Shriek Show / Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) / Color / 1 disc / 88 minutes

BLACK DEMONS was released in 1991, but looks like a movie made in 1981, with a plot from about 1971, containing racist overtones from 1961.

The politically incorrect title of this fairly dull Italian flick literally refers to the ethnicity of its antagonists. The “demons” in question are Africans hellbent on killing white folk on a Brazilian coffee plantation. The hateful iconography of bondage and racial inequality are present — chains, leg irons and the noose. The upshot is, the living dead/zombies/demons don’t even get to fully enact their gory reparations. And that’s a shame because the victims here are utter tools, made even more idiotic by their stunted attempts at acting and the pompous, grandiose dialog they are issued.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi (1981’s brutal CANNNIBAL FEROX), BLACK DEMONS features a mostly unknown cast. Keith Van Hoven (HOUSE OF CLOCKS) stars as annoying Englishman Kevin, Sonia Curtis (MONSTER SQUAD) as his plucky girlfriend Jessica, and Kevin Bacon-wannnabe Joe Balogh (HITCHER IN THE DARK, also by Lenzi), as her half-brother Dick.

We find this unlikely trio in Rio de Janeiro where they have been on a mission recording “Samba rhythms” for the past 10 days. Perpetually unhappy Dick accuses his companions of acting like “packaged tourists” and stomps off in search of black magic. Inexplicably, his character is fascinated with Macumba, sort of a localized voodoo. He finds evidence of the religion in a back alley and despite his lily-white upbringing, manages to score an invite to a Macumba ceremony, complete with nude tribal dancing, drumming and chicken sacrifice. Dick secretly records the ceremony with his portable tape player, passes out and awakes the next morning with a hangover and a silver Macumba charm around his neck.

The next day the trio heads 200 miles out of town, but car problems halt their journey. They are rescued by local 20-somethings Sonia and Jose (The latter apparently subscribes to the Wilmer Valderrama school of acting), who allow them to spend the night in their crumbling plantation house, complete with creepy housekeeper Maria. For unknown reasons Dick heads to the plantation graveyard and plays the tape of the Macumba ceremony recording. This apparently causes the dead to rise, specifically, six angry black men who were blinded and put to death years ago after they attempted to escape the enslavement of the plantation.

Sonia, roaming the plantation at night in her cute black panties, is the first victim of the restless undead. The next hour is a painfully unexciting cat-and-mouse game between the undead and the remaining victims, who eventually deduce, via the standard “local legend” exposition, that they are being hunted by the dead slaves and the slaves won’t rest until they “kill six white people.” The housekeeper eventually gets the axe, because she was trying to counteract the demons with white magic. Dick, a victim of circumstances, ends up being the scapegoat.

Naturally, Kevin, the Caucasion Sensation from England, saves the day with some MacGyver-esque Molotov-cocktail-fu that accompanies the film’s “best” lines of dialog.

Kevin: “If what we fear is true, they may attack us at any moment. We’ve gotta forestall them!”
Jessica: “What’s the use? There’s no defense against the living dead!”
Kevin: “That’s where you’re wrong. There is! Fire! There’s some gasoline in the tool shed!”

It’s video game action from here on. Poor Dick gets a pitchfork to the chest, the undead get vanquished in a rain of fire and Kev and Jess drive off into the sunset.

Despite the packaging’s promise that my DVD of BLACK DEMONS was “uncut” for the first time in America, I wondered what was so violent that it needed to be cut at all. Sure, there’s some eyeball ripping here and there, but it’s all rather comic. I was rooting for the undead all the way, hoping that by the end they would have flipped the script on “The Man.” The premise isn’t particularly bad; it just needs tweaking. Well, a good bit of tweaking.

I can accept a certain level of camp and poorly-delivered dialog, but BLACK DEMONS was just utterly dull. The characters are so idiotic, they make the kids of FRIDAY THE 13TH and other 80s slasher ilk look like quantum physicists. And the dialog, poor as it is, is recited with the gusto of a bored community theater stand-in.

Here’s what I liked though; the undead looked awesome. They were sufficiently horrifying with their festered skin and dead eyes, and each carried a unique weapon: One had an axe, another a butcher knife, one had a hook, and so on. I can appreciate that attention to detail.

BLACK DEMONS is known in Italy as DEMONI 3, apparently to build on the success of DEMONI and DEMONI 2, both of which were superior films directed by Lamberto Bava. This film is NOT a sequel to Bava’s films.

The DVD features a decent print of the film and a bonus features including trailers for BLACK DEMONS, KILLING BIRDS, and ZOMBIE 2, 3 and 4. There’s an interview with Lenzi and an interview with scriptwriter Olga Pehar.

Overall, I give it two stars. Not completely bad, but bad enough.

Check out a trailer for this film below: