|Demons (1985): The Movie That Makes Horror Contagious

What if watching a horror movie was the thing that got you killed? That's the question at the heart of Demons, the 1985 Italian splatter classic from Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento — and Ambrose and Jessica are here to make the case that this film invented meta-horror a full decade before anyone gave it credit.

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Episode Breakdown:

• Ambrose argues that Demons beat Wes Craven's New Nightmare to the "horror-as-infection" concept by ten years — and he's not wrong
• The hosts break down Geretta Geretta's iconic demon transformation, which was entirely improvised and ended up setting the physical blueprint for every demon in the film
• Jessica and Ambrose go deep on the practical effects — glowing demon eyes made from street sign material, teeth pushed out by mechanical fangs, and a spine-bursting scene straight out of a fever dream
• Coffin ratings are in: Ambrose lands at four and a half, Jessica goes full five — and makes a pretty convincing argument for why the unexplained stuff is actually the point.

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Transcript

[Music and Horror Sound Effects]

Voiceover: Hello, fiends. Welcome to The Thing About Films, the horror podcast where two horror-obsessed hosts dig into the movies that disturb us, surprise us, and sometimes completely mess us up. No credentials, no filters, just a love for horror and a need to talk about every scream, every scare, and every "what was that noise in the background?" So turn the lights down low, settle in, and let’s step into the darkness. Your hosts—Ambrose and Jessica—are waiting.

Ambrose: Okay, get this. So a couple of years ago, I'm in Brooklyn, right? And I go to this pop-up horror screening in, like, a basement venue.

Jessica: Really?

Ambrose: In a basement venue that used to be a boiler room.

Jessica: Yeah, that sounds very shady.

Ambrose: That’s the whole gimmick. They’ve cleared it out, they’ve set up folding chairs, they’ve hung a projector screen off one wall, and the guy running it is wearing a gas mask.

Jessica: Okay, why?

Ambrose: For the vibe, Jessica. You know, the vibe!

Jessica: Yeah, that is not a vibe. That’s a straight-up warning.

Ambrose: So I sit down. They’re screening some obscure Italian thing—I don’t even remember which one, and about twenty minutes in, somebody behind me starts laughing. But like, this weird laughing. You know, not like laughing at the movie. Laughing like they’re the only person who gets the joke. And this goes on for about a minute, and then it stops. And then somebody in a totally different part of the room starts doing it.

Jessica: Oh, stop it.

Ambrose: And then it just keeps going.

Jessica: Oh, come on. Now you’re just messing with my head.

Ambrose: And I’m just sitting there as the movie is playing, and all around me is this laughter that is just going on. And to be honest, I can’t tell if it’s part of the movie or if it’s something else. And I’m looking around at the other audience, and the crazy part is, half of them are also looking around. So, now I’m thinking they don’t even have a clue what’s going on. So there I am, sweating, because now I have no clue what I just walked into and, like, how deep this really goes.

Jessica: I was wondering that same thing.

Ambrose: And at some point, I start to realize that they were part of the staff. You know, like part of the show. But I was still not sure about the setting.

Jessica: Ugh, thank God for that.

Ambrose: I know, right? But for a second

Jessica: For a second, you thought you were in a horror movie.

Ambrose: I did. But here’s the thing.

Jessica: This is why you shouldn’t go to events.

Ambrose: Haha, you’re right.

Jessica: I know I’m right.

Ambrose: But here’s the thing. In that 30 seconds where I wasn’t sure if the laughing was the movie or the room, something flipped in my brain. And that’s when I thought about a movie I’d seen a bunch of times, but it never made me feel like that—where the screen just blends into our reality. Like where whatever is happening in the movie starts happening to you. And I was like, "Oh, oh, I’m in Demons.”

Jessica: And that’s our movie for today!Ambrose: Yep, Demons, 1985, Lamberto Bava, produced by Dario Argento. And honestly, the reason I wanted to tell that story is because this movie is the blueprint for that feeling the "Wait, wait, is this happening to me?" feeling.

Jessica: And unlike your boiler room adventure, in Demons, it actually is happening to them.

Ambrose: It actually is!

Jessica: There is no staff member with a gas mask pulling a prank. It’s real demons, in the theater, eating the audience.

Ambrose: Really.

Jessica: Okay, so let’s actually lay this out. Because some people listening might have not seen this movie, and they need to know what they’re walking into.

Ambrose: Yeah, they really do need to know this.

Jessica: 1985, Italy. West Berlin is the setting. A college student named Cheryl is riding the subway, and a man in a chrome mask

Ambrose: Hmm... a half-chrome mask. Just a half.

Jessica: In a half-chrome mask, stalks her through the station and, instead of doing anything a stalker would normally do, he hands her two free tickets to a movie screening.

Ambrose: And of course, she takes them.

Jessica: And she takes them! This is my biggest problem with this movie.

Ambrose: I know, right?

