Delayed Reviews: Demons 5- The Devil's Veil (aka The Mask of Satan)

 It's about time I made good on a promise from 11 years ago!  Back in 2010, I finished covering the quartet of Films by Lamberto Bava that included Demons 3: The Ogre.  In the final one (seen here), I mentioned that I was done unless I can find Demons 5: Black Sunday.  I forgot...for a long time.  This is Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, a 1990 Film from Italy.  Why does it have a different Title?  Well, the Film is a partial homage to MARIO Bava's Black Sunday, hence the unofficial Title.  The Film thankfully stands on its own...but it sure is weird.  The Plot involves people in an Ice Cavern, a Witch, a blind Priest and some freaky monsters.  As far as notable Cast goes, there's not much.  Our Heroines was briefly engaged to Klaus Kinski (she must have some stories!), one of them was the Female Lead in Black Cobra (which gave us all Poor Bastards of Cinema) and one of the group is Director Michele Soavi.  Fans of Rifftrax might recognize one Star from Ghosthouse, while fans of Bad Movies might recognize her from Troll 3/Creepers/Contamination .7.  That's basically it.  Was it worth waiting 11 years to finally do this?  To find out, read on...

The Earth shifts and a bunch of skiers fall into a crevice.

They thankfully don't jump right into cannibalism, which is almost always everyone's concern post-Donner Party.

While some of them look for a way out, others find a frozen body and decide to remove the mask on it...to sell, I guess.

Who does that?!?

The entryway collapses and kills one of them.  The desperate group finds a random entryway to an area and just goes through it.

This is people taking ALL OF the wrong choices in a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.

They find a Blind Priest alone in a snowy village (which is oddly lit for being unexposed to the Sun) and turn to Page 33 by choosing to immediately fall asleep in his House.

When he finds out what they did, he's not happy.  He only warns our Lead, however, as he thinks that the others have been compromised.

It all relates to a watch named Anabis who was given the titular mask (with nails in it!) and was kept there.

Only the Priest survives now, apparently, as the watch...but he also isn't there to see them take the mask, so...useless.

The group starts to get possessed in a particular order...

Going by first names, it happens in the order to spell out 'Anabis,' which means that our Heroine (Sabina) is last.

She keeps trying to get our Lead to sleep with her and, well, something is definitely up with her.

After killing her to save her soul, he wakes up...and everyone is fine?

"I had the craziest dream- and you were there and you were there?'

Well, we're only an hour in, so that was a lie.

It's all a continuous trick to get him to give in to Anabis and empower her.

He finally wins out and...wakes up to find his friends dead in the Cavern.  He rushes to escape as the Movie ends (without a shirt, so good luck!).

A weird mess of a Film that is at least endearing.  I will certainly give the Film points right off the bat for creativity.  It's a lazy thing to say that it is a Remake of Black Sunday (the Italian one not the killer Blimp one).  It features a similar creature and very loose Themes, but that's it.  Credit where credit is due, this is the kind of thing that Remakes should do.  That said, the Movie itself is...interesting.  The premise starts out strong, but kind of has many, many problems.  The Characters are pretty cut-and-paste.  I think the biggest reason for that is that the Plot necessitates so many Characters to spell out 'Anabis.'  If her name was like 'Rosa' or something, they could have been more nuanced.  Once they get possessed, they just are there to be freaky and attack.  The Priest does well enough, but eventually is just a Plot Device.  In the Third Act, he's dead and giving advice 'from the great beyond' to make things work.  The fake-out Ending is the big issue here.  The Pacing is just killed by the Film just kind of restarting in a silly way.  The logic behind it is intriguing...but not great.  I will give credit to the freaky effects that sometimes show up.  It's not awful, but it pales in comparison to Demons and Demons 2.  My copy has the original Italian Audio and some Subtitles.  It is just too bad that, for some reason, the SRT File mixes up the letters 'rt' for 'm,' giving me such lines like this...

Next up, I continue Make Up March with a Film that I meant to cover long ago.  Gotta love misleading Titles, no?  Stay tuned...