Demonia (1990) Poster

(1990)

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6/10
A slight mis-step from Il Maestro
haildevilman14 September 2006
It didn't stink, but it was nowhere near the brilliance of "Zombie." It was more like "Gates Of Hell," a so-so plot with some decent scenes to keep us interested.

Italian nuns get crucified in medieval Italy for...wait for it...being a secret satanic coven. Years later (aka present day) they rise and attack a Canadian archaeology team digging under the ancient churches.

Lucio re-did his zombie films with nuns. There's some good creepy atmosphere here. And the story itself isn't bad, it just doesn't really take off.

Al Cliver gets a cameo role and the Maestro himself shows up as a (what else?) high-ranking cop. And Canadian Brett Halsey does a good job in the lead.

The drawn and quarter scene, despite the shoddy effects, (DeRossi where were you?) will make a few of you cringe. It seemed to ape Deodato's "Cut And Run" scene stealer.

It makes a good addition if you're a completist, but Lucio's done better.
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4/10
Meg Register is hot...
mullert902 September 2001
..But she's no Catriona Macoll. Wow.....I like "Zombie," "The Beyond," even have a special place for "The Gates of Hell." For some idea of this one's rank in the Fulci canon, "Aenigma" is better. This one makes no sense, the gore is cheap, and everyone, including Lucio must have been sleepwalking when they made this. Sure it ain't the worst thing ever, but it's pretty bad. Flatly directed with a potentially interesting storyline, Fulci missed the target big time with this.
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5/10
Strictly for Fulci-Fans
Witchfinder-General-66621 October 2009
"Demonia" of 1990 is one of the last films by Italian Horror/Gore deity Lucio Fulci, and while it certainly ranges among the man's lesser achievements it is still a stylish little film that should be enjoyed by his fans. The film's main problem is that it is a bit of a mess, and that it truly pales in comparison to most of Fulci's other achievements, even becoming a bit boring in some parts (which is a very rare fault in a Fulci film). Yet the film is interesting in its Fulci-typical style and atmosphere and features several truly creepy moments as well as some spectacular gore-scenes. What also makes the film worth checking out is the fact that the master himself has a role - Fulci plays a police Inspector. The storyline is actually very promising Horror-material: In 15th century Sicily, a Covent of nuns who are suspected of conspiring with the devil are lynched by angry villagers. Five centuries later, Canadian archaeologists come to the area and are met with hostility by the superstitious locals. The locals fear that the strangers and their archaeological work might raise the demons of the past; and their worries are not entirely unfounded... Overall, the film has a promising premise but the execution is too messy. Yet it is recommendable to Fulci fans, as it does include many moments of pure creepiness. The master does show his talent for haunting atmosphere, and once again proves that his moniker "The Godfather of Gore" is justified. While "Demonia" should entertain many of my fellow Italian Horror buffs, it might make others roll their eyes. My advice to fellow Fulci-fans: check it out! Others, never mind.
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5/10
VERY Mediocre Fulci Fare...
EVOL66611 April 2006
Not the worst of Fulci's films (MANHATTAN BABY wins that dubious distinction in my book...) but DEMONIA takes so long to get to any of the classic Fulci "good-stuff", that you'll probably be asleep by then.

Two archaeologists are digging around Sicily, and the locals don't like it too much. Apparently a group of nuns who were into group sex and Satanism once resided at the site of the dig. The locals don't like the scientists messing around in their backyards, and when some strange deaths occur around the dig-site, all hell breaks loose.

Luckily, DEMONIA does come with the "goods" towards the end. A good tongue-hammering, and a guy split in half are a couple of the notable scenes - unfortunately, the story isn't interesting enough for you to care by the time you get there. Drawn out and boring storyline isn't saved by a few cool gore scenes. Worth a look to the TRUE Fulci fan - don't expect a gore-fest masterpiece...5/10
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5/10
Deceptive Lucio Fulci's Gore Movie
claudio_carvalho22 March 2009
In 1486, in Sicily, five nuns are crucified in their nunnery by the superstitious locals that believe they are evil and worship devil. In 1990, in Toronto, the skeptical archaeologist Professor Paul Evans (Brett Halsey) and his superstitious colleague Liza Harris (Meg Register) explore with their team the medieval dig where the nuns were killed. Liza has dreadful nightmares with the nuns while members of the expedition mysteriously die and the locals are against the research in the archaeological site.