Jessica: Because Cheryl is an idiot.

Ambrose: No, Cheryl is curious.

Jessica: No. Cheryl is a cautionary tale.

Ambrose: Cheryl is the reason we have Stranger Danger PSAs.

Jessica: Yeah, Cheryl is the PSA. Cheryl is the "before" picture. And she drags her friend Kathy along, which—Kathy, I’m sorry, you didn’t sign up for this. You were just trying to skip class.

Jessica: And Kathy ends up as collateral damage.

Ambrose: Oh, total collateral damage. So they show up at this theater called the Metropol, which is a real building in Berlin, by the way.

Jessica: Which we will talk about later.

Ambrose: Oh, we’ll definitely talk about that later. But yeah, the Metropol is this beautiful Art Deco lobby. And inside the lobby is what I have now lovingly renamed "Chekhov’s Showroom.”

Jessica: Why Chekhov’s Showroom?

Ambrose: Because in this lobby, on display next to where you buy popcorn, there is a dirt bike.

Jessica: Which will be important.

Ambrose: A samurai sword.

Jessica: Also important.

Ambrose: And that creepy silver demon mask.

Jessica: All of this is on display in a public space.

Ambrose: Yep, right next to the snacks.

Jessica: No theater anywhere on earth has ever had this décor.

Ambrose: None. And I love it so much because the movie is just telling you: "Here are the weapons. Here are the tools. Something is going to happen. Stay tuned.”Jessica: And the mask matters because Rosemary, one of the characters, she’s in the lobby, she picks up the mask as a joke, she puts it on her face, and it scratches her cheek. Tiny little scratch.

Ambrose: Nothing. A nothing scratch.

Jessica: And that’s the whole movie.

Ambrose: That’s the whole movie. That scratch is the Big Bang. Everything that happens for the next 60 minutes comes from that scratch.

Jessica: And before we get there real quick, the mask itself is a Mario Bava shout-out.

Ambrose: Oh, big one.

Jessica: Because Mario Bava, who is Lamberto Bava’s dad

Ambrose: Who’s the whole reason Lamberto is in this industry.

Jessica: Mario Bava made a movie in 1960 called Black Sunday, which in Italy is called The Mask of Satan. And the opening of that movie is a spiked metal mask getting hammered onto a witch’s face.

Ambrose: Which is iconic.

Jessica: Which is iconic. And Lamberto putting a spiked demon mask in the center of his movie—

Ambrose: Don’t you mean it’s a love letter?

Jessica: Yeah, it’s a love letter. It’s a son going, "Hey Dad, I’m doing the thing.”

Ambrose: And I love that so much. I love when nepo babies have taste. That’s all I ask for in a nepo baby.

Jessica: Wow, that’s a low bar.

Ambrose: It’s a low bar, but you’d be shocked how many fail it.

Jessica: True.

Ambrose: Anyway... so they go into the theater. And the movie playing at the Metropol is—get this—a horror movie! About teenagers who find an ancient tomb, discover a cursed silver mask, put it on, get scratched, and turn into demons.

Jessica: So it’s the same mask.

Ambrose: The same mask that’s in the lobby. And this is where the movie gets really clever, actually.

Jessica: Okay, because what Lamberto Bava is doing here in 1985

Jessica: Is meta-horror.

Ambrose: Right. But before meta-horror was a thing. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare doesn’t come out until 1994. Scream doesn’t come out until ’96. And here’s Bava, a full decade before anybody, going, "What if the horror movie is the infection? What if watching horror is what gets you killed?”

Jessica: That is actually a really cool idea.

Ambrose: I know it’s such a cool idea. And nobody talks about this movie in that conversation. Everybody wants to give Craven the credit.

Jessica: And Craven deserves credit.

Ambrose: I know, right? I love Craven. But I have to say, Bava got there first.

Jessica: Ten years first.

Ambrose: Ten years first with a dirt bike and a helicopter.

Jessica: Okay, so Rosemary is sitting in the theater. The scratch on her cheek starts to bubble up.

Ambrose: It becomes a boil.

Jessica: It becomes a massive, pulsating boil.

Ambrose: Gross.

Jessica: And she leaves the auditorium to go to the bathroom. And in the bathroom, the boil explodes.

Ambrose: In neon green.

Jessica: In neon green fluid all over the mirror. And she turns into a demon. And the actress playing her

Ambrose: Geretta Geretta! Who is a legend! And we have to talk about her because her story is insane.

Jessica: Oh, please talk about her.

Ambrose: So Geretta, who is an American from Portland, Oregon

Jessica: Which I didn’t know.

Ambrose: Which I didn’t know either! So she’s doing this Off-Broadway theater in New York. It’s some kind of improv with a group called Rusty Nails, which is a great name for an improv group.

Jessica: Top-tier improv name.

Ambrose: And somehow she ends up in Italy doing horror movies. And she does a movie called Rats: Night of Terror right before this.

