College students, Kevin (Keith Van Hoven), Jessica (Sonia Curtis), and her brother Dick (Joe Balogh), are traveling through Brazil. Dick decides to take part in a black magic ritual and he becomes cursed. The trio’s jeep breaks down and they are escorted to a villa by two friendly travelers. Dick finds a nearby gravesite containing the bodies of six murdered slaves and awakens them. The slaves rise up from the ground armed with various pointy objects and the urge to slaughter anyone who is unlucky enough to be hanging around. Maria (played by Maria Alves), the servant and resident practitioner of magic, does all she can to protect everyone from the evil that Dick has awakened.
Umberto Lenzi, is that you? From the director of Seven Bloodstained Orchids, Eyeball, and Ghosthouse, comes the unfortunately-titled Black Demons. A straightforward plot (read as only a handful of loose ends) and beautiful Brazilian locations fooled me for a moment into thinking Lenzi might just have pulled off something of a minor classic here. However, bland lighting and a forgettable soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi combined with a cast of wildly irritating actors hinder the film from being a return to the glory days of Italian horror.
Speaking of bland, Keith Van Hoven (House of Clocks) turns up as our hero, Kevin. While he’s not the worst of the lot, the guy is frighteningly dull. From the moment she opens her mouth, soap opera and sitcom actress Sonia Curtis, is unfathomably awful as Jessica. If only the producers had hired a competent voice actress to dub over Curtis’s thinly delivered lines then we’d only be stuck with her vacant stare to contend with. Then we have Philip Murray as Jose the mumbler and Juliana Texeira as “just plain” Sonia. Two annoying characters whose death scenes inspire sighs of relief, if not some cheering.
Joe Balogh (Hitcher in the Dark) actually won me over with his portrayal of Dick, Jessica’s haunted and ultimately cursed brother. The scene where he takes part in a Macumba ritual is the best directed in the movie and Balogh is definitely up to the task. Brazilian actress Maria Alves easily has the best performance in the film. I only wish her character, Maria, could have survived long enough to get us through the rest of the dang flick. Alves spends most of her screentime looking completely terrified but it works.
Oddly enough, Lenzi refers to Black Demons as his masterpiece during an interview in the book, “Spaghetti Nightmares”. Well, I just don’t know how to interpret that one. The pace of this film is drowsy at best and despite some occasionally inspired camerawork, fluid editing, cool zombie makeup, and somewhat gory (and well-staged) deaths, I don’t see how any director could interpret this as their masterpiece. While not the worst of his horror contributions, Lenzi has done much, much better. If nothing else, Black Demons is a decent little time waster.
“You know, Kevin, you really get up my nose!”