"Demonia" is a deceptive Lucio Fulci's gore movie. The terrible story is never scary or intriguing; actually it is boring, with the low pace of the first half, and ridiculous with an awful conclusion associated to an annoying soundtrack. It is funny to see, for example, the blonde archaeologist that is superstitious, participates in séances and is scared after finding coffins with bones in a crypt. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): Not Available
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5/10
Drab
adriangr3 September 2013
Warning: Spoilers
This is such an unimpressive movie from Lucio Fulci. It's one of the more difficult to find, being somewhere after his golden years, but before his TV series flops, but it's not worth hunting down a copy.

The plot concerns atrocities that happen in a convent many years ago, in which some seemingly evil nuns are brutally executed and crucified. These past horrors come to light (again) in modern times when a long sealed ancient church vault is opened up by a young researcher.

The film has a very slight plot, and doesn't do well with it. The film is shot almost entirely in soft, fuzzy focus, with light leaking all over the place, which is very annoying, even if it is (presumably) intentional. The story seems to vaguely show it's lead heroine, played by Meg Register, being possessed by the long dead evil nuns and taking revenge on various members of the village, but none of this is clear. The sealed chamber of crucified nuns looks good when first glimpsed, but the rotting bodies appear and disappear sporadically, and Meg Register briefly flits between looking like herself, and transforming into one of the evil nuns, all of which is presumably intended to generate fear, but which fails miserably.

Various murders take place. Because this is a Fulci film, and people want to know, I am going to tell you what happens - but this obviously means SPOILERS... One guy gets stabbed and his head ends up being pulled out of the water on an anchor (?) Another lady, a sort of psychic, get's attacked by her own cats who pull her eyes out. Looks very fake. Another man is attacked by slabs of meat hanging in a freezer. He only had to leave the freezer, but he doesn't. After some meat bashing, he collapses onto a table and someone pulls out his tongue and nails it to the table. as you do. The final murder is the best, worst and most bizarre at the same time. A young couple lose their son, and the father searches a forest for him. he catches a glimpse of the boy being dragged off by a nun! Then suddenly - the father is strung upside down in a kind of trap! How? The son trips on a wire and the father's whole body is split into two halves! This is REALLY badly done, the fakeness is extremely obvious. It's still rather disgusting though. That's it for the main gore.

Eventually the film limps to a close as the villagers invade the sealed up crypt, and in a feeble ending they confront the ancient evil. Boring, boring, boring. Please don't be encouraged to seek this out based on the descriptions of gore I have detailed above. They are all laughable and do not rescue the film from being extremely lame. A sad entry in the late career of Fulci. Not as bad as his TV efforts, but worse than "Manhattan Baby", and that's saying something
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5/10
An awkward, yet somewhat enjoyable Italian horror film...
Lotica2 June 2009
Demonia seems to be a movie by Lucio Fulci that I don't know about... the death scenes in this movie are corny and are not the same to other death scenes in Fulci's earlier films, mainly the ones from the late 70's to middle 80's. I think it was because of the special effects director was changed or something, I'm not sure. But the one I remember was the one scene where the guy is caught upon a trap while trying to get his son from one of the nuns or whatever, and the guy is split apart from his son tripping upon a rope or something. The effects looked terrible, I'm sorry.

Otherwise, the movie was weird to me. Not saying that the movie is a piece of crap, though it could be better. The music was... well, I think it could be better. I liked the intro music, plus the music following the intro scene.

So, final verdict? Well, Demonia is a mixed bag of good and bad. If you're a true Fulci fan (like me), then this is your movie. If not, then... I guess you should give it a try. Demonia, the 'What the Babuguganosh!?' moment of Fulci's career.

Also, Al Cliver (Zombi 2) actually is in this movie, though he is credited as Al Clever... clever, I must say, eh? Ha ha ha... ha???
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A Few Interesting Ideas
Michael_Elliott17 July 2016
Demonia (1990)

** (out of 4)

Five nuns are brutally murdered and five hundred years later their spirits get a chance for vengeance. Archaeologist team Professor Paul Evans (Brett Halsey) and his partner (Meg Register) begin to realize early on that something isn't right.

