Demonsoul (1995)

 

A fairly rare example of a British Shot-On-Video horror film from the 1990s (although it did bypass the UK market).  Demonsoul was a film I remember being mentioned in passing in a few of the horror mags of the time and I think FAB press’ Ten Years of Terror book (a fairly derogatory mention, if I recall correctly) but since its VHS release was confided to the States, Demonsoul quickly fell off the radar. The film’s profile only being raised slightly by its recent reappearance on a cheapo US DVD release, that partnered it with three other SOV titles. 

Erica Steele (Kerry Norton) is plagued by nightmares about black masses, vampirism and the mysterious Selena (Eileen Daly). “I wake up and I can never get back to sleep” Erica tells her shrink “then I turn up to work tied and restless, and piss everyone off”.  Visits to pervy hypnotherapist Dr Bucher (Daniel Jordan), who uses hypnosis as an excuse to grope female patients, don't help and soon Erica is seeing vampire Selena on the street and having visions of Selena fucking her boyfriend Alex. During one of his touchy feely sessions Bucher discovers that Erica is in fact being controlled by Dana.  No, not the Irish Eurovision song contest winner, rather Selena's long dead lesbian vampire lover of the same name. Bucher attempts to enter into a pact with Dana, even offering his secretary to her as a blood sacrifice. Only for it all to backfire on Bucher when Selena and her hooded followers kidnap him and Alex leading to some BDSM and spirited blood drinking by leather clad vampires. 

Demonsoul does have Eileen Daly's sapphic vampire shenanigans going for it, a shtick later to find a better known home in Razor Blade Smile (1998) a few years later. Alas, the film does tend to fall asleep when she isn't onscreen, leaving you with some flat supporting actors and echoey sound recording to test your patience. Norton and Jordan are fine, and contrary to the idea that actors who appear in SOV productions are on a hiding to nothing, seem to have enjoyed lengthy and successful careers, but when the one-movie-and-they’re-done cast members take to the screen, Demonsoul does get brought back down to a home movie level.  Along the way though there is gore, nudity, kinkiness and a few truly bizarre moments to wake you up like Alex being mobbed by cult members in a park, which apropos of nothing is intercut with shots of a cute l'ttle squirrel going about its business….awwww.  Allen Bryce, the editor of The Dark Side magazine also shows up as the head of a lunatic asylum towards the end.

Demonsoul’s credits reveal it to be the work of several pioneers of the American SOV scene.  Co-producer Matt Devlen was the man behind The Abomination (1986), one of the more famous SOV horror films of the Eighties.  Another producer Jerry Feifer was the mastermind behind the long running ‘Witchcraft’ movie series, which managed to make it to sixteen entries.  Demonsoul has the feel of a test movie, to see if Feifer’s Witchcraft formula of horror, sex and no-frills production values could work in a UK setting.  A test it presumably passed since Feifer temporarily relocated the Witchcraft series to the UK for 1998’s Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft which retained this film’s director and brought back Eileen Daly in its cast.  Too cash strapped for any gothic horror trappings (we only anecdotally hear about Dana’s persecution and death in ye olden times) Demonsoul is resolutely contemporary and despite its American financing resolutely British too.  The opening credits are a runaround of the capital that manages to include just about every piece of London iconography that you can think of, the Tower of London, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, double-decker buses, black cabs, red phone boxes.  This isn’t just a glamourous travelogue made with American tourists in mind though, Demonsoul is happy to get its hands dirty location wise, with SOV production values making 1990s Britain look even more colour drained than usual.  Demonsoul’s London takes in shots of garbage ridden streets, the stiflingly middle class blandness of the office Erica works at, while a dirty, disused church plays host to the majority of the horror film incidents here.  Then there is Erica’s lodgings, with its dirty kitchen sink, Jean-Luc Godard poster and where characters pass the time playing Monopoly, all of which feels on the money in terms of young people living on the low down in 1990s London.  Seemingly the only concessions to its intended American video market is a reference to Erica “needing a vacation” and a last minute appearance by R.J Bell, a Canadian actor who lent a bit of transatlantic flavor to many British productions of the era. 

As well as giving the vampire myth a contemporary spin, Demonsoul zips it up in a PVC costume and firmly entrenches it in the era’s fetish scene.  A reoccurring theme in Demonsoul, and the heart of its fetishistic appeal lays in seeing obnoxious, domineering men having the tables unexpectedly turned on them.  Erica, firmly under the influence of Dana, struts her stuff around the backstreets of London, attracting the attention of a longhaired bloke who slaps her about and calls her a bitch, only for her to hit back with dirty talk “let me go, you peasant” before baring her fangs and going for his jugular.  A gimpy guy clad in leather underwear and a dog collar is regularly brought out for Selena to straddle and torture with a knife, before her leather clad underlings make a bloody mess of him. This man’s lack of connections to other films suggesting he was here for the party rather than the acting experience.  Bucher is built up as such a repugnant creep, who only got into hypnotherapy after being discredited as a medium, and uses it to con women out of money and sexually molest them while they are unconscious.  Naturally, given the film’s fem-dom inclinations it is Bucher who suffers the most, as he is rendered powerless when Erica/Dana gets the upper hand during one of the hypnotherapy sessions, stripping off, becoming the dominate one sexually, then tearing off his shirt and biting his chest.  The ultimate frightmare of a predatory guy who likes ‘em passive and passed out.  Later on he is whisked off to by whipped by Selena, who adds insult to injury by tearing into his back with her fingernails “You’re pathetic, you worthless piece of slime”.  Demonsoul showcases the dominatrix bitch persona that Eileen Daly would take on a roll for many years, from Redemption VHS covers to the aforementioned Razor Blade Smile, before reinventing herself as a kooky, Big Brother contestant (although surely anyone who appeared in three Richard Driscoll movies along the way must surely have a masochistic streak to them as well). 

The first time I saw Demonsoul I have to admit that I didn’t make it all the way through, the second time I managed to get through it but didn’t like it, the third time around and I have to admit to warming to it, and I daresay the film might make a convert of me yet.  SOV productions do tend to be the unwashed urchins of the horror movie world though, in that it does take a bit of persistence, not to mention perseverance, in order to see any good in them.  The 1990s was a punishing time to be a British horror film fan, trust one who lived through it and spent a little too much time staring into that abyss.  You would hold out hope that the next film to come along would be a return to former glories, only to be confronted with bores like Beyond Bedlam, Tale of a Vampire, merely adequate schlock like Breeders and Proteus, or retarded garbage like Revenge of Billy the Kid and Funnyman.  Believe me, it is no coincidence that the same decade saw many adopt a backwards gazing stance and choose to rediscover later day Hammer and Amicus, plus the films of Pete Walker, Jose Larraz and Norman J Warren, rather than champion the present.  However Demonsoul does suggest that there was the odd glimmer of hope which we may have overlooked whilst we hurried back towards the comforting bosom of the 1970s.  So it’s sad to discover that the film's director Elisar Cabrera (billed here as Elisar C Kennedy) died recently at the young age of 49.