Jessica: Which I need to watch.

Ambrose: Oh, you definitely have to watch. Anyway, she plays a tomboy named Chocolate, which for the ’80s, you have to know was a different time. And then she lands Demons. And the stuff she does in this movie, the twitching, the crocodile smile, the physical weirdness of her transformation—it was all improv. All her. And she told Bava, "Let me try something," and she just started moving like a broken puppet. And Bava was like, "Great! Do that!" That’s the blueprint for every demon in the movie.

Jessica: So she basically designed the demons.

Ambrose: Of course she did! And then here’s the part that got me. After all of this, she goes back to the States and she gets her MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute.

Jessica: Which is a real degree.

Ambrose: And let’s not forget, it’s also a hard degree. And then she just goes to Ireland

Jessica: To teach!

Ambrose: Yes, to teach cross-community writing workshops between Catholic and Protestant writers

.Jessica: So, the Demon Queen of Italian horror became a peace-builder in Belfast.

Ambrose: That was the arc. That was the resume.

Jessica: And that’s a life.

Ambrose: That sure is the life. And meanwhile, her character, Rosemary, comes back from the bathroom looking like a monster, attacks Carmen, who is the second character to turn. And Carmen, bleeding and dying, runs behind the projection screen. And this is the iconic moment

Jessica: because on screen, the horror movie is playing out. The on-screen demon is killing people, and behind the screen, Carmen is finishing her transformation, and then she bursts through the screen.

Ambrose: Physically bursts!

Ambrose: Yes, she physically bursts through the movie screen, tearing it. And at that exact moment, the movie in the movie and the real movie—which is still a movie, obviously, we’re watching Demons

Jessica: Obviously.

Ambrose: —they collapse into each other. There’s no screen anymore. The movie is the room. The room is the movie. And once that happens, everybody in the theater is inside the horror movie.Jessica: And that’s when they go to leave and discover

Ambrose: doors are bricked up.

Jessica: They sure are. But by who?

Ambrose: We don’t know.

Jessica: So we never find out.

Ambrose: Nope, never. It’s never explained.

Ambrose: Okay, so how did one guy in a metal mask brick up every exit of a large theater during a movie screening without anyone noticing?

Jessica: That’s the mystery. Or that the movie just didn’t care to explain it.

Ambrose: Well, that just sucks. Anyway, you know what? At this point, when we go back and watch this again and really think about it, that must have really sucked to watch this movie for the first time and never know how he did it. Or they didn’t care back then.

Ambrose: That’s a good point.

Jessica: So we’re just along for the ride then.

Ambrose: Yep, and the ride is insane! Because now the demons are multiplying. Every scratch, every bite you turn, which is zombie logic basically, but faster. And the survivors are scrambling. And this is where we meet Tony the Pimp.

Jessica: Oh my God, Tony.

Ambrose: I know, right? The man.

Jessica: Oh, he is definitely the man. Who is played by Bobby Rhodes, who is actually Italian, who was born in Livorno.

Ambrose: Again, I didn’t know that.

Jessica: Oh, I didn’t know either! And he talks about it in interviews, how hard it was to be a Black actor in Italy in the ’60s because there were basically no parts. And he’d mostly get work when American productions came to Rome and needed extras. But by the ’80s, he’s carved out this niche as a character actor and stuntman. And then he gets Demons and he just... he takes over.

Jessica: Every line he has

Ambrose: Yes, every single line! "It’s an instrument of evil." Which, by the way, is a dubbed line, because this movie is shot in what they called "the international style." Everybody spoke their native language on set, then the whole thing got dubbed in post.

Jessica: Which is why the dialogue sounds the way it sounds.

Ambrose: Which is why this movie has that specific ’80s Italian horror feel where everything is a quarter-second off.

Jessica: And I love it now.

Ambrose: Me too!

Jessica: When I was younger, I thought it was a flaw.

Ambrose: Really? Because I thought the same thing.

Jessica: Now I think it adds to the dream logic. Like this movie is not quite real, which for a movie about reality breaking down inside a horror screen is accidentally perfect.

Ambrose: Oh, it’s the best kind of perfect.

Jessica: Oh definitely the best kind.

Ambrose: Oh it’s the best kind for sure. The teeth!

Jessica: Oh my God, yeah.

Ambrose: And the teeth are so gross.

Jessica: That’s because the demon teeth are literally pushing the human teeth out of the gum, like in a close-up. So the mechanical mouthpiece in, which holds the demon fangs, come up underneath the human teeth and drop right out the actor’s mouth and land right on the bathroom floor one by one. And it’s just

Jessica: —it’s craftsmanship disgust.

Ambrose: You got it! Craftsmanship disgust. That’s the whole genre in two words.

Jessica: Put it on a shirt.

Ambrose: Second shirt of the episode! And the fingernails... they did the same thing with the fingernails. The demon talons pushing the human nails right off the fingers. And then there’s the backburster scene.