DEMONIA is a later day Lucio Fulci film, which is actually slightly better than its reputation. By this time the Italian horror market was taking its last gasps of air so if you're expecting something that looks or feels like ZOMBIE or THE BEYOND then you're certainly going to be disappointed. With that said, if you've seen Fulci's later day films like THE GHOSTS OF SODOM then you'll be happy to see that this here is better than that.

The biggest issue with DEMONIA is the same thing that haunted a lot of these films and that's the fact that there just wasn't enough money to pull everything off. The story here is an interesting one but it's never fully developed, which is really too bad. As I said, the budget was certainly very low here but Fulci still managed to build up a nice atmosphere and there's some minor gore, which his fans will enjoy. I also thought both Halsey and Register were good in their roles and they at least keep you interested in what's going on. Al Cliver (ZOMBIE) also appears briefly.

DEMONIA certainly isn't a classic movie and if you're new to Fulci it's certainly not the place to start watching. With that said, there are a few interesting ideas and moments scattered throughout.
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1/10
boredom, thy name is "Demonia"
Jonny_Numb21 January 2003
Dull, lifeless direction... A total lack of atmosphere... Dialogue scenes that stretch on endlessly... A story that fails to rile any tension... Gore that's on par with a home movie...

Lucio Fulci is high on my list of favorite directors (check out his early-'80's output to see what I mean), but "Demonia" is one of his worst movies, not even worth the trouble to revive on video, in my opinion.

Zero/10
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7/10
Nuns on the Run
stmichaeldet4 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Meet Paul Evans, the world's worst archeology professor. He's arrogant, self-centered, disdainful towards other cultures, and dismissive of his students' opinions. And while we never see any direct evidence that he's sleeping with his star pupil, Liza, his condescension, paternalism, and control-freaky behavior pretty much clinches that deal. In the real world, he should've imploded from the weight of his own obnoxious ego long ago, but without him, Demonia would probably be a non-starter, so I guess we have to put up with him.

But it's Liza who's got the real problems here. She's got some kinda psychic link to a group of five dead Satanist nuns who are angry that the villagers rose up and crucified them lo these many years ago. (But isn't that what angry villagers do?) So they trick Liza into freeing them so they can wreak their unholy revenge upon . . . the archeology team? What did they do? Or maybe Liza is possessed, and she's the killer? She does spend part of the movie running around in an antique habit that she got from God-knows-where, and one of the killings is kinda set up to frame Paul, so maybe that's it. But then, why is there a ghost-nun running around in so many scenes? Hmmmm . . .

Well, it really doesn't make too much sense if you try to think it through - it is an Italian shocker, after all. Once the killings start, plot goes out the window in favor of cool atmospherics and a hefty dose of gore. And there's gore a'plenty here - crucifixions, beheadings, mutilation, animal attacks, impalings; you name it, this movie will step up and drive a nail through it. As usual, you can count on Lucio Fulci to deliver the goods.
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3/10
Little gore, no suspense and pathetic ending
Mr_Shaggs21 December 2006
Warning: Spoilers
In XVth century church group of nuns committed a religion blasphemy. All women preformed satanic rituals and wild orgies with strangers, who later vanished in a mysterious circumstances. Of course it had an effect. One of the nuns gave birth to a child, which was immediately burn. People who lived nearby church had enough and decided to crucify wicked nuns. A few centuries later group of archeologists started to do the research nearby ruins of church. This fact made locals very suspicious and unfriendly, because of superstition of murdered nun's revenge. It's question of time when sinner's ghosts came back to get their death toll.

