Demons 6: De Profundis (1989)

 

a.k.a The Black Cat

Director:  Luigi Cozzi

Screenplay: Luigi Cozzi (with an unaccredited Daria Nicolodi)

Cast: Florence Guérin as Anne Ravenna; Urbano Barberini as Marc Ravenna; Caroline Munro as Nora; Brett Halsey as Leonard Levin; Luisa Maneri as Sara; Karina Huff as Esther Semerani; Alessandra Acciai as Nadine; Giada Cozzi as Sybil

An Abstract Candidate / A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I came to this film with a fondness for Luigi Cozzi, a more obscure figure in terms of the Italian genre film directors' canon. He won me over for the likes of Starcrash (1978), likely his most well known and an infamous film in the post-Star Wars craze. This film in context to when it is made, with the end of the golden age of the Italian genre film industry in sight, really adds a strange touch to the proceedings. The production history adds a stranger turn, as there are multiple versions of this film in existence even, and was said to have had its archival materials lost in terms of preservation. Cozzi ended up being hired by the Cannon Group, which was not created by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, but became famous (and notorious) from them. He was signed to film Hercules (1983) with Lou Ferrigno, another candidate for his most well known film and also a bizarre experience. Golan and Globus would have a significant breakup in 1989, during the last period of Cannon before its end, with Menahem Golan leaving to run the 21st Century Film Corporation, who financed Demons 6 with Luigi Cozzi.

We are going to have a lot to mention, and one is that, in the English title, this is The Black Cat after Edgar Allen Poe's famous story. Barring a black cat and the idea witches can turn into said cats, this has nothing to do with that Poe narrative at all despite some references. Demons 6 as a title is more maddening to consider - Dario Argento, a friend and colleague with Cozzi, produced Demons (1985) and Demons 2 (1986) with Lamberto Bava as the director, films which are seen, least the first, as last hurrahs for this era, and it managed to get "sequels" in bunny ears to cash in on its successs. To give you an idea, the same year as Demons 6, Lamberto Bava's TV film The Ogre (1989) got renamed Demons III: The Ogre in some territories. Umberto Lenzi's Black Demons (1991) and Michele Soavi's The Church (1989) were also christened Demons 3 in some circles.

This era of late eighties Italian cinema, with Demons 6 as I will call it, was one even as a fan of these territory I took a huge time to appreciate, where once I would cruelly (in written form no less) viewed this as a reminder that even directors you like, great auteurs or workmen, can fail hideously. Another example of this from this era was Zombie 3 (1988), a.k.a. the second Zombi film by Lucio Fulci that had to be finished by Bruno Mattei when he became ill, complete and utter cheese to the highest degree even next to the older films of the industry that, for even great ones, could be cheesy.

This era is strange, and none stranger than Demons 6. After its set up of a director husband Marc Ravenna (Urbano Barberini) and his actress wife Anna (Florence Guérin), where we see a giallo being shot on a film set with Anna and another director, this predates Dario Argento's Mother of Tears (2007) by decades. Also a divisive film, Dario Argento’s official third film in his Three Mothers Trilogy, based on passages in Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis, was pipped to the post by this obscure third film which, in this world, the characters openly talk about Argento's Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980) exist within it. Marc and his scriptwriter friend decide to use material from the same source Argento’s films came from, planning to make a film about an evil with called Levana, the last of the original three mothers of witches from de Quincey's writings, if a famous producer is willing to fund the production. Anna, planned to play Levana, is beset by troubling hallucinations however, with threats to herself and her young child by Levana coming to be.

Cozzi, his own script, effectively beat Wes Craven too with this. Before New Nightmare (1994) became a meta-film with actress Heather Langenkamp playing Heather Langenkamp, being beset by Freddy Krueger, this film like Craven's too, surprisingly, is presents as it could all by psychosis within the female lead's mind. The difference is that this being Italian, they are more pulpier, have more glam metal in the soundtrack (including from Bango Tango and White Lion), and Anna having Levana jump her out a mirror, through the reflection, and drool green goo on her as a warning. The script has an origin from Daria Nicolodi, which adds to this film's curious history, the ex-wife of Dario Argento and actress arguably the inspiration for Suspiria, as a key tenant to the script she co-wrote came from the story of her grandmother having to an academy where black magic was taking place¹. She is important for that legendary film, and was originally on this production meant to be a proper Three Mothers sequel than never come to be.

Instead, Demons 6 if it was this basic plotline would annoy many people, as never was there a film where the "it was all a dream" or "dreams-within-dreams" clichés exploited to a comical degree.The film's history, including the 21st Century Film Corporation changing the original work print cut of the film Luigi Cozzi had, only for that version managing to be released on Japanese VHS, is strange and befitting a film which has this dreamy, irrational tone. That what sounds like a meta-horror film from an industry already becoming meta (Argento's Tenebre (1982)), only to become a sci-fi conclusion that just screams the truly bizarre The Visitor (1979), emphasises this. I can appreciate this film now, though even for casual fans of Italian genre cinema, I would not be surprised this would baffle and irritate people as a mess, before you even consider the name The Black Cat, and the Poe references, are only there because 21st Century Film Corporation was releasing Poe inspired horror movies between 1989 and 1990, like Gérard Kikoïne's Buried Alive (1990), and wanted to sell a film with that title.

