Percival Rubens' "The Demon" is one of them late 70's low-budget horror oddities of which you can't help wondering why the hell it was ever made. What director, in his right state of mind, comes up with a completely illogical story about a malicious killer with unexplained motives and a heroic copper who gets killed even long before he's face-to-face with his nemesis? And this describes just a small part of everything that is wrong with the film's screenplay. There's a sadistic killer on the loose in a small town. He wears gloves with claws attached to them, yet he exclusively kills his victims by choking them with a plastic bag. He always seems to walk in the shadow, has the size of a giant and never speaks a word. Is he really a demon
or just a frustrated outcast who never received any motherly love? He seems to be after the local kindergarten teacher and her gorgeous cousin but why is anyone's guess. On the other side, we have an ex-cop gifted with psychic powers looking for the killer. Cameron Mitchell ("Blood and Black Lace", "Nightmare in Wax") truly makes a fool out of himself here, pretending to be in contact with higher forces and sniffing a missing girl's pillow for clues. He's smart enough to predict his own death, yet he doesn't take any efforts to prevent it. As you can see, the plot is one giant MESS and there's absolutely nothing that makes the slightest bit of sense. The only positive point I can raise is that "The Demon" benefits from a neat morbid atmosphere and an occasional flash or sheer suspense. It's also quite sleazy! The two lead girls regularly strip all their clothes off but this doesn't seem to influence the madman in any way. On the contrary, he's more interested in tearing apart the dressing gowns than in naked female bodies. Like I said, it's a bad bad bad BAD film
but curiously intriguing at the same time.