Fulci always goes from one extreme to another. Once his movies were full of suspense ["Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes "] or gore ["Zombie Flesh Eaters"]. Demonia is a try to mix these two. But, it's failed. Fulci tries all of his suspense tricks such as eye close-up, sudden zooms and creating orinirique atmosphere. But it makes this film worse. Close-up looks really poor and zooms are very annoying. Oh, we can't forget about music. Sometimes it honestly can build atmosphere but it's only one scene. In other ones, especially in ruins where we hear drunk organist's symphony it's driving insane. Gore also lets down. There are only two scenes, of which one is typical for Lucio (eyes scratched out by a cat)but second one - tearing man apart - really satisfied me. The biggest flop is main character and strictly speaking acting. Her looks brought me a lot of fun. For example, in scene where Paul (leader of archeologists) says to her that they must leave her look is wonderful! It's similar to kid's look when they are forbidden to eat sweets/play computer games/whatever. But all of these are nothing when we compare it to the ending! I have seen many bad movies, but it's first really PA-THE-TIC ending in my life. There is nothing better than view of burning nun in company of soap opera's music! As for me, it's probably top bottom of Lucio Fulci's movies and it's a little pity, because the plot is quite good.
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8/10
This is a very entertaining addition to the horror genre that is worth your time
kevin_robbins27 April 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Demonia (1990) is an Italian horror movie I recently watched for free on Tubi. The storyline focuses on a group of archeologists that accidentally release a trapped demon spirit that immediately begins terrorizing the archeologists and local townspeople. This movie is directed by Lucio Fulci (Zombie 2) and stars Brett Halsey (Godfather Part III), Lino Salemme (The Passion of the Christ) and Christina Engelhardt (Man on the Moon). First thing I must say is I liked the Nuns in this better than the Nuns in "The Nun" from the conjuring series, especially when they had yellow ooze coming out of their mouth. There are some amazing scenes in this including an awesome scene where a character is attacked by a cat then their eyes pop out and a scene a guy gets nailed down by his tongue. Even the special effects of ripping apart a body was fun and well done and the conclusion is fulfilling. Overall this is a very entertaining addition to the horror genre that is worth your time. I'd score it a 8/10.
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6/10
A mediocre nunsploitation horror made by Lucio Fulci.
HumanoidOfFlesh7 August 2007
A team of archaeologists are exploring the ruins of an ancient crypt in Sicily where five heretic nuns had been stoned and crucified by superstitious villagers.One of them Liza starts to suffer terrible nightmares about the nuns and other members of the team start to die in particularly horrible ways."Demonia" is a mediocre Lucio Fulci's nunsploitation flick that offers surprisingly little amount of gore including a tongue nailed to a barrel an,eye-gouging and an "Inferno in Diretta"-style decapitation between two springy trees.Still the film is well-shot,picturesque and enjoyable enough to give it a 6 out of 10.However if you are new into Fulci I suggest watching first "The Beyond" or "City of the Living Dead".
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2/10
Awful, hard to recognize as a work of Fulci
Bogey Man9 April 2003
Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci (1927-1996) did a great amount of atmospheric and wonderful Spaghetti horrors during his prolific career, his masterpieces being Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979), The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetery (1982) and Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) among many other more or less interesting and noteworthy films from the horror or other genres. His masterpieces have wonderful soundtracks by composer Fabio Frizzi, great cinematography by Sergio Salvati and the kind of surreal and infernal ultra gory imagery that will stay inside the mind especially when experience for the first time. But his career has the other side, too, these ultra braindead cheapies that are so painful to watch especially if one appreciates the director at all.

Demonia is Fulci's attempt in the nunsploitation genre, at least kind of. It has a historical background as a bunch of Sicilian nuns were brutally killed in the convent as they had practised something the others judged as evil and satanic. This is shown as a flashback, just like in his The Beyond, but so much less effectively and it comes clear in this very beginning that even the gore effects are very bad and stupid in the film. Then we jump to the present day as some group of archeologists search for treasures from the historic times (if I'm correct, the mentioned nun killing took place in the sixteenth century) and naturally neither the villagers nor the raising evil spirits like this too much and soon the bloody killings begin...as well as all the possible errors and negative sides a film can have.

There are hardly any positive things to be said about this piece of cinematic garbage. None of the Fulci magic is left. Some of the dream sequences and close-ups of frightened eyes remind me distantly of Lucio Fulci but still, there's nothing in the imagery that would save the film. The ending has some nightmarish scenes and images as the nuns return from the beyond, but The Beyond shows how great that kind of scenes can be. The music is also horrible and probably taken from a commercial or something like that. It doesn't create atmosphere and terror as Frizzi did but is there in order to make the silent scenes not to look so dull, which they still are as well as the whole film. What's there is the graphic gore and very boring 80 minutes.

