My Demon Lover (1987)

Movie and TV Mistress here again, as it is Valentines Day I have decided to review a 80's Cheesy romantic monster film called My Demon Lover staring Scott Valentine, who played Nick Mallory's boyfriend in Family Ties.

The plot of this film is your basic Beauty and the Beast but not as classy as the Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman TV show.  This movie was written by Leslie Ray who also wrote and produced The Fresh Prince of Bel Air so at least he went up in the world.

The movie opens with a fun 80's song and seeing a girl (Denny) walking home in New York having a dog steel some food from her and then her Boyfriend and cronies pushing her over as they steal all her stuff and she doesn't seem to understand that he is leaving her, so she is your literal push over. her friend Sonia arrives to help her and she is your classic strong sexy Latino, who is also a little psychic; for a psychic and friend of Denny's she is not great, as she didn't even know it was Denny's Birthday, plus she can't figure out who the bad guy of the movie is, but whatever.

While this is going on we are introduced to Scott Valentine's character Kas, he is a homeless Street performer, the type of guy you try to ignore and stay away from when on the subway. He loves women so much so he gains Pennywise the clowns teeth and red contact lenses.  We then see a scene on a subway platform with a woman screaming and falling down dead, it looks and sounds like the opening to The Equalizer.

Meanwhile Sonia decides to cheer Denny up and take her out they stop at Sonia's occult shop and we see her psychic powers predicting a phone conversation.  They head to a bar and Sonia tells Denny that she attracts scum, dogs, alley cats and actors then we are introduced to a dork as Sonia calls him played by Robert Trebor who is probably best remembered for playing Salmoneus in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.  At no point in the conversation do they introduce themselves but they some how know each others names and Charles later has Denny's number even though she doesn't give it to him, maybe he's psychic too.

We see Kas meet a street Psychic who tells him to put his curse away and stay away because there is nothing that can help him, we don't see him again until 32 minutes into the film when he shows what happened to Kas on a crystal doorknob and explains what he has to do to remove the curse, just your classic do something noble. This guy then returns at the end of the film for the final battle.

Denny goes to a vegetarian dinner and we have a really pointless scene involving a fat guy dying and falling in his leek soup, she orders a fruit burger and sits outside in a seat next too all the trash which is where Kas was sleeping he then bugs Denny for a bite of her burger and he takes a bit then spits it on her and then follows her home calling her fruit burger.  I'm starting to wonder about all the romance films why do people fall in love with their stalkers, seriously think about it, you have Sleepless in Seattle, Secret of my Success, even Sandra Bullock in All about Steve and well Twilight is the most obvious one.

Well it's lucky he followed her home because Chip her ex who stole her stuff turns up to beat her up because he got caught by the police and blames her any way we see the first of many demon looks of Kas in the film.  Denny lets Kas stay with her and the next day offers to be friends with him, no sex or romance and they agree...it doesn't last very long the next thing you see is a classic 80's romantic montage of them hanging out eating ice cream playing on kids climbing frames, you get the picture they fall in love in one day, so much for being just friends, Harry and Sally were friends longer then this.

Meanwhile we have a killer on the loose storyline a man is clawing and killing women and the press are calling him the mangler, the actual film the Mangler is scarier then this sub-plot.  Sonia's sister was attacked and relives the experience and Sonia sees and feels it too, because you know she's "Psychic" Sonia's cop friend doesn't believe her when she explains the mangler is the devil. 

So it's this point in the film we find out that Kas as a kid made out with a girl in front of all his friends, the girls Romanian grandmother caught them and cursed him with a Pazaski, which basically means he becomes possessed whenever he gets horny and he turns into a demon, and as Kas loves Denny he can't sleep with her, he also believes he is the mangler.  Kas gives Denny a birthday night and she tries to sleep with him he freaks out and tells her everything and she tells him to prove it so they make out and he changes into the second version of the Demon with telekinesis.

We have Charles reappear in the film phoning Denny and leaving messages about things they could do one of them being a command performance for Princess Diana and Prince Charles of Sylvester Stallone doing Dickens, probably the funniest throw away lines I've heard in a movie.

Kas has disappeared and Denny goes walking back to the places from the earlier montage while the same music plays and we see another couple plying around the climbing frame, is there a park in New York that is just for adult couples to play at because there are no kids in sight. She sees a guy in the garbage outside the vegetarian diner who looks like Scott Valentines ugly doppelgänger; of course like all lost things Kas is in the last place she looks at her house with his bags packed ready to leave.

