Night of the Demons III (1997) Revisited – Horror Movie Review

Night of the Demons III? Weird. That must be like one of those Hellraiser sequels that wasn’t originally intended to be a Hellraiser movie but had Doug Bradley pasted into it for 5 minutes to justify it. Wait, it was written by original director Kevin Tenney? Well surely its easy to watch… oh for Pete’s sake, its not even streaming on Tubi. No offense to Tubi at all. I love finding random movies to watch on there but they have everything and even have commentary on the first Night of the Demons. Okay, I knew this movie existed, especially after I did a black sheep on the second entry a few years ago, but until a couple months ago I had never seen it. After watching both the official version and the workprint version (more on that later), I’m ready to move the Black Sheep crown from part 2 to part 3. The king is dead, long live the king.

When you first look up the movie as I’m sure some of you will, it immediately starts with “Night of the Demons III is a Canadian horror comedy…” and right there you should be thrilled as Canadian tax shelter films have a long a prestigious lineage of being anywhere from actually really good to excellently bad. Now, why this series was picked for a third entry is anyone’s guess as the first one is a bonafide classic and the second one is a silly reinterpretation of the first one. What’s interesting is that this movie really does boil down to what feels like someone explaining the plots of the first two movies and then the screenwriter mashing the two together to recreate something. The weird part is that the screenwriter is the director of the original movie in Kevin Tenney. Sadly, he ended up not liking this movie at all and explained that much of what he wanted ended up being cut out. The movie was produced by independent producer Claudio Castrevelli who has worked in television and film for a multitude of bigger companies. Distribution would fall to Republic Pictures, which is a smaller company owned by Paramount.

While Tenney wrote the screenplay this time around, he did not direct. The director on this one is a guy by the name of Jimmy Kaufman who doesn’t have a ton of actual directing credits on his resume, at least ones that are instantly recognizable. Tons and tons of TV series episodes and a few other direct to video movies but if you dig deeper, he is quite the accomplished assistant director. He helped as first- or second-unit director on stuff like Scanners, Children of a Lesser God, Dracula 2000, and Gothika. Tenney is a favorite of horror enthusiasts with stuff like Night of the Demons, Witchboard and Witchtrap, Pinocchio’s Revenge, and The Cellar along with a handful of other sequels and one offs. While he lamented things being left on the cutting room floor, I don’t think him directing would have mattered as these types of direct to video releases usually get slashed up and repurposed by distributors. This was called Demon House in the UK and not even pushed as the third movie in the trilogy at the time of its release. The movie did have a very limited theatrical release. Its budget, if Wikipedia is to be believed, was 5.7 million, which is a huge jump from the other two movies and its gross from either the theater release or the home video market is unknown to me or the internet that I’m willing to spend time searching anyway. At least they had the foresight to release the movie in October of 1997.

While it does feel disjointed, it still has one constant going for it. Angela, who is the ever present and looming threat throughout the entire series, is still here to drum up laughs and scares and is still played by the same trooper of a gal that portrayed the demon in the first two. While Amelia Kinkade may not have a ton of film credits, she is quite the success with having 6 books published worldwide, and, let’s be honest, she will have a legacy that lives on long after she passes with these three movies. While her makeup here is easily the worst of the trilogy, she hardly misses a beat and by this time is a slasher villain in her own right. She gets a good body count here and can be attributed to more with those she turns to demons killing and being killed as well.

The movie opens with a police officer exploring Hull House on Halloween a few years after the events of the second movie. He runs afoul of Angela and is killed by his own police badge before we are treated to an amazing cgi opening that looks like a point and click adventure horror PC game that would star Tim Curry in the 90s and I mean that in the best possible way. While the humor is much more akin to the second one than the first, the movie feels comfortable enough to move Angela into the Freddy realm where she has a fun quip to use after every death, she doles out and it mostly works. Night of the Demons III is the physical manifestation of “HBO late night movie” with its looks and action. After the fantastic credit’s scene, we get one of the three pillars of horror we have come to expect. After seeing Angela and knowing that her and her demons will be the creatures of the movie, we ae also immediately introduced to more characters that instantly become naked for reasons that the plot tries to explain as normal. Of course, Holly and Abby are getting ready for a Halloween party and of course they get stuck on the way there so they can be picked up by the other half of the movie’s characters.

