DEMONS 3: THE OGRE

Aka La casa dell'orco (I)
1988
Italy
Lamberto Bava, Anfri for Reteitalia
Director: Lamberto Bava
Story & screenplay: Lamberto Bava, Dardano Sacchetti
Cinematography:
Music: Simon Boswell
Editor: Mauro Bonanni
Release details: Italy (Made for TV, 92 mins)
Cast: Virginia Bryant (Cheryl Mancuso), Sabrina Ferilli (Anna), Paolo Malco (Tom), Stefania Montorsi (Maria), Patrizio Vinci, Alice Di Giuseppe, David Flosi, Alex Serra

This title is available from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk on DVD

This was one of four films made for television - under the moniker Brivido Giallo - by Lamberto Bava in 1989, the others being Graveyard Disturbance (Dentro il cimitero), The Changeling 2 (Fino alla morta) and Dinner with a Vampire (A cena con il vampire). They're all extremely variable in quality, with some moderately successful atmospherics being let down by dumb screenplays and variable acting. Demons 3: The Ogre, is possibly the best of the lot, building up quite a decent level of tension before wasting it with an utterly bathetic climax. It also has, needless to say, absolutely nothing to do with Demons (Demoni, 85) or Demons 2 (Demoni 2, 86); the connection with Bava's previous - and most successful - films is purely the result of some creative re-titling on the part of English language distributors.

Poor little Cheryl experiences disturbing nightmares in which she's attacked by a grotesque monster - a skeletal ogre that 'hatches' from a glowing cocoon - living in the basement. When she's grown up, though, these seem little more than a distant memory; the only lasting effect being her macabre imagination. And even this turns out all right, as she has a successful career as a horror author. It all changes when she goes on holiday with her husband, Tom (Paolo Malco) and son Bob: the castle that they have hired, which is absolutely huge, seems strangely familiar. She starts dreaming that she's a small child again, and that the monster is still after her.

Just your average holiday villa. DEMONS 3: THE OGRE

While searching the castle, Cheryl finds a room full of empty canvasses and, worryingly, a drawer full of teeth. Doors open of their own accord, windows smash in the wind and strange handprints are made in the dust. Worst of all, she discovers a hidden basement, identical to the one in her dreams. Could it be that, rather than being echoes of the past, her imaginings are predictions of the future? Or is she simply going round the bend?

Dardano Sacchetti, who scripted all of the Brivido Giallo films, here manages to weave together a plot that exists mainly to pay homage to - or rip off - a number of far better films. The general setting, child protagonist and nasty in the cellar are from The House by the Cemetery (Quella villa accanto al cimitero, 81); the green, goo spitting monster from John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (87); and the writer in an isolated location and possibly going mad from The Shining (80). Just when you think it's not possible to include yet another film reference, there's an underwater swim - complete with submerged corpses - that's almost an exact replica of the famous scene (directed by Lamberto's dad, Mario) from Dario Argento's Inferno (80).

Amongst all this, there's all the plotting silliness that you'd expect from the guy who gave us The Beyond (L'Aldilà, 81). Green ogre blood is revealed to be 'play slime'; villagers drop cutlery whenever the castle is mentioned; and successive people walk into the basement despite it obviously being a really, really bad idea. It all never adds up to anything remotely new, and several plot elements - the history of the ogre, the teeth in the drawer, the cause of the dreams - remain almost totally unexplained. It also suffers from one of those exasperating 'it was all a dream' twist endings, guaranteed to leave the audience feeling entirely short-changed.

Don't go in the basement. DEMONS 3: THE OGRE

Despite the lame script, though, The Ogre is still a pretty enjoyable film. This is largely due to the direction of Lamberto Bava, a talented filmmaker who made anything half as good as he should have. This was certainly a job for hire - he was far happier with the likes of the 1991 fantasy Fantaghiro - but he seems less disinterested than with some of his work. Hugely influenced by Argento and Fulci, the look of this also recalls the Hong Kong horror films that were so popular at the time, and the stylistic trimmings bely the occasionally draggy pace and low budget. The excellent castle sets - complete with scurrying beatles that get trapped in Cheryl's typewriter - help with this, but plaudits are also due to ??'s cinematography and Simon Boswell's effectively repetitive soundtrack.

Another plus point to note is that, unlike Graveyard Disturbance and Breakfast with the Vampire , this has halfway proper characters played by halfway proper actors. Paolo Malco is a familiar Italian performer who had appeared in a number of Lucio Fulci films, most notably the aforementioned The House By the Cemetary (his character here is practically the same as in that film). Virginia Bryant didn't appear in much - Bava's Demons 2 and The Prince of Terror aside - but proves perfectly adequate. Beyond these two, nobody else really has that much to do except wear some vile eighties fashions, and they manage this capably enough.

Virginia Bryant looks suitably spooked in DEMONS 3: THE OGRE

As for the titular creature, it's really more of a zombie than ogre, even wearing a ratty renaissance-style bodkin and britches (did this grow in the cocoon as well?) The make-up effects are rather creaky, mainly being comprised of a face mask that's been stolen from Demons , but the beastie makes up for it by running around like it's drunk way too much coffee. It also has an unpleasant masticating habit, constantly chewing like an American teenager, and proves one of the easiest monsters to kill in film history.

The disc available in the UK looks pretty decent, and is certainly good enough considering the decidedly B-nature of the film. By way of extras, well, there aren't any; which is all you'd expect from VipCo. There are a few trailers for their other films and a couple of filmographies which, in line with their habitual approach to research, are ripped straight from the IMDB. The Shriek Show US DVD is also pretty good, if short on bonus material, but it's probably not one of those films worth shelling out extra cash for a slightly better quality print.

Matt Blake