I have to confess I’m more than a little surprised I’m penning a review of this movie, because when I first saw it I pretty much hated it, and I still can’t remember if I even watched it all the way through. At the moment, the only reason I have this in my possession is pure nostalgia. I saw Demon Wind back in either 1991 or 1992 when I was in my early twenties. It was one of them “morning movies” as I recall. Back in the day I used to stay up until 1:30 or 2 in the morning, if a movie I wanted to see came on later than that, I set the timer on the VCR in the living room and would retrieve the tape the next morning and watch it in my bedroom before getting up. Watching a horror movie in the morning after waking is just as powerful as watching them late at night, maybe more so. I don’t watch horror movies, or any other kind of movie at all, in the morning anymore. The last time I did that was in the late 90s, watching the VHS of Lair Of The White Worm (1988) to see if I still liked it enough to replace it with the newly released DVD.

I haven’t seen Demon Wind yet, so I honestly don’t know if it’s a keeper. When I heard Vinegar Syndrome had acquired this flick I searched out the trailer on YouTube and watched it. It definitely has an Evil Dead vibe about it, but back when I first saw it, I had yet to see Evil Dead (1981), and I can’t remember if I had already seen Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987). I don’t think I had because I don’t remember thinking about it when I watched Demon Wind.  I was into the movie right up to this scene where this guy tosses a can into the air and karate-kicks the shit out of it. For some reason I remember thinking that was just so out of character for what’s supposed to be a horror movie. It was a well choreographed kick too, and I think he kicked it several times before it landed, which may have been the real reason it turned me off. Am I watching a horror movie, or an action flick?

Back then, and kind of still today, when I’m watching a movie I’ve just gotten sick of and/or bored to tears by, I start fast forwarding, and that’s what I did with Demon Wind, so that’s why I can’t exactly remember if I watched the whole movie, or if I gave up on it entirely. I guess we’ll see soon, but the majority of what I saw in that trailer didn’t look familiar.

I also remember telling a friend of mine I was hanging out with at the time of this movie and we started making fun of the title. I’m pretty sure there were some fart jokes in there too. How could there not be? Just look at the taglines on the artwork above.

Okay, here I am several days, actually, more like a week, from when I penned the above paragraphs and I’ve finally seen it! Not the greatest of flicks, by any means, and I thought I might like it a lot, but I didn’t. It’s a weird flick too, with random things and plot points popping up here and there, but I got into a bit more in the final act. I don’t know whether I’ll ever end up watching again, but I feel I’ll keep it just for the nostalgia vibe alone, of the 80s it reminds me of, and of when I first saw it. I will say the physical FX, the demon possessions, and the main demon, or son of Satan, whatever that thing was, was fun to watch!

Now, where to begin with the plot, hmmm, well, it all started back in the 1800s in this little town where Satanism took over, then in 1931, this kid was born and his family, Regina (Stella Kastner) and George (Axel Toowey), were massacred by demonic forces. The prologue starts out with this massacre. Now in present day (circa 1989) this kid named Cory (Eric Larson), Regina and George’s grandson, and his chick, Elaine (Francine Lapensée), are headed to his father’s house, the same house in the prologue. Why? He just says he feels compelled too. But we find out later he reconnected with his father at this house and at some point the father slit his wrists and died from it. Why he left, I don’t know, but now he wants to go back and take his chick and bunch of his friends with him.

He meets the cliché gas station attendant, and diner owner (the diner is part of the gas station), Harcourt (Rufus Norris), who is predictably creepy and predictably tries to warn the kids from going up to the house. Harcourt will be revealed in the final act to be this demon, or son of Satan, in a scene that has him suddenly appearing as a priest who rallies his demonic horde, then banishes them, then kills a cast member, who already died earlier in a scene that had her turning into a doll—yeah, I didn’t know what to make of that scene, and neither will you, probably.