The film almost gives a new meaning to the phrase "dead boring" as it has some laughably long dialogue sequences which almost force to stop the viewing. The characters are uninteresting, but fortunately don't over-act too much, the plot is nothing too special (but could have been interesting if made by Fulci ten years earlier) and every single element in the piece screams in tired pain as does the viewer too. The film also looks very amateurish as if done by a bunch of amateurs and it is no wonder this didn't even have a theatrical run in Italy.

The gore scenes are also very bad and the effects don't even look real as they did in the classics, created by Gianneto de Rossi. They are quite sadistic and graphic at times, the "body splitting" and tongue impaling, being the most memorable examples, but still they are not as haunting as in the earlier films that were also effected by the soundtrack and visuals. Now there's plenty of gore but hardly any impact. They show more than Deodato did in Cut and Run, for example, but as everything around the scenes sucks, it is hard to take the horror shocks too seriously. The butcher house sequence, however, is a pretty nasty as an idea and has some interest in it, too, and that is also easily among the film's "most interesting" parts. And the guy really has a tongue that makes Gene Simmons look green in comparison.

Demonia is a very, very bad film even as a fan of Lucio Fulci. It has practically nothing to make it worth recommending, only those very few distant things mentioned above and I think it is rather impossible to watch this film again. It is so bad, as unfortunately was the state of Fulci's career when he was forced to make films like these. 2/10 and very barely so.
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4/10
Everybody run, we have got killer nuns!
Aaron137531 October 2010
The first impression this film gave me when it first came on was that it was a lot older than its 1990 release date. The picture quality just was off as if I were to pick which Fulci film was the oldest between "The Beyond", "City of the Living Dead", "House By the Cemetery" and "Zombie" I would say this one was the oldest. There was also something very weird about the bedroom the one character was in when she was taken there by her professor. The story has said professor with said student going to Sicily to do an archaeological dig to try and uncover some Greek relics. Unfortunately, there is a monastery nearby that the female student is drawn too, and it turns out it is the site of a nun crucifixion. You will follow the woman as she tries to unravel its mysteries as she is very much drawn to the place. Along the way we have some good kills and some rather pointless subplots such as the professor being questioned about the murder of one of the people killed. You will also see a very strange death as a man chases after his son in one scene, boy gets away and dad is somehow staked in the ground his legs in the air and let me just say good death that may have had a bit more impact if said character had been established. I did not even know until then he was the boy's father. The ending makes me wonder what the point the film was trying to get across too. Just not up there with earlier Fulci horrors, it is nice that he did not focus on the eyes every five seconds, but that still does not make up for the general mayhem at the end. He was actually putting forth a good plot, then it kind of falls apart. Better than "Manhattan Baby", a film I saw by him a couple of days earlier, but this one too suffers from this need of the man to just shoot random things at times. This one also did not have the atmosphere of earlier films by him. Had its moments, but just not as fun as some of his other work.
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3/10
Disapppointing, even for a Fulci fanatic
craigaholmes13 January 2006
I've seen most of Fulci's output (that's available in English anyway) and even I found this one in particular to be disappointing. It's dull, seems incredibly long (though isn't)and even the odd gore scene which aren't very frequent or impressive do little to relieve the boredom.

This seems to be the work of someone running low on ideas and, I'm sorry to say, motivation. It's a similar situation with a few of his later works. I'd recommend House Of Clocks, Touch Of Death or Cat in the Brain for a taste of Fulci's later works.

Go for one of his many other classics, ignore this unless you're a completist like me and have to have it all!
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1/10
I've made a huge mistake.
I_Ailurophile17 October 2021
I'd watched several Lucio Fulci pictures previously and found them distinctly underwhelming. For some reason I decided nonetheless to watch another; I think it was the premise that drew me in. I acknowledge that my expectations and viewing experience could well have been colored by my past viewership of Fulci flims, but I nonetheless think 'Demonia' speaks for itself: This is not a good movie. In fact it's very, very bad.

Early exposition wholly fails to impress, striking me as a mess with very weak writing, nearly haphazard execution of scenes, and camerawork so incredibly dubious that "rotten" is perhaps a better descriptor. Filming locations and set design or decoration are great, but these don't necessarily count for much if a movie isn't worthwhile overall. And, well - the kickoff of the plot is deeply unconvincing, and the film's construction does not improve. 'Demonia' is so frankly sloppy and graceless that it almost comes off as self-parody.

