Movie Ad of the Week: THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE (1982)

The Charles Band-produced trailer compilation THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE (1981) played midnight shows in 14 Chicago area theaters on February 5-6, 1982 as a presentation of The Alternative Film Society, a New Jersey-based organization that “four-walled” theaters for midnight movie screenings and dusk-to-dawn shows in the early 1980s. Under the title SCREAMS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, this "comic look at Hollywood's wildest moments" filled out many of the Society’s “5 Deranged Features” programs at drive-ins during the summers of 1982 and ’83 (We wrote about those here), even though it was already available on home video through Band’s Wizard Video label. Since none of the movies pictured in the ad (THE DIRT GANG, WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, two different GINGER flicks) have anything to do with THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE, here's a list of the 28 trailers that do appear in the film: BURY ME AN ANGEL; THE DOBERMAN GANG; TUNNELVISION; THE SIN OF ADAM AND EVE; ALICE IN WONDERLAND; CINDERELLA; FAIRY TALES; EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD; TANYA'S ISLAND; I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE; TOURIST TRAP; THE BOOGEY MAN; ZOMBIE; THE SINGLE GIRLS; THE WORKING GIRLS; THE MANHANDLERS; DR. MINX; TRUCK STOP WOMEN; THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE; BEYOND ATLANTIS; THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT; SWEET SUGAR; TERMINAL ISLAND; EBONY, IVORY & JADE; DR. BLACK & MR. HYDE; DOLEMITE; THE HUMAN TORNADO; DISCO GODFATHER.

DEMON RAGE (1982)

DEMON RAGE
(also known as DARK EYES, SATAN'S MISTRESS and FURY OF THE SUCCUBUS)

by Keith Hall, Jr.

Super-voluptuous Lana Wood plays a housewife with a glamorous beachfront house and a husband who has a penchant for taking cold swims in the ocean, but doesn’t make love to her. This has been going on for a couple of years, so Lana is understandably quite put out, and pent up. Help arrives from the beyond…and in a big way. Soon the nubile Lana is getting laid every ten minutes by an invisible ghost: in her bed, in her shower, sometimes even under the nose of her husband. We get many cutaways to the waves breaking on the shore as Lana moans in ecstasy.

Lana soon moves into another room in her house so as to have more privacy with her sexual spirit, who eventually becomes visible and turns out to be Kabir Bedi from OCTOPUSSY. But as if these cosmic couplings weren’t enough, more strange things occur. The other members of the family start bleeding for no reason, meeting strangers who claim to be Satan’s helpers, having weird dreams, noticing their eyes beginning to glow, and experiencing visions. With all these events taking place, Lana can’t tell if she’s cumming - I mean coming - or going.

Lana’s psychic friend (Britt Ekland) gets into the (sex) act when she senses dark forces at work. Satan’s CIA tries to warn her off by giving her a very hot hot tub and then decapitating her boozer husband (Don Galloway), but with the counsel of priest John Carradine, she pursues the case.

It seems our ravishing wraith is a soul who can’t decide whether he wants to go to Heaven or Hell. Satan is using Lana as bait to lure him to the hot place, although things seem pretty hot between the two of them up here. In the end, Bedi elects to go to Hell and the forces of evil are defeated. Or are they?

Miss Ekland receives top billing but only appears in only about four short scenes, and Carradine has just one. It is really Miss Wood who carries the film on her shoulders, and other places! I hope Mr. Bedi (with emphasis on BED) wasn’t paid by the word, since he never said anything. However, if Miss Wood was paid by the moan, she could probably retire by now. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her around lately…

[Originally published in Temple of Schlock #10, August 1988]