If Shot on Video horror movies were a thing when The Demon Lover was made, it would’ve definitely been a Shot on Video horror movie. In fact, it often feels like a Shot on Video horror movie that was accidentally shot on film with a real camera. The acting is amateurish, the nighttime scenes are hard to make out, the sound is crummy, and the monster is really silly.
A devil worshipper named Laval (Christmas Robbins) tries to bully follower Pamela (Kyra Nash) into getting naked for his latest Satanic ceremony. Pamela balks at the idea and she and her boyfriend (played by Howard the Duck co-creator Val Mayerik!) leave the coven. In a show of solidarity, the other followers walk out on Laval too. It's Laval who will have the last laugh when he summons a demon and orders it to kill all the former cult members who shunned him.
I have to admit, the first half-hour or so of The Demon Lover was so bad that I started considering giving up this watching-one-movie-a-day-on-Tubi project and begin doing something meaningful with my life like charity work or joining the Peace Corps or entering the seminary. Fortunately, once the goofy-ass demon is summoned and it starts killing everyone, I dropped all those silly notions and started to semi-enjoy myself. These sequences are appropriately bloody, and at least give the film a reason to exist. There’s an especially great sequence where the demon interrupts three girls in the midst of a whipped cream fight that almost singlehandedly made the whole thing worthwhile.
Now this didn’t necessarily make up for all the dreary scenes of Renaissance Fair wannabes dressing up like Anton LeVay. In fact, they are downright brutal. I mean, the first act is so bad that it makes The Deathmaster look like Rosemary’s Baby in comparison. Oh, and no one loves a demon, and a demon doesn’t love anyone, so I have to deduct points for that too.
At least you get to see Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen, in only his second role as a soft-spoken professor of the occult who says, “Practitioners of evil aren’t exactly found in the Yellow Pages!”
Co-director Donald G. Jackson went on to have a wildly inconsistent career, making everything from classics like Hell Comes to Frogtown to the abysmal Rollergator.
AKA: Demon Master. AKA: Demon Tower. AKA: Master of Evil. AKA: The Devil Master.
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