Effects are simply questionable at best; even the blood and gore that Fulci is supposedly known for - and which also failed to light my imagination elsewhere in the past - are basically perfunctory, failing to excite. Sound design is laughable; that the unmistakable echo of a person's staggered footsteps are intended to represent a heartbeat does not speak well to how 'Demonia' was made. Performances stop just shy of being phoned in, and are no more believable than any other aspect here; we need an extra layer of suspension of disbelief just to pretend that the cast are giving an effort to act. As if this feature weren't enough of an ordeal, every further instance of poorly considered dialogue makes the watching experience a strenuous exercise of endurance. Why, so it is with scenes broadly - all penned and played out with such ham-handed, inauthentic clumsiness that the result is laborious and excruciating.

The plot is direly thin and disjointed; narrative progression is slow, piecemeal, disordered, and lacking. There are no thrills, no tension, no suspense, no frights. The most interesting this gets are a couple scenes with passing shots of some cats. This is a trainwreck of a movie, so unexciting that I had a hard time staying awake, let alone focused.

Whether or not 'Demonia' belongs considered alongside other discretely low-grade, lackluster, lolling, loathsome gaffes of cinema as a contender for "worst movie ever made" is up for debate. I certainly would argue it does. This is so feebly decrepit and rickety a film that just recommending against it isn't enough; this needs to be wished out of existence.

There is no reason to watch this. There never has been and never will be a reason to watch this. 'Demonia' is a roundly awful movie. Avoid it like your life depended on it.
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5/10
Nuns have some fun...
dworldeater30 September 2018
Demonia is somewhat of a disapointment and one of the lesser works of legendary Lucio Fulci towards the end of his run in making movies. Although, this film is a bit of a snoozer and is downright boring in parts, I would not say that this is unwatchable. This film has Canadian archaeologists come to Italy to check out some Greco/Roman stuff, but leading lady Meg Register is more interested in the ruins of an old monastery that involved a Satanic nun coven that haunts the small town of Santa Ria. Meg Register is pretty wooden and bland as the lead in the film and with the micro budget and poor directing job from Fulci, Demonia is not such an easy watch. I must confess, I myself tried to watch this multiple times without falling asleep and through out the course of a week and I could'nt do it. I did watch the complete film in pieces at a time though and it does deliver on having an atmosphere of dread, set on location at a real monastery with a tomb of real dead corpses. Although, there is a lot less of it, the gore scenes are extremely vicious and brutal, complete with a guy who gets drawn and quartered and scenes where tongues and throats get hammered. There is some nudity, but also not nearly enough. Demonia is a very, very flawed film, but at its core is still a half way decent horror movie with great ambiance and gore.
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Later, and lesser, Fulci
Richard_Harland_Smith20 March 2000
No, it's not the name of a disinfectant used by exorcists, but rather the title of Lucio Fulci's 1989 film about demonic possession on the island of Sicily.

Brett Halsey and Meg Register star as a pair of archeologists, one sensible and scientific, the other sensitive and superstitious, whose latest dig is plagued by a series of violent, non-Mafia-related deaths. It seems a local Medieval nunnery was once the site of devil worship, flagrant carnality and ritualistic murder - until the locals banded together to exorcise the evil by crucifying the nuns (depicted in the film's prologue). Turning a deaf ear to the warnings of the village leader and the local butcher, the archeologists carry on digging, and ultimately loosing the hounds of Hell, Fulci-style.

DEMONIA is a largely uninteresting affair, sluggishly paced and directed with apparent indifference by Fulci. Everything seems a bit tame (artfully placed blankets throw cold water on the orgy scenes) and second hand, from Giovanni Cristiani's corny, tympani-heavy score to the use of such hoary spook-cinema devices as double exposures to suggest ghostly apparitions and echoey dream voices (has anyone in your dreams ever spoken with an echoey voice?). Fulci stumbles further by having his heroine plagued by nightmares that offer no information beyond what we already saw in the prologue.

Fulci himself turns up late in the film as an inspector from Scotland Yard, only to turn up clues to a mystery that is no mystery to us; worse yet, Fulci's Inspector Carter's last scene finds him eyeballing a piece of cloth (torn from the habit of one of the murderous ghost-nuns), identifying it as centuries old, and then disappearing from the film entirely). Al Cliver (aka Pier Luigi Conti) appears as Porter, a fellow archeologist who meets an untimely end at the hands of a transparent, headless, speargun-toting haint (Fulci regular Cliver is billed in the credits as Al "Clever").

