Nova CarltonCINEMAS

There was really only one way to follow a documentary about Steve Johnson’s monsters, excesses and marriage to Linnea Quigley: screen the movie where all three collided. It’s Halloween night and ten teenagers have decided that the perfect place for a party is Hull House, an abandoned funeral parlour with a suitably unpleasant history. There’s booze, dancing, a séance and, inevitably, the accidental unleashing of an ancient demonic evil that begins possessing the partygoers one by one. Kevin Tenney’s NIGHT OF THE DEMONS is about as pure a distillation of late-’80s horror as you could hope for: horny teenagers, gratuitous nudity, spectacular demon make-ups, eye gougings, severed limbs, bitten-off tongues and scream queen Linnea Quigley finding a place to keep her lipstick that definitely wasn't designed by Revlon. Much of the gooey good stuff comes courtesy of Steve Johnson, whose extraordinary practical effects remain the film’s not-so-secret weapon. It also has the distinction of being the film where Johnson met future wife Linnea Quigley — while making a cast of her breasts for the aforementioned lipstick effect. Because apparently sometimes Hollywood romances really do begin like that. Nearly 40 years later, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS remains funny, filthy, gooey and enormously entertaining — and the perfect reminder of why Steve Johnson was one of the great practical-effects madmen of the VHS era.