Saturday, May 17, 2014

Devil Master (1977)

aka Demon Lover

How bad is it? It's often spectacularly bad.
Should you see it? Yes. And see the making-of film, too.

This was made with no budget in central Michigan by a first-time director (who actually went on to direct more films) with a very amateur cast and one professional - a sound man, so the sound's good even with a droning synthesizer score, but everything else is awful. The plot involves a guy in a long blond wig, who also co-wrote and co-produced under his real name, using satanism to gain power over people. His friends mostly take his parties as a lark, but things become ever more serious until they end up killing each other (and themselves). There's a cop investigating who ends up face-to-face with the devil and firing his gun at it. The main character wears one glove throughout the film; he allegedly cut off a finger for insurance fraud to help fund the movie! The guns and bullets are real and allegedly stolen from Ted Nugent! The scenes not featuring the devil master himself look like they were shot in sequence and you can see the strain in the actors as they grow increasingly unhappy. There's a gratuitous martial arts sequence in a bar, followed by one in a class that has nothing to do with anything. The version released under the original title "Demon Lover," is shorter; I believe it's missing a lengthy scene of full frontal nudity. The girlfriend of the sound guy filmed a documentary of the movie called "Demon Lover Diary," which is an excellent film and a real surprise, given the quality of Devil Master.

It's worth noting that one of the actors was an illustrator for "Howard the Duck" comics, so some of the characters have the names of famous illustrators, while others have the names of people associated with horror films.

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