The film perks up a bit halfway through, when the local medium (a character similar to one played by Rada Rassimov in Mario Bava's BARON BLOOD) meets her predetermined demise by dint of half a dozen cat hand puppets, but DEMONIA is still slow going. A third act disemboweling of one of the dig members is gross but unconvincing, and the film climaxes on an ambiguous note that fails to satisfy or justify the investment of an hour and a half.
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5/10
Oh my!
Boba_Fett113820 November 2007
Watch out for those nude killer nuns!

Lets face it, Italian horror isn't anymore what it used to be and all of the best movies were made mostly in the '70's and '80's. In the '90's the genre was already pretty much dried up in Italy.

The movie has a pretty good genre concept and story but it deserved a way better execution all. The movie its story also most definitely isn't helped with its dialog. You know, it's the kind of dialog that is so bad that it will make you laugh. The actors that have to deliver the lines also obviously aren't among the best in their profession.

No matter how hard the movie tries, it just never gets real scary or mysterious. The movie is often more dull and a drag. Besides some of the moments are just too ridicules. For instance, an archaeologist that is being scared by a couple of bones? That really doesn't sound likely. It also doesn't help that the movie doesn't feature an awful lot of gore or monsters/killers in it. At least not some good gore. The gore that is in the movie looks quite amateur like. It makes this a rather disappointing- and below average genre movie.

The movie spends more than halve of its time figuring out a mystery, while we as the viewers already knew what happened, because it was showed in the beginning of the movie. The how's and why's of it all is little interesting. The movie could had better focused on the present time within the movie, to make it more of a scary one.

The character treatment also isn't among the greatest. The person who seems to be the main character suddenly disappears out of the story halve way through, to appear again much later. Yes, there is a reason for it but it doesn't make it any less bad. Same goes for lot of other characters, that just come and go within the story.

There are some way better genre movies than this one and Lucio Fulci also has made way better movies.

5/10

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7/10
Solid and enjoyable genre effort
kannibalcorpsegrinder19 November 2019
Leaving Canada to arrive in Italy, an archeological expedition trying to discover the connection between a series of stories concerning an abandoned nunnery and a team members' vivid dreams about the nuns comes to fruition when they begin a rampage against the crew for disturbing their rest.

For the most part, this one wasn't all that bad. A lot of the positives here are traced to the film's story which, although quite a cliche at times, offers the perfect kind of setup for this one. he concept of the nuns who were wrongfully executed hundreds of years earlier coming back from the dead to seek revenge gives off a rather strong basis for a ghostly story, especially from the stellar opening showing the convent being invaded and the nuns strung up on crucifixes to be executed. By tying that action into the setup of the villagers who are completely unwilling to help out beyond providing warnings about the situation, which are all cliches as well, the setup here is good enough to get this going rather nicely. Once the film goes past this fine setup, the action detailing the ghosts out on their rampage are rather fun, as the aide of Gothic-enhanced rainstorms provides extra emphasis for the first attack on a local in his room preparing notes, the fantastic chase through the ruins of the catacomb where their laughing and shadow-play gives this a creepy setup for the final blow and the incredibly cheesy attack by a voracious pack of cats inside a victims' apartment. By setting the stage for the finale where it deals some rather gory deaths as well as getting to the confrontation between the villagers and the ghosts in their catacomb home, these here are a lot of fun and provide this one with enough to like to hold it up over it's few flaws. The main issue holding this one back is the abundance of cliches present throughout here which really undoes a lot of the potential fun here. The idea that she's psychically linked to the nuns and is able to see how they died is obvious while the use of claiming the innocent villagers in revenge for what happened in the past can be seen coming from a mile away. That also goes for the storyline about them being unwilling to help out understanding the situation by not helping them understand what's going on. The other big issue to be had is the sluggish pacing on display, which really does this one no favors by being rather overlong to get to its main point. The amount of time spent here on the idea of her getting the vision and connecting to the ghosts in the past which worries him to a great degree is not really needed, and the amount of time spent with the inspector investigating the crimes is completely unnecessary which just drags the pacing of this one out. To compound matters, the usage of a truly hated concept where the one who knows what's going on engage in private conversations without revealing what's going on to those that don't, and it just doesn't do anything for the overall pacing. Combined with the somewhat cheap look of the film, these here hold the film back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity and a sex scene.
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5/10
Technically well-made but boring.
gridoon20 August 2003
This film comes up short in many areas, but it's still not Fulci's worst (it's better than "Aenigma", for sure). The script is thin, and the ending makes no sense, but there are enough well-executed gore set-pieces (considering the budget, the scene where a man gets split in two is a real dazzler!) to make the picture worth seeing, if only for horror fans. (**)
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6/10
A little boring due to low budget
AS-6930 July 2001
With "Demonia", Fulci offers us again a supernatural horror movie. This time, Fulci's vision is not as apocalyptic as in "The Gates of Hell" or "The Beyond". Instead, Fulci presents a more straightforward horror story about the return of some satanic nuns.