Vince, Lois, Nick, and Reggie, who all look about as 90s as you’d expect, are cruising along in their van when they come across Abbie and Holly. The group now needs to bring booze to this function and stops at a gas station to use a fake ID. The situation escalates way further than anybody wants with cops arriving and people getting shot, including Reggie. The group takes some of the guns and pulls away in the van only to wind up at Hull House when they run out of gas. At the crime scene we are introduced to lieutenant Dewhurst who has an amazing character issue of retiring on Halloween at midnight. It is the equivalent of a character buying a new boat called the Never Die just days before retiring. This cop is doomed. At Hull House, Vince forces everyone to go inside by crossing over the underground stream, which according to Abbie is why they shouldn’t enter this cursed house and the only thing keeping demons at bay.

Vince pulls a Chad move and shoots a hole in the wall which unleashes the Angela demon even though we already saw her earlier which is kinda confusing. While the group Scooby Doo separates, we get the famous and required Angela dance followed by her sucking the bullets out of Orson’s gun in a way that only a 90s HBO type movie would feel comfortable doing. We get the first real kill of the movie and even though it took longer than expected, its fun. Something unexpectedly fun about this movie is its kills. They put most of that reported 5-million-dollar budget into the kills, well that and that all timer of a credits intro. Once we get the first one of the teens killed off it moves really quickly. As I said before, the movie has everything we are looking for with dumb teens getting killed off, fun effects and creature design, makeup aside, and these people finding almost any reason to have a steamy session with contract guaranteed nudity.

Abbie is next to get the demonic treatment as Angela makes her feel good about herself for the first time before sealing the deal with a kiss. Reggie then gets hit by a car driven by Demon Orson while Lois gets her arm turned into a snake in the most convincing arm snake this side of Santino Marella, which of course also bites her. The cop from the very beginning appears if only to kill a few minutes with a chase and show us what happens when demons cross a running stream. After he disintegrates, Officer Dewhurst appears and tries to convince Holly and Nick that he is there to help. He takes them outside, but Vince tries to take Angela as a hostage to negotiate. He opens fire and is shot through the eye before getting turned into a demon like the rest of his dead friends. Angela will let the rest go if Holly will join her willingly and open a gate to hell.

Dewhurst won’t have any of that on his watch and while sunup hits and he is technically retired, Angela appears and rips out his heart before turning her attention towards Nick and Holly. She grabs Holly but Nick pulls them both over the stream which makes Angela turn into a fatality from one of the Mortal Kombat games. We OF COURSE get the swerve ending where Angela turns the lights on in Hull House and laughingly says Happy Halloween. There would be no 4th entry but 2009 would bring us a Night of the Demons remake starring Edward Furlong and Shannon Elizabeth of all people. While I have no idea of the quality of that, I’m also not sold on giving it a go but let me know if it’s the good kind of trash.

Night of the Demons III IS the good kind of trash. Characters that you want to die, fun gore and completely pointless nudity, and a very small tangential link to the other movies in the series. It’s a bummer that its not easily accessible but good on Scream Factory for giving it the best edition you could ask for. In addition to some great interviews and a commentary, the disc also provides a director’s cut work print and an alternate TV version. That’s 3 versions of a third entry for a series that I’m guessing a ton of people haven’t had the chance to see. While part 2 was the original Night of the Demons Black Sheep, I feel like that one is getting the recognition it deserves and now it’s time for Night of the Demons III to shine. Head over to Hull House and make sure to give Angela my best.

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