Jessica: The backburster!

Ambrose: Yeah, where a fully formed tiny demon erupts out of a woman’s spine.

Jessica: Oh, like Alien.

Ambrose: Yeah, just like Alien, but sillier and somehow worse.

Jessica: Worse in a fun way.

Ambrose: Isn’t that the truth. And then my absolute favorite piece of effects trivia—the glowing demon eyes.

Jessica: Which is iconic.

Ambrose: They’re iconic for sure. They’re the thing everybody pictures when they picture this movie. And they were done on set with no post-production using—get this—cheap refractive paper, Scotchlite, the stuff they put on street signs.

Jessica: No way!

Ambrose: Yes way. Bava and Stivaletti stuck little pieces of Scotchlite on the actors’ eyes and then put a light right next to the camera lens. And when the light hit the paper, it bounced right back into the lens and made that glow.

Jessica: Now that’s just genius.

Ambrose: Right? It’s that "We don’t have money, figure it out" genius.

Jessica: That’s the whole Italian horror industry in one sentence.

Jessica: It really was. Okay, so the survivors are barricading the balcony. They’re pushing a Coca-Cola vending machine against the stairs. And here is my favorite piece of production trivia in any horror movie ever.

Jessica: Okay.

Ambrose: They had to turn the Coca-Cola cans away from the camera.

Jessica: Really?

Ambrose: Yeah, so when the characters drank from the cans, the logo is deliberately facing away.

Jessica: Why?

Ambrose: Because Coca-Cola didn’t sign off on it and they were worried about legal action.

Jessica: So, let me get this straight.

Ambrose: Okay.

Jessica: In this movie, we have eye-gouging, we have teeth being pushed out of people’s mouths by demon fangs, we have a miniature demon bursting out of a woman’s back like a second puberty

Ambrose: Now that’s funny.

Jessica: —we have cocaine snorted out of a soda can, we have sex workers, we have a helicopter in a movie theater

Ambrose: Uh-huh.

Jessica: but God forbid the Coca-Cola logo shows up.

Ambrose: Yeah, go figure. The logo was where they drew the line.

Jessica: I just can’t believe that is where they drew the line.

Ambrose: The priorities of the 1980s, I tell you.

Jessica: It’s just wild.

Ambrose: And speaking of the cocaine, can we please talk about the cocaine punks?

Jessica: Oh, I’ve been waiting for you to bring that part up.

Ambrose: Okay, there is a subplot in this movie. Go figure, of all things—a subplot! In a movie that already doesn’t have a main plot. But anyways, there are four punks driving around Berlin in a stolen car, and one of them is named Baby Pig and one of them is named Hot Dog.

Jessica: Now that is funny. Hot Dog.

Ambrose: I know. Where do they come up with these names? It’s hard enough to take this movie seriously.

Jessica: Right.

Ambrose: And they are snorting cocaine out of the exact same Coca-Cola can we were just talking about.

Jessica: Ah, the coke can returns.

Ambrose: Which is funny, because they really wanted Coca-Cola in this movie. Anyway, there’s this great quote from Kim Newman, who is a film critic who reviewed this movie at the time. And he said the punks in this movie sound like they were written by—and I’m quoting—"middle-aged imagination rather than the streets of Berlin.”

Jessica: That is the most accurate review I have ever heard.

Ambrose: It’s so accurate! These are not punks. These are what middle-aged Italian screenwriters in 1985 thought punks were doing.

Jessica: Which is exclusively drugs and driving.

Ambrose: Oh, and don’t forget about the yelling too. So we’ve got drugs, driving, and the yelling. Oh, and maybe a mohawk. That’s the full vocabulary.

Jessica: And they break into the Metropol from the back of the building, which breaches the quarantine and spreads the infection. Which is the reason the whole city ends up on fire at the end of this movie.

Jessica: It’s because of Hot Dog, right?

Ambrose: It sure is.

Jessica: So Hot Dog is Patient Zero for the apocalypse.

Ambrose: And he’s the reason the world ends.

Jessica: So what you’re saying is that Hot Dog ended the world.

Ambrose: I know. Can you imagine that? Now put that on my gravestone.

Jessica: Okay, so by the time we get to the third act, most of the cast is dead. Tony dies a hero. Big shout-out to Tony.

Ambrose: Tony!

Jessica: And it’s basically down to George and Cheryl.

Ambrose: Oh right, our preppy college boy and our Final Girl.

Jessica: And George looks around the lobby and goes, "You know what? I’m going to ride the dirt bike.”

Ambrose: Yeah. He’s going to ride this dirt bike right through the theater with a samurai sword to the sound of Accept.

Jessica: You mean "Fast as a Shark," right?

Ambrose: Yes, "Fast as a Shark" by Accept, which is a German speed metal song.

Ambrose: And it’s such a good song!

Jessica: It’s a perfect song for this scene. And this is where the movie just decides it’s a music video.

