Demon Rage

 (1982)

(aka Dark Eyes, Demon Seed, Satan's Mistress, and Fury of the Succubus)

 

by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Lana Wood, baby sister of screen legend Natalie Wood, was once a Bond girl: Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds are Forever. That, however, was in 1971, and was followed by a career that led downward to nowhere and then still farther downward to this film.

Lana plays a housewife whose sexual frustration rises to the boiling point when her husband continually neglects her. Since their family lives in a remote house on the beach, there are few men around, and she needs some drilling, so she must turn for relief to the same source that has attracted so many women throughout the centuries: Satan. Luckily The Dark One is always able to spare some time from his ongoing duties in the Middle East to provide some manly services to particularly frustrated housewives.

Her relationship with Satan actually goes quite well. Satan pounds the daylights out of her whenever she needs it, and it is not long before the beach house is filled each night with banshee howls emanating from her bedroom. The woman's daughter is understandably confused by the noises coming from mommy's room when daddy is in the kitchen, but daddy explains that when a mommy loves a special supernatural step-daddy very, very much ....

I suppose if Lana had been living alone, she and Lucifer could have kept it up forever, and this would have been the first Satan movie with a happy ending. But fate is a cruel manipulator. The negligent husband gets turned on by her new attitude, and he starts making whoopee with her again. Needless to say, Satan is not pleased when he shows up for his nightly booty call and finds that his parking place has been taken. He does exactly what you'd expect from a being who is second in power only to God himself: he sits in a rocking chair and tries to rock away the tension while he watches the couple and seethes with anger.

I didn't make that up. He has a satanic rocker in the house. I assume he brought it with him from hell and it has been custom designed to keep from rolling over his tail.  Or maybe every beach house in California automatically comes with a Satan-adapted rocker, as part of the Californians with Disability program, just as all tiny convenience stores must have one parking place reserved for people in wheelchairs, even if they have only two parking places to begin with. I did catch a look at the chair, but I didn't see any signs indicating that it was only to be used by Satan and his infernal minions.

By the way, the house also has a guillotine in the basement. I believe that would be unusual even in California. Probably even in France. As you probably know from Chekhov's first rule of drama (i.e., a rifle hanging on the wall in act one will be used in act three), the guillotine will play an important role later on in the film. It's especially handy when the vegematic breaks down. A guillotine makes great Julianne fries when it isn't decapitating aristocrats.

At any rate, Satan and hubby get into a pissing contest to win the heart of the frustrated wife. The Prince of Lies does not play fair, as you might expect, and he pulls out all the stops. Well, at least a few of the stops. He enlists the aid of henchwomen, minions, civil servants, Republicans, and other forms of evil incarnate. In fact, one of his minions did such a good job that she was promoted to henchwoman, and therefore got an extra five grand a year, full dental, and a company rocker.

Despite all of his powers and company perks, however, Mephistopheles ends up losing. Man, that husband must be one sexual dynamo. It's bad enough when you have to compete for your girlfriend against an NBA star or a porn star, but to go one-on-one with Ol' Scratch himself ... that's something. I have to tip my hat to the husband, because he wins the match-up ...

... or ... does he???

As bad as that may sound, the actual movie is not as good as the one I have fancifully described. Oh, it would be a hoot on bad movie night if it were a twenty-minute short, but it drags on for more than an hour and a half of amateur performances and technical incompetence (the sound is especially bad), exacerbated by repetition.

My personal favorite scene is one in which Lana's character and her daughter hold down a normal conversation in a normal tone of voice about three minutes into the film. What's so bad about that? They are standing in front of a roaring ocean, and the sound has been recorded live, so we can't hear what they are saying! Jeez, maybe it was something brilliant, some bit of Shavian wit that could have made the whole film worthwhile, lost now in time, "like tears in the rain."

Or not.

DVD INFO

* No widescreen

* No features

* To add to the film's woes, the DVD appears to have been transferred from VHS.

 

 

 

THE CRITICS AND ACADEMIES

No major reviews online

THE PEOPLE

   
1.8 IMDB summary (of 10)
   

It scores a perfect 1.0 from males under 18. Think about that. Giant-breasted Lana Wood does about a half dozen topless scenes, and guys under 18 still rate it 1.0. That's how bad it is.

 

 

 

 

THE BOX OFFICE

Drive-in movie, then straight to VHS.

 

 

 

 

NUDITY REPORT

  • Lana Wood showed her breasts in several scenes, and her pubic area in one of those.

 

 

 

 

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Our Grade:

If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to read the explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by our definition, a C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:

D

Not worth your time, unless you want to see Lana Wood naked, and even in that case the image quality is poor.