So, Cory has a lot of friends he wanted around him when he went to this cabin. My favorite two were, Chuck (Stephen Quadros) and Stacy (Jack Vogal), no. that’s not a girl, there’s a dude named Stacy in this. Vogal has this 50s throwback vibe about him, he reminded me of Nick Adams (Die, Monster, Die, Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero). But their appearance in the film is another headscratcher. They show up in this convertible, Chuck standing up in it, wearing a magician’s outfit, and Stacy driving, also wearing something magician-y. There’s this jock-type named, Dell (Bobby Johnston) who’s girlfriend, Terri (Lynn Clark), was once Chuck’s chick’ Chuck didn’t know she’d be there and Dell doesn’t like Chuck, this leads into that aforementioned karate kicking of the can that looked different than I remembered it. I naturally assumed this magician thing Chuck and Stacy are into will be part of the movie as it unfolds, but once they head out to the cabin they toss their costumes out of the car and that’s the last we ever see of that. Regardless, I liked both of those kids. I’m sure this won’t come as much of a surprise that all them, except for Cory and Elaine, end up dead by the end of the movie.

Chuck and Stacy also just so happen to have a pistol and a shotgun in their car. If I had seen this all the way through back when I did and they pulled out those weapons I would have scoffed, but when I saw it this time, I didn’t even bat an eye. That says a lot about how much our “gun culture” has grown since then. Yeah, so they’ve got guns. Good for them, ‘cause they’re gonna need ‘em. Not that slinging led at the demons do much of anything.

Aside from having clear Evil Dead inspirations Demon Wind also got some of its inspiration from Night Of The Living Dead, but the kids aren’t up against zombies. Like in Evil Dead, random characters get possessed and become grotesquely demonic, but the dead from centuries ago are lurking around outside and they come back in demon form and try to get into the house. Go outside and you’ll be ambushed by them and/or a strange fog will displaces you. Try and run from the house, the fog will swallow you up and either put you back at the house or somewhere deep in the woods, like what happens to Dell and Terri.

For an almost no-budget flick there’s a pretty decent house explosion in the prologue and it’s used again at the end. The remnants of the house still stand, but in another headscratcher of a plot point looking through the door of the remains of the front will show you a fully intact cabin inside, Corey goes around to see there’s nothing but rubble, and peering through the door, he can see his friends but his friends can’t see him. This dimensional oddity is never explained, you just have to go with it.

Oh, right, and there’s a book, a diary his grandmother made. She was a witch, and there are seven daggers that are supposed to send this son of Satan back to hell, but she only left him two. One character kills another possessed character with a dagger and he reverts back to normal, then into a child, then into a baby, and finally into a dove that flies away.

The final confrontation is between this big ass, ugly, not entirely unimpressive demon, and Cory and Elaine. In yet another headscratching moment, Cory utters something from the diary and a turns into what I can only presume was a good demon. He sports a funky shaped head and pointed years and proceeds to do battle with the big demon. He does revert back to normal after killing it, actually, I think Elaine does it in with a pitchfork, or something, and they get the hell out of dodge, but not before stopping off at that diner and killing one more demon.

Demon Wind (1990) has never had any kind of DVD release here in the states before, so this combo is it’s debut on both formats! You can buy it here on Amazon!

VIDEO/AUDIO/SUBTITLES: 1080p 1.85:1 High Definition Widescreen—5.1 English DTS-HD Master Audio—English SDH

Picture quality was great, but I did have a problem with the sound, as reported in other reviews there’s a bit of a sibilance problem. If you’re listening to it on cordless headphones, like I do with all my movies, this audible dog whistle hiss in the background will threaten to blow your head apart like a Scanner attack. I had to do some tinkering with the settings on the transmitter to get it to go away. I have an audio cable going from it to the blu-ray player, and a digital audio cable running from it to the TV, so I can listen to television shows. I can listen to the blu-rays through this cable too and I had to switch over to it to get rid of the hiss. So, keep that in mind, if you use cordless headphones.

EXTRAS INCLUDED . . .

  • Interview With Producer Sandy Horowitz (26:27)
  • Interview With Actress Sherry Leigh (16:31)
  • Interview With Cinematographer Thomas Callaway (19:57)
  • Interview With Editor Christopher Roth (audio only) (20:17)
  • Still Gallery
  • Theatrical Trailer

(NOTE: Production year listed on the back is a typo. It was made in 1989 and released in 1990. The 5.1 audio might be a typo too. The audio that came up on my player said it was 5.0).