She persuades him to stay, she tells him she doesn't believe he is the Mangler and says "If you start looking at me like a lite snack, I’m out of there and in therapy before you know it" it's laughable that it would take that to send her to therapy, I think she needed therapy at the start when she was defending her ex boyfriend.  So they go for a drink, yeah I would have to be really drunk to sleep with Scott Valentine and his different demon incantations in this movie.  

While they're drinking Sonia is also at the bar and Charles is hitting on all the woman at the bar and accidentally on her, he apologises and she starts talking to him and he tells his life story about being raised in Philadelphia, it's not as funny as the opening to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air sadly.

Sonia and Charles join Denny and Kas, Kas is turned on by just looking at Sonia and she sees his red contact lenses, Denny drags him away and back to hers and Sonia has Charles take her to the shop to get a demon killing sword so she can kill Kas. While this is going Denny and Kas are about to go all the way until he is completely possess and we get a couple of scenes which I think are meant to be funny but aren’t. first Demon Kas has a new look again then he bashes his head in on the wall and we get a guy with a bowl haircut talking about cheetos then he changes into a fat woman who looks and sounds like Roseanne, Denny smashes the woman’s head in and we get a scene of a yellow slime filled body that would not look out of place in Peter Jackson's Brain Dead Kaz returns, but Denny leaves after telling him she was right that he is not the mangler.

The background music tempo picks up so it must be getting near the end of the film, Sonia sneaks into Denny's apartment and Kaz changes into the 4th version of the Damon, this one looks like Jesus with wings (insert your own Beatles joke here.) Sonia attacks him and their fight continues on Charles' car roof while he is kidnapping Denny and taking her to his layer which is in a castle in Central park, pictured below.

Firstly that is not Central Park or the tiny non castle that is actually in Central Park, as Monty Python might say it's only a mat painting.  Kaz has to rescue Denny from Charles who we find out is the mangler, Robert Trebor is brilliant at delivering his lines like they are all throw away ones. Charles tells her he can show her how he made his monster hand glove and he acts scared when he sees Kaz as a demon but he is actually a demon too.

To be a strong demon Kaz has sex with Sonia which pisses Denny off of course and he then attacks Charles after getting rid of a bomb.  As I said Charles is also a demon but he has control over it and can change at will, he has Kryptonian breath and force lightning, which makes Kas loose his Demon hard on and return to normal Denny escapes as Demon Charles is distracted fighting Kaz.  The street Psychic has turned up with the cops as he was arrested for squatting, he and all the other characters are watching the battle from a window in the castle and he throws Kaz the demon killing sword, that Sonia used on him without success; the street Psychic tells Kaz to stab Charles in his curse scar because you see both Charles and Kaz made out with the same girl as children and were cursed by her Romanian Grandmother. So Kaz succeeds in stabbing Charles, he's blown back towards everybody and Charles explodes in something reminiscent of the quickening.

The street Psychic helps Kaz into the castle and the cop says "Just another day in the big city." yeah I guess New York cops are used to strange shit happening there what with the Stay Puff marshmallow man, X-Men, Spider-man and the statue of Liberty walking around the city a guess a little demon fight is nothing. 

So Kaz did something noble and is magically cleaned up, no I’m serious there is a magic whoosh sound and sparkles and he then looks like he is wearing Beetlejuices wedding tux he is happy but then worries that Denny might have gotten his curse because she is so close to him but she’s fine it was actually the street psychic that got it and considering what he said about the curse when he first saw Kaz at the start of the film I’m surprised at how happy he is about it.

This is not an amazing film, it is not an original story, it is 80's cheese and well it's a fun silly story that I know people have not seen.  The major problem with this film is it can't decide what it wants to be a romantic comedy or a scary cop thriller it feels like two separate films put together with a crazy fantasy ending. I'm still a bit surprised I saw this as a kid considering what makes Kaz a demon but hay I saw a lot of crazy films as a kid including Cellar Dweller.

I know you maybe expecting me to be harsh but hay it was the 80's none of the films of that period made much sense, not even Teen Wolf or any of the others I mentioned in this review and as I said in my last blog this is one of my guilty pleasures, plus it has a cool 80's soundtrack.