Ambrose: Wait, it’s a music video?

Jessica: It’s just a music video for seven minutes. And honestly, by that point, the movie has earned it. We’ve been through an hour of carnage. Everybody we cared about is dead.

Jessica: I just can’t believe Tony’s gone.

Ambrose: I know it’s hard to believe. And Rosemary’s gone. Kathy’s gone. It’s time to let the guy ride the motorcycle already.

Jessica: Just let him ride.

Ambrose: That’s what I just said!

Jessica: And then we can’t forget the helicopter.

Ambrose: Oh my God, you’re right. The helicopter!

Jessica: Which we still don’t know where it came from.

Ambrose: I know, right? It just falls out of the sky.

Jessica: And it crashes through the roof of the theater!

Ambrose: Yeah, for no reason.

Jessica: And George climbs into it. Not to fly it

Ambrose: Obviously not.

Jessica: because it’s crashed and it’s broken. But he turns on the rotors. The blades. Just the blades.

Ambrose: And it was like a blender.

Jessica: A demon blender!

Ambrose: Now that was something I was not expecting.

Jessica: I know, a demon blender in a movie theater. Who would have thought that?

Ambrose: Which, if you think about it, it’s kind of sick.

Jessica: And completely ridiculous.

Ambrose: But also sick.

Jessica: Yes, both things are true.

Ambrose: And then he uses the helicopter’s grappling hook.

Jessica: Okay, I need to ask—why does the helicopter have a grappling hook?

Ambrose: Who knows!

Jessica: Well, that helps.

Ambrose: Hey, I don’t know, but it does. And he uses it to pull himself and Cheryl up through the hole in the roof. And the masked man is waiting for them up there, who is played by Michele Soavi, by the way.

Jessica: Hold on! Isn’t that the same person who also directs the movie within the movie?

Ambrose: Yes! Because they were on such a tight schedule, Soavi was filming the cemetery scenes on one soundstage while Bava did the theater on another. And then Soavi goes on to direct The Church in 1989.

Jessica: Which was originally supposed to be Demons 3, right?

Ambrose: Yes! And then it wasn’t. But then in some countries, it got released as Demons 3 anyway.

Jessica: Which brings us to the fake Demons.

Ambrose: Oh boy.

Ambrose: The fake Demons are my favorite rabbit hole in all of horror. Okay, follow along. The real Demons 2 comes out in 1986. Bava and Argento, same team. Apartment complex instead of a theater. That counts. That’s canon. After that, pure chaos.

Jessica: Yeah, just pure chaos.

Ambrose: Okay, let me break this whole thing down for you. So, we have The Church in 1989, which was also released as Demons 3 in some markets, but let’s be clear, it wasn’t a sequel. Then you have The Ogre, which was also released in ’89, and it was also directed by Bava. And they also called this movie Demons 3 in other markets, but it was really a TV movie about a haunted castle, and it didn’t even have a single demon in it.

Jessica: Oh, what a wicked web they have spun. So you’re saying that The Church and The Ogre were Demons 3, and that Ogre was a TV movie with no demons in it?

Ambrose: Nope. Then you had Black Demons, which came out in 1991. They also called that one Demons 3, but this was a voodoo zombie movie in Brazil and it was directed by Umberto Lenzi.

Jessica: So they were completely unrelated.

Ambrose: Yes, completely unrelated. Then Demons 4 is a movie called The Sect, not related also. Then we have Demons 5, which was a thriller called The Devil’s Veil, not related. And Demons 6—now this is my favorite—was called De Profundis.

Jessica: Which is actually

Ambrose: which is actually a secret sequel to Suspiria!

Jessica: Wait, they took a Suspiria sequel and called it a Demons sequel?

Ambrose: That’s exactly what I’m saying. They took Suspiria’s sequel and they called it Demons 6.

Jessica: Okay... why?

Ambrose: Because in 1980s Italy, distribution worked on one question: "Does it have demons, witches, or zombies?" And if the answer was yes, they called it Demons whatever number they were on.

Jessica: And the wildest one has to be Cemetery Man

Ambrose: Michele Soavi’s Cemetery Man, which is actually a masterpiece.

Jessica: Yes it was.

Ambrose: Got released in some small markets as Demons ’95, which is an incredible title that tells you nothing.

Jessica: Yeah, nothing at all about the movie. God, I love Italian horror.

Ambrose: They are the best. It’s the best genre because everybody’s just trying stuff and nobody cares.

Jessica: You got that right. Okay, so back to the real movie. George kills the masked man by impaling his head on some rebar on the roof.

Jessica: He just casually impales his head.

Ambrose: And he and Cheryl climb down to the streets of Berlin. They think they’re safe. And then they realize

Ambrose: Yeah, they realize the whole city is on fire.

Jessica: The whole damn city.

Ambrose: And the infection got out. The demons are everywhere. Buildings are burning, people are dying in the streets, and a Jeep of armed survivors picks them up. It’s like an entire heavily armed family.

