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I'm stoked. Fun cheesy slasher remastered, restored, uncut AND widescreen! Time to retire the old Diamond DVD.

cool!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xljaQFetSlc

 :bouncegiggle:

Percival Rubens was a good friend of mine who sadly passed away in June 2009 and he wrote, produced and directed this, while another friend of mine did the photography. I think I should write a review of this for Andrew.

I'm curious as of which version they are restoring. Apparently they made two versions of this film: One with nudity for the international market, and one without for South Africa. I can't see this film to be better without because the random nudity is quite hilarious.

The 35mm print we have in the NFA is the uncut one, or so Percival told me: the DVD we have is cut.

Did Percival Rubens happen to mention anything else about the film?  Was he particularly proud of it?  Was it made to cash-in on Hallween?

Mike ~ welcome to the site.  :smile:

Percival was actually very proud of this film, as bad as it was. He told me that in 1978 he was, as he put it, down and out and went to see Halloween and determined there and then that he could go John Carpenter one better by making a South African horror film. Percival's earlier films like The Foster Gang and Mr Kingstreet's War are good: at one time, he was the only filmmaker making English language films in South Africa.

It's bad but in a good way... I really like the cat and mouse chase in the ending... the girl is running from the killer naked.

If I was going to make top 10 bad horror films that are fun to watch list... Pieces would be number 1 and The Demon would be number 10... :)

One thing he definitely could be proud of is that The Demon has NEVER been out of print.  From the time I saw it as a little kid, until now, it's always been on video in some form or another.  It was actually the first horror movie I ever saw, so it's got that distinction for me.  I'm also friends with one of the girls in the movie who did a couple of films with Percival Rubens -- and she maintains that his sets were so dull, you had to do drugs the entire time to keep yourself entertained.

Percival was actually very proud of this film, as bad as it was. He told me that in 1978 he was, as he put it, down and out and went to see Halloween and determined there and then that he could go John Carpenter one better by making a South African horror film. Percival's earlier films like The Foster Gang and Mr Kingstreet's War are good: at one time, he was the only filmmaker making English language films in South Africa.
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This is really interesting to know where the inspiration for the film came from.  I like it much more than Halloween, but I watched it yesterday after reading this and got a different vibe from the story.  To me, the characters are much more interesting and likable than those in Halloween, especially Col. Carson.

Speaking of which, this is somewhat off topic, but a couple years ago I added some sampled dialog from The Demon onto some of my old music tracks and posted them on myspace.  I reposted them today, you can listen at myspace.com/electricleathermusic

Enjoy,

Hey there.  I checked out your Myspace.  Cool tracks!  Yeah, I too find The Demon oddly compelling.  I think it's because, like I said, it was the first horror movie I saw, so I definitely have a nostalgia for it.  I also dig the grainy, crusty, 70's TV movie look, the library score (cues from which also turned up in the opening credits of the American version of TORSO), and the faux American mise en scene typical of many South African potboilers.

Another thing I'm wondering about is if the makers were authorized to use the song Rapper's Delight by The Sugarhill Gang in the movie. You can hear some of it when the father pulls up with his car at the beginning. For a movie made so cheap I always had my doubts that they had the actual rights to that. I could be wrong though.

I've thought about that too.  And the use of the song "Funkytown" in the Boobs Disco sequence.  The only theories I've got for that are: a) music rights were a lot cheaper and less complicated in those days; and b) the film was immediately sold off to something called Gold Key Entertainment the minute it was made.  It may even have been produced by them.  Gold Key was a TV and (sometime) theatrical subsidiary of a larger media company (I can't remember the name) and it's possible that they or one of their sister companies may have already owned "Funkytown" and "Rapper's Delight" and were able to offer them for cheap or free. 

I agree with A) music rights were a lot cheaper and less complicated in those days.

I think the whole video market has made music rights very complicated (and expensive). At least it was a factor for Heavy Metal (for years they couldnt put the movie in video because of the music rights) and beavis and butt-head also has problems with music rights.

Such as?  :question:

Oh, like Percival Rubens' other movies "Survival Zone" and "Sweet Murder."  And the Zoli Marki movie "Baby Brown," which is HILARIOUS by the way. 

