Year: 1995
Runtime: 92min
Director: Ernest R. Dickerson
Starring: Billy Zane, Jada Pinkett, William Sadler, CCH Pounder, Dick Miller, Gary Farmer, Thomas Hayden Church, Brenda Bakke.
The full title to today’s film is Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight. That is quite the mouthful and so I will be reducing it to the logical Demon Knight to save on typing. And also so I don’t have to explain to the young kids in the audience what Tales from the Crypt was and why it was glorious. I mean, it was basically Masterpiece Theater, but for gruesome horror stories.
…Please don’t make me explain what Masterpiece Theater is/was.
Anyway, the connection to Tales from the Crypt is pretty tenuous at best as Demon Knight lacks most of the key elements that composed your average Crypt story. There’s no underlying morality play, no big O. Henry twist at the end, and aside from the infamous Crypt Keeper bookending the film, the only other aspect this movie shares with its namesake is the sense of humor on display. Tales from the Crypt always did like to use humor to take the edge off some of the more nasty and macabre happenings in their stories, and Demon Knight knows to do the same with its surprisingly bleak story.
A story that is simple enough in its construction.
Two men flee across the desert in New Mexico. One, played by William Sadler, is a rough-and-tumble drifter fleeing from a force that proves to be rather immune to vehicle explosions as we witness in a highly charged opening sequence. That second, nigh-invulnerable force is a being played by Billy Zane, and he is after Sadler’s character, Brayker, to collect one little item. A piece of antiquity worth nothing to most, but everything to Zane’s dangerous Collector. It’s a key, you see, and it happens to be the last piece of the puzzle the devil needs to unleash hell on earth.
Oh that old shtick!
Brayker flees into a little desert hotel run by CCH Pounder and filled to the brim with B-movie veterans, the Collector hot on his heels with an army of slimy demons. And perhaps, if our hero he can hold out until dawn, mankind might live to see another day. But Zane promises to make that a challenge!
The script is nothing special, written by Ethan Reiff and Cryus Voris, with help from Mark Bishop, but this average tale is improved by the rapid pace delivered by director Ernest Dickerson. We don’t have much time to breathe once the action starts, with grisly creatures ripping through the extended cast with gusto. Of course this also means we have almost no time for character development, but that’s a minor point when you’ve got a truck load of great character actors chewing up the scenery.
I mean, we are absolutely spoiled for quality B-movie stars in this flick. As mentioned two paragraphs above, CCH Pounder is the hotel’s curmudgeonly owner, cheroot between her lips and scowl on her face. The legendary Dick Miller plays an amiable drunk who will do anything for his next drink (perhaps even sell his soul?). We also get the brooding Thomas Hayden Church as the sleazy dirtbag you know is going to betray our plucky survivor types and Brenda Bakke providing a bit of eye candy as a hooker with a heart of gold. And to round our the cast, there’s also the talented and very humorous Gary Farmer as a bumbling deputy who manages to outlive his cliches, and, oh, a young lady by the name of Jada Pinkett playing a delinquent who might be humanity’s last hope.
Yeah, that Jada Pinkett-Smith. It’s an early role for the talented actress but she shines through the fumbling script and gives us a strong female presence in a genre that loves to relegate female roles to victims and objects.
The whole movie feels like a proto-Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a lot of gory violence intercut with jokes and black humor.
A large portion of that humor can be attributed to the wild Billy Zane, who takes a one-note role as “evil demi-god” and jumps into it with gusto and more than a little bit of the Beetlejuice attitude. Like the ghost with the most, Zane is always mugging for an audience, smirking while delivering a cheesy one-liner, or gleefully prancing about before punching off someone’s head. He is a devilish rogue that elevates this film into a higher category of cult fun. We don’t want to see him win, but we do enjoy following his efforts.
But even the talents of Zane wouldn’t be enough to hold this film up without at least a little dash of the horror, and while Demon Knight won’t scare any but the most timid, it makes up for whatever scares it might lack with some really good creature effects from the Todd Masters company, including work from Scott Patton to help make the gooey demons come to life. It’s not going to make Alien shiver in terror, but the effects are solid, especially the slimy “birth” sequence for the demons.
Also, minor point to make, but for a movie set entirely at night, the use of lighting and tone is excellent. We’re never drenched in darkness so thick we can’t tell who we’re watching and the splashes of color add a bit of flavor to the proceedings. Some might argue that it’s too bright for a horror film, but I would politely remind those whiners that I like to be able to actually see what is going on in my movies, thank you very much.
I think if I had a major complaint with this fun piece of schlock, it would be the lack of world building.
I mean, you can’t drop the revelation that demons have been trying to destroy the world for thousands of years and have been stopped throughout the centuries by a key filled with the blood of Christ, and then not deliver any more than that! I don’t want an encyclopedia of facts and dates with this eternal war, but this leaves a lot of questions and not many answers—and why the hell am I questioning a Tales from the Crypt movie again?
Maybe because what little they give us whets my appetite for more. A doomed hero standing against an unstoppable horde of evil time after time, decade after decade? That’s some metal stuff right there! I’ll order five seasons and a Todd McFarlane action figure line, please and thank you!
Is Demon Knight worth a watch? I’d say absolutely. If you read the cast list and recognize one or two names, you should sit down and tune in. If you loved Buffy and crave something in the same vein, you should sit down and tune in. If you get the hot and tingles from a handsome young Billy Zane smarmily murdering everyone in sight, you should…probably see a shrink because I think you have problems, but also sit down and tune in.
It’s not a great Tales from the Crypt movie, and it’s not even a great movie by the traditional norm, but it is a fun and thoroughly enjoyable cult film