Jessica: And you think to yourself, where did they come from?

Ambrose: Right, but hey, with this movie, we don’t have to worry about it. And they drive off into this burning apocalyptic wasteland and the movie ends. Roll credit.

Jessica: And it’s so cynical because

Ambrose: Why is it so cynical?

Jessica: Cheryl has already been scratched.

Ambrose: Wait, wasn’t she already scratched?

Jessica: So the escape is a lie. She’s in the back of the truck with strangers, one of them is becoming a demon right now, and the movie just cuts.

Ambrose: Now that is the most Italian horror ending of all time. You didn’t win. Nobody wins. The end. Play the metal song. And I just want to point out that the metal is part of why this movie works, by the way. We haven’t really talked about the soundtrack.

Jessica: Oh my God, it is so good.

Ambrose: So, Claudio Simonetti from Goblin does the score. The guy who did Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead. His resume is just insane, and he builds this pulsing synth thing that’s basically club music. Like Simonetti himself has said in interviews that this was the first time he really went all-in on electronic tools. The keyboards, the drum machines he’d been messing with in the mid-’80s, he just committed.

Jessica: And it sounds like 1985 Berlin.

Ambrose: Oh, it sounds like you walked into a Berlin nightclub in 1985. Which—and this is the part that got me—the Metropol, the building where they filmed this, is literally a nightclub now.

Ambrose: Oh wow, now that s… is funny.

Jessica: And get this, it’s called Goya, and it’s in Berlin. And you can go there today.

Ambrose: No, you can go.

Jessica: And the best part is, you can go stand where Cheryl got her cursed ticket.

Ambrose: Oh that’s perfect. And you can order a drink.

Jessica: And the wildest thing about this movie is that the music became the actual building.

Ambrose: Haha, now that’s what I call full circle.

Jessica: Yep, full circle.

Ambrose: So what I’m hearing is that this is going to be a podcast field trip.

Jessica: It’s already on my list of things to do.

Ambrose: Alrighty then, put it on the list. And we can’t forget the metal songs too. Like Accept, Billy Idol, Mötley Crüe, Saxon

Jessica: Rick Springfield.

Ambrose: Wait, Rick Springfield?

Jessica: Yes, Rick Springfield is in this movie. There is a Rick Springfield song in a movie where people are getting decapitated by a samurai sword.

Ambrose: Well, that sums up the ’80s.

Jessica: No, that sums up the entire decade in one sentence.

Ambrose: And Simonetti has this track on the soundtrack called "The Evil One.”

Ambrose: Oh, it’s good.

Jessica: That he composed completely backwards.

Ambrose: Wasn’t it a joke about the Satanic Panic?

Jessica: Yes, which is such a good joke.

Ambrose: That’s because at the time, if you remember, people were freaking out that heavy metal records had hidden satanic messages when you played them in reverse. And Simonetti just went, "Fine, I’ll write it backwards. Here."

Jessica: He was like, "You want backwards? I’ll give you backwards.”

Ambrose: You just got to love him.

Jessica: I do love him.

Ambrose: Of course you do. And that actually connects to the bigger thing this movie is doing. Because in the ’80s, you had the "Video Nasties" panic in the UK, Margaret Thatcher, Mary Whitehouse, the Video Recordings Act of 1984, and people were getting prosecuted for distributing horror movies.

Jessica: And Bava and Argento go, "Hold my beer.”

Ambrose: Right! And they’re like, "You think horror movies are corrupting the youth? Great. Let me make you the grossest movie of the decade where horror movies literally corrupt the youth. And let me make it fun.”

Jessica: It’s a punk rock horror film.

Ambrose: Oh, it’s so punk rock. It’s the most punk rock horror movie of the decade.

Jessica: And that’s actually what this movie is. It’s a middle finger with a dirt bike.

Ambrose: That should have been the tagline. I’m putting that on a shirt. Okay, it’s survival check time.

Jessica: Ooh, survival check. Okay. You’re at the Metropol.

Ambrose: I’m way ahead of you. I already took the ticket.

Jessica: Hold on, I’m doing the survival check. Don’t jump ahead.

Ambrose: Fine. Go ahead.

Jessica: Okay, well, since you already have your ticket, do you go in and see this mystery movie?

Ambrose: Well, knowing myself very well, I’d have to say it would be a really—and I mean really—hard pass. And the reason I say that is because I would be so gone.

Jessica: Oh, you’d be the first to die.

Ambrose: Yeah, I’d be Rosemary.

Jessica: Huh. Wait, you’d be Rosemary?

Ambrose: What I mean is I’d put on the mask.

Jessica: Oh, you’d put on the mask.

Ambrose: Yes, and I’d scratch my face.

Jessica: Yeah, that makes sense.

Ambrose: And I’d turn into the first demon and start the whole infection. And I would be Patient Zero, and I would be the one who ends the world.