It says this DVD will be widescreen.  Do you think The Demon was SHOT anamorphically?  I always just figured the full-frame version was the entire frame, and they matted it for theatrical at one time.  My guess is the DVD will be matted.

I was going to ask if anybody here has seen "Survival Zone".  If it is anything what it looks like, a South African Mad Max rip, then it is worth buying.  A rare vid dealer I know has it for a low price.  So, do the other Demon fans out there  enjoy it? I mean to say that if it is anywhere near as entertaining as the demon i probably ought to buy it.

Baby Brown is one of those films that people in the local film industry refer to as "one of those subsidy fraud films" ~ there was a period in the late 80's and early 90s where anyone who knew how to pick up a camera shot anything that moved in order to cash in on the lucrative, loophole ridden subsidy system. It's interesting to see that Baby Brown is available on DVD now. It's also a bit  :buggedout: :buggedout: :buggedout:
 

I think it was shot anamorphically.

I've seen it: it is kind of a Mad Max rip: the kind of film where you see flowers and green grass where there shouldn't be any after a nuclear holocaust.

Baby Brown is AMAZINGLY bad.  I posted clips from it on youtube because I can't believe it's not a comedy classic of bad filmmaking.  For years I would bust it out at parties and floor people with it.  In fact, I think I ruined Zoli Marki's Christmas by sending her a copy (she'd never seen it). 

Survival Zone is definitely worth a watch, I suppose.  I do particularly love how the main villain wears a studded leather jacket that says "Big Man" on the back.  When I was a kid, the local UHF channel bought a boatload of cheap films and showed them over and over.  Survival Zone and The Demon were on TV CONSTANTLY.  I ran into Jennifer Holmes, the topless nursery school teacher, at her husband's art opening in California a couple of years ago.  Her husband was also in The Demon.  She said they got married five days before they flew to SA to shoot the movie and that Cameron Mitchell had gotten them the gig while they were working together on an episode of The Incredible Hulk.  She also said she thought that nobody would ever see it, and seemed kind of irritated that it won't go away. 

Jennifer Holmes and Cameron Mitchell must have been really good friends. According to IMDb they did two movies and eight TV series together.
The other movie was Raw Force (1982) and is another cheesy gem.

As I said, Percival was very fond of The Demon and apparently the 35mm print we have in the NFA is uncut. Percival's other film that he liked was Mr Kingstreet's War with John Saxon and Tippi Hedren. :smile:

Mr. Kingstreet's War was another one they showed on TV a lot.  Tippi Hedren is a noted wildlife preservationist and she credits that movie with opening her eyes to the plight of lions.  I don't remember much about it except there are tons of animals, and lots of scenes of John Saxon firing a rifle at jeeps.

Did The Demon ever get a theatrical release in South Africa?  I think I read somewhere that it was produced mainly for sale to America.  I have a couple of friends who are REALLY fond of it because they used to hang out in Hillbrow and go to Bella Napoli, etc. and some scenes in the film are a nostalgic time capsule for them.

Apparently Noel Marshall (who was Ms Hedren's husband at the time) wanted Kingstreet to be a kind of answer to the Vietnam War so he ordered the producer Thys Heyns to have Percival re-shoot the ending so that the main characters are shot dead in a hail of bullets. Percival regretted not shooting it two ways and the film failed allegedly because of the downbeat ending which worked for The Wild Bunch but not for this.


It did get a limited release as far as I know. Regarding Hillbrow, I was there two days ago and that is not a place to just hang out in today, believe me.

This is a little off-topic, but speaking of bad movies and Hillbrow, have you ever seen NO ONE CRIES FOREVER with Howard Carpendale and Zoli Marki?  It's BRILLIANT.

My good friend and mentor Jans Rautenbach directed that ~ he told me that he has never seen it (although I have) and, like his earlier film The Winners 2, he disowns it.  :question:

Have you ever heard of another subsidy fraud movie called Deathwalkers?  It's by the same guy who made Baby Brown.  I'm dying to see it, but it's as obscure as they come.

During the subsidy years (which ran from 1987 to 1991) the Film Archives had an agreement with the labs here that if the filmmakers failed to pay for their transfers, rushes, etc, the filmmakers would forfeit rights to them and the Film Archives would get the film negatives. Deathwalkers wasn't one of these, unfortunately but I am aware of it.