Thirty minutes into this, the film is still going through introductionary exposition, as a ninety plus feature, and befitting a film soaked in so much colour gels and lighting to rival Inferno and Suspiria, this feels like an irrational head-trip. It is different from those films, trashier, and the sense of dream logic is closer to the strangeness of this country's genre films which exist in their own logic, than the focused surrealism of the Argento Three Mother films, excluding Mother of Tears which is its own creation in tone and presentation. Seen in a good form, Demons 6 regardless of its cheese does have some striking moments. Yes, this is a film where for a scare, Anna finds herself talking to a repair man fixing her fridge, only for him not to have existed at all and vanished into thin air, but there are shots within this which are gorgeous to see even if the dialogue and tone is deeply silly. Her later wandering through a mansion suddenly overcome in cobwebs and decay in pure red lighting, at the straddle point between wondering if she is hallucinating whilst talking to a wheelchair bound figure who is undead, has a legitimate air of the irrational for a director, honestly, who is more goofier in tone, or is famous for a film like Contamination (1980) in his less adventure-toned productions, whose atmosphere came more from its incredible score by Goblin.

The quirks are their own charm too, such as its fixation on that refrigerator in the first place, even if playing a possible gas-lighting narrative with twists involving Nora (Caroline Munro), another actress envious for the Levana role. Or that there is also a fairy named Sybil who talks to Anna through her television late at night, or the cuts to a demon foetus in red. Or the shots of outer space and planets, which become more and more common as, for a film meant to originally conclude the Three Mothers trilogy, becomes stranger in a different way. Or that, whilst Mother of Tears was lurid and gory, and the originally two films had violence, none go over-the-top as here where someone's heart is literally made to explode and burst a giant cavity out their chest. The other jarring touch for some and a quirk for other, which is still one I admit does not quite work, is the decision to cut to cheesy hair metal riffs. I can appreciate this, and this music, but there was a reason one ago why only Demons and Demons 2 made heavy metal work in Italian horror films for me, as a fan of both. It is something Dario Argento was fixated on, from Phenomena (1985) at least on for a short while, and the Demons films he produced were balls balls-out splat fests rather than spine chilling. Alongside cheekily exploiting Goblin's main theme for Suspiria, it does add a humour here when, in Opera you got Saxon or Motorhead, this dates when in the nineteen eighties it was made, like Cannon Group productions had licensed soundtracks before, in that this is full blown hair metal. The guitar licks are appropriate abrupt in when they appear as they are appropriate, but this is not even Motley Crue, but the bands that grunge and Kurt Cobain were said to have killed off.

Cozzi's films have a vibrant imagination, even in spite of the silliness of the material, but this is different even to his other films. Unlike a Starcrash, where the unexpected tangents felt like a celebration of pulpy storytelling or how a child adds more and more to a story they are telling as they go along, this abruptly introduces its plot aspect, including full blown science fiction, with complete unawareness of it being set-up earlier on. Demons 6, right from the first images of outer space and a cosmic foetus, depending on the version you are watching, does feel like two or more different movies were bolted together, and it cannot be denied it does have exposition at times that is panicked and gibbering in desperately trying to make it sound. Even if now as I am older, and I find that utterly entertaining, there is madness here that I forgot transpired which is ridiculous, [Spoiler Warnings] where nothing really prepares you, for what originally existed as a proper ending to the Three Mothers trilogy, for the ending to suddenly reveal, with a car having plowed through Anna's living room earlier, that this is about telepathic illusions, an evil psychic mutant, and the fate of the Earth being jostled for between forces of good and evil that concludes with a baby having an evil voiceover plotting revenge. [Spoilers End] If a reader is someone who is going to find these twists off-putting, even a very silly film like Cozzi's Hercules film is more focused and a wiser choice to appreciate his idiosyncrasies as an Italian genre filmmaker. Even in mind to that film's weird tone, with its Ray Harryhausen tributes and colour gel lighting, this is a fever dream that, with fresh perspective, I found incredibly entertaining, but will flummox people.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Abruptly Paced/Dreamlike/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

 

======

1) Mental Floss' 14 Unforgettable Facts About Dario Argento's Suspiria, written by Matthew Jackson and published on October 25th 2018. It is specifically the first fact which is of any importance for this:

 

"1. IT IS PARTIALLY INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY.

Though the phrase “fairy tale” is often thrown out to describe Suspiria’s unique Technicolor horrors, the original seed of the story apparently emerged from something quite real. According to co-writer Daria Nicolodi, her grandmother Yvonne Müller Loeb was once sent away as a young girl to a prestigious boarding school, only to find that Black Magic was actually being practiced there. When Nicolodi heard the story, she filed it away in her head, until she and Argento took a trip through various European cities with a history of witchcraft. She was reminded of the story, told Argento about it, and Suspiria was born."