Jessica: So, you’d be Hot Dog is what you’d be.

Ambrose: Yep, I’d be Hot Dog. I’d be the Hot Dog of the apocalypse. Okay, Miss Smartass, what about you?

Jessica: Oh, I’d survive.

Ambrose: Oh, of course you’d survive.

Jessica: Yes, I’d be the first person going, "Why are the doors bricked up? Who bricked up the doors? When did that happen? There’s a back entrance. There has to be.”

Ambrose: Of course you’d go find the back entrance.

Jessica: Yes, I would find the back entrance before anyone else even noticed there was a problem.

Ambrose: And you’d grab the sword first too, right?

Jessica: Oh, I’d grab the sword before George even saw the sword.

Ambrose: That’s because George is slow on the uptake.

Jessica: Yeah, George is a late bloomer. He earns it in the third act, but First Half George is coasting.

Ambrose: Oh, I agree. So again, I’d be dead and you would be the sole survivor.

Jessica: Hey, what can I say? I’m smarter than you when it comes to horror movies.

Ambrose: Whatever. Okay, it’s time we take this conversation down into the "Critics’ Crypt" and lay down our final thought of this movie.

Jessica: Yeah, we have a lot to discuss about this one, that’s for sure. Lead the way, Crypt Boy.

[Eerie, classical harpsichord music begins]

Voiceover: Gather close, listener, if you dare. The air grows cold and the light begins to fade. Can you hear them? Two brave souls have foolishly left the safety of the world above. They descend the spiraling stair, deeper and deeper into the damp darkness where cinematic skeletons remain unburied. They come not to praise the dead, but to dissect them. Watch your step, friends. You have now entered... the Critics’ Crypt.

30:05 Ambrose: Okay, I need you to know something. I’ve been down here thinking about that boil scene this whole time and I can’t stop.

Jessica: Wait, the one that explodes in the bathroom?

Ambrose: Yeah, that one. I can’t shake it. We’re in a crypt, there’s something dripping from that corner over there, and all I can picture is Rosemary at that mirror.

Jessica: Well, you’re welcome for that image.

Ambrose: I hate it here. But I also love it here. Okay, Demons. Let’s do this.

Jessica: Let’s do it.

Ambrose: Okay, I’ll say it first. Geretta. We talked about her during the episode, but I need to say it again in this room, formally, for the record. Everything she does in that bathroom is improvised—the twitching, the way she moves like something’s gone wrong in her skeleton. She just started doing that and Bava kept the camera rolling. And the whole movie kind of hinges on that moment working. Now, if Rosemary’s transformation is silly or unconvincing, the whole thing falls apart right there in the first act.

Jessica: Oh, you hit it right on the head. And it absolutely doesn’t fall apart. She sells it completely and you believe that something bad has happened to her, not just a stuntwoman in makeup.

Ambrose: Right. And there’s a second where she’s still kind of herself, and then she’s just... not. And Geretta does that with her face and her body, and there’s no post-production help whatsoever.

Jessica: And then she becomes the template for the rest of the demons. All from what she invented in that bathroom.

Ambrose: Haha, oh yeah. She is the one who designed them. I mean, she designed all of the demons just from her logic from what she did on that bathroom floor.

Jessica: Oh definitely. Okay, my thing is the Carmen moment, when she bursts through the screen.

Ambrose: Oh my God, yeah.

Jessica: Because you spend the first half of this movie watching two movies at once—the one in the theater and the one happening to the audience. And the whole time there’s this invisible wall between them, and then Carmen just removes it physically. She just tears through the literal screen. And now they’re the same movie.

Ambrose: Let me just say this. For the times it was such a great idea, and it was well executed—like just tear a hole, and that’s the whole effect, and it worked to perfection.

32:14 Jessica: True. But it worked because it was real. There’s an actual hole and the camera is on the other side. It’s not a cut or a visual trick. She literally just comes through the screen.

Ambrose: And here’s what gets me. That idea—the movie infecting the audience, the horror spreading through the act of watching—nobody gives this movie credit for that. Everybody’s talking about Scream, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. And meanwhile, Bava did it 10 years earlier with a dirt bike and a helicopter that nobody can explain.

Jessica: The helicopter nobody can explain.

Ambrose: Yeah, like where did it come from, Jessica?

Jessica: It’s a mystery, we’ll never know.

Ambrose: That’s true. Okay, what didn’t work for you?

Jessica: Oh, that’s simple. The masked man.

Ambrose: Yeah, I’m with you on that one.

Jessica: The whole movie you’re waiting for an answer on him. Who is he? Why did he hand out tickets? How did he brick up a large theater while it was full of people and nobody noticed? And then at the end, George just impales his head on some rebar and that’s it. No answer, nothing.

Ambrose: I know, right? Just some rebar, a head, and then some credits rolling.

