bad.

Which is thanks in part to uber-writer, horror legend and dusky moustachioed love God Dardano Sacchetti who manages to fill his screenplay with dozens of riffs stolen not only from his own back catalogue but also random stuff like John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness, The Last Snows of Spring and even Argento's Inferno.

Couple all this with Lamberto Bava's snappy direction and the magnificent Simon Boswell's frankly bonkers synth score and it least makes it interesting to look at and listen to.

Which is more than can be said for 99% of movies they weren't involved with.