The opening is typical Fulci style. It depicts the crucifixion of the satanic nuns in graphic details. What follows is a very uneven film, lacking the pace of Fulci's previous horror movies. In an interview, Fulci stated that he wanted to create a "dreamlike atmosphere". He succeeds when he shows us how Liza gets into contact with the satanic nuns. But, on the other hand, the movie is filled with minutes and minutes of completely boring dialogue and other uninteresting scenes, like people dancing around a campfire, just to stretch the movie to the required 80 plus minutes. Finally, the ending is abrupt and completely disappointing.

Nevertheless, the movie is still enjoyable, at least for Fulci fans. It is occasionally atmospheric and still has the "Fulci touch". Fulci recalls many of his motives from previous work. The movie also contains some reasonably well executed gore scenes, such as a feline attack, a tongue impalement, and a body torn apart.

Finally, it is fun to watch Fulci play the part of a police inspector (for budgetary reasons, as Helsey explains in an interview). However, as good as he was as a director as bad he was as an actor. Like in "Nightmare Concert", he just wanders around, appearing totally unaffected by what is going on.
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5/10
Nuns, but no Nuns
Coventry20 January 2008
"Demonia" is one of the master horror director Lucio Fulci's final achievements and, though not exactly one of his finest ones, it remains a truly interesting film for his many avid fans to track down and enjoy. The first half hour is tame and slow and, generally speaking, the entire film isn't nearly as gory as Fulci's previous highlights (though there's one jaw-dropping scene that compensates for nearly everything), but the script is ambitiously compelling and the atmospheric Sicilian settings are quite wonderful. Fulci even managed to create suspense at some points here and successfully sustains an adequately mysterious ambiance. The depiction of the eerie nun's face on the cover looks appealing, but "Demonia" has really nothing in common with the so-called "Nunsploitation" movies that also primarily came out of Italy. The nuns in this film were barbarically crucified by angry villagers in the catacombs of their Sicilian monastery in the late 15th Century. More than 500 years later, an archaeological expedition intends to investigate the ruins, only the local population brutally objects and act as if they're all commonly sharing a morbid secret. Particularly the young archeology student Liza Harris becomes increasingly obsessed with the mysterious convent's past, as visions and nightmares lure her straight to the exact place where the nuns were executed. The cloister's background is sinister, to say the least, and especially the flashback sequence is unsettling. Death occurs in the film frequently and with pleasingly nasty effects, including implements, beheading and spontaneously attacking meat hooks. And, of course, since it's undeniably Lucio's pet peeve, you may also anticipate the repulsive removal of someone's eyeball. But the very best piece of gore, accomplished with stunningly realistic effects, shows a guy getting split in half – human wishbone style – clean down the middle. This scene alone is worthy of a top-recommendation! Unfortunately several sequences are extremely overlong and tedious, as if our good friend the directors thought it was necessary to endlessly stretch the plot to reach the running time of the film. Shame actually, because in case of a little less padding and pointlessness, "Demonia" could have been a modest classic listed directly underneath his best works "The Beyond", "City of the Living Dead", "House by the Cemetery", "Cat in the Brain" and "Zombi 2". Fulci granted himself a modest but entertaining role as the police inspector investing the series of grisly murders. To those who don't know him, he's the elderly man with enormous glasses big enough to cover half of his face.
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