Jessica: And I don’t mind ambiguity when it’s intentional. But this doesn’t feel intentional. It feels like they just forgot to write that part.

Ambrose: I can definitely see that. I think they were so focused on the chaos inside the theater that the framing device just stopped mattering to them at some point.

Jessica: And it shows, because every time I watch it, I’m still hoping for something and all I get is that damn rebar.

Ambrose: Haha. Well, my thing is the cocaine punks. And look, I don’t hate them. The bit with Hot Dog being Patient Zero for the apocalypse—I love that conceptually.

Jessica: Right.

Ambrose: But structurally they exist entirely to breach the quarantine and spread the infections. And the movie doesn’t even bother to make you care about any of them first.

Jessica: Right. They’re just a plot function in a mohawk.

Ambrose: That’s exactly what they were. And like when Kim Newman said they sounded like they were written by "middle-aged imagination" rather than any actual character. Because they’re not really punks. They’re what someone who has never met a punk in 1985—it was just someone who thought that was what punks were.

Jessica: Yeah, they missed that part big time. It kind of came off as offensive towards punks with the drugs, driving, and yelling.

Ambrose: And that’s the full vocabulary right there. But again, I don’t hate them. Hot Dog ended the world. That’s a legacy.

Jessica: That is technically a legacy.

Ambrose: All right, let’s get to the main reason we come down here every week. It’s Coffin Time. And

Ambrose: Oh, I’m going first this week.

Jessica: Yes, I’m passing the baton to you this week.

Ambrose: Okay then. For me, I have to say I’m giving it a four and a half out of five coffins. Now, hear me out. Because I love this movie. You got the effects, Geretta, the screen rupture, and Simonetti’s score. You know, that meta concept. Then you have the dirt bike music video in the third act. All of that is a five. But then you have the masked man thing and the punks as pure plot distractions. That is what knocked it down a hair for me. The mystery promises something and then just... doesn’t pay off. And I can’t fully let that go.

Jessica: Okay wait. See, that’s where we split. Because I’m giving it a full five out of five coffins this week. Because here’s the thing: the masked man not being explained, the helicopter nobody can account for, the bricked-up doors with no clear answer—I don’t think those are mistakes. No, I think that’s the movie working exactly as intended. You’re not supposed to know how any of it happened. You’re trapped the same way the audience is trapped, and the movie refuses to give you an exit, including a narrative one.

Ambrose: Okay then. You have some really good points, and I hate them all.

Jessica: Yeah, I know you do.

Ambrose: And I just want to say that you genuinely had really good points, and you are making me rethink my rating.

Jessica: Well damn, that’s a first for you!

Ambrose: I know, right? But I’m sticking to my four and a half. But spiritually, I’m at a five.

Jessica: You say four and a half, but you really mean five.

Ambrose: Yes, I really want to say five. But I just can’t say five because of everything I said. Hot Dog would be devastated.

Jessica: Yeah, I know. But Hot Dog should have thought about it before he ended the world.

Jessica: Okay, can we please leave now? Something just dripped on me while you were doing your coffin math.

Ambrose: Haha, now you know how I felt last week.

Jessica: Well, I’m wringing out my sleeve as we speak.

Ambrose: Okay, is that a new thing?

Jessica: Everything about this crypt is a new thing. Can we just go now?

Ambrose: Okay, okay, I’m going. Jeez.

Jessica: Well, move it faster, Crypt Boy.

[Music and horror atmospheric sounds]

Voiceover: Silence has fallen upon the Critics’ Crypt once again. The screams have faded, and the reels are back in their graves once again. You have survived the visit, but take heed: we will always keep a cold spot ready for your return inside the Critics’ Crypt. Sleep well, my little critics. As for now, the crypt is closed... for now.

Ambrose: Okay, so we just did Demons.

Jessica: And I have questions. So many questions. None of which will ever be answered.

Ambrose: That’s the deal with Demons though. You just kind of accept that a helicopter appeared inside a movie theater and you move on.

Jessica: You move on or you go insane. Those are your two options.

Ambrose: Both are valid. So, here’s what I want from you this week. Go back and rewatch Demons, and this time pay close attention to the lobby. Just the lobby. And I want you to really sit with how fast everything falls apart in there. Like, the speed at which that situation deteriorates is genuinely insane. And I feel like most people are too busy screaming to notice it.

Jessica: Which is fair. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Ambrose: No, you cannot unsee it. Anyway, we’ll be back next week with another movie that’ll probably do something to us emotionally.

Jessica: Hey, what can we say? It’s a lifestyle at this point.

Ambrose: It really is. All right, don’t go to the movies alone. Use the buddy system.

Jessica: The buddy system? Did you just say that?

Ambrose: Yeah, why?

Jessica: Okay, Grandpa Jones. Who actually says that anymore?

Ambrose: Well, I don’t know, it just popped in my head. Anyway, we’ll see you next week.

Jessica: Yes, bye!

Ambrose: Bye!