Customer Reviews

Demons 3 - The Ogre

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The movie open with a young girl having a nightmare in Portland, Oregon. We immediately noticed this 10 year old girl is dubbed by a woman in her 20's. In the dream she enters a creepy basement while clasping her white teddy bear with an orchid around its neck. She drops the bear, a creepy ogre appears and takes the orchid while she hides. The girl wakes up and her teddy bear is missing!

The next scene is disconnected. We finally figure out the adult woman, Cheryl, with her family is the same little girl. She writes horror stories for a living. They rent a vacation home in Italy near a village known for its orchids and creepy people, one of which everyone thinks is a witch.

While in the villa, Cheryl finds secret rooms and passages. She is inspired to write. She also finds that same identical creepy basement in her nightmare and she finds her teddy bear! Eat you heart out Stephen King! She writes, sleeps, gets more nightmares... Reality, the nightmares and her story start to blend together until they become one.

The acting didn't seem too bad, but whatever good acting that may have been there was erased by the mediocre dubbing. I liked the connection of the village that raises orchids with a legend of an ogre. The childhood to adult nightmare connection was also done well and the women were pretty.

**PLOT SPOILER **The big negative was the aforesaid dubbing. The soundtrack was tiresome. The movie builds up to a climax scene that was short by modern standards. They spend all that time to build up the characters and the story only to have it end with a Chief Cherokee? What were they thinking?

I think this would be a 4 star movie if they simply guttered the dubbing and soundtrack and redid the whole thing.


Nudity, No f-bombs.

Story, acting, efx(hardly any), are all poor. Not enough extras on dvd to compensate for the lackluster movie. Skip it altogether.

I thought the movie was very bad.. it has nothing to do with Demons the first two..it is just full of nothing and a monster or OGre in a basement.. don't expect nothing much..it is a very bad movie

Demons 3: The Ogre (Lamberto Bava, 1988)

Things I learned from watching The Ogre:
1. Previously happily-married couples will suddenly begin to have fights of the "is not! is too!" variety for no apparent reason.
2. Ogres look kind of like Lon Chaney-era wolfmen, but with a decided penchant for Victorian garb.
3. Ogres get really, really turned on by the smell of orchids, and they are very gentle when handling teddy bears.

Things I already knew from hundreds of other horror films, but once again learned in The Ogre:
1. If everyone in the town claims to have never heard of the place you're renting, you should probably just cancel your contract and take a room in town somewhere.
2. Anyone in a horror film under the age of puberty is safe from the monster. Meanwhile, any female between puberty and voting age is pretty much monster buffet. (How long any female fitting this description survives is directly related to her cup size.)
3. Everything ever written by horror novelists is bound to come true eventually.
4. If you had nightmares when you were a kid about monsters in a particular place, and you suddenly find yourself standing in that particular place as an adult, you should just leave. Don't even think about it, don't rationalize it, just leave. (Especially if you find your missing childhood teddy bear and you're halfway around the world.)
5. Any snatch of a work in progress read aloud by a supposedly best-selling novelist is going to sound like pure, unmitigated crap.

The best thing I can say about The Ogre is that it has the Demons 3 tag solely as a marketing tool; this movie has nothing to do with Demons (supposedly directed by Bava, but I've heard a number of people speculate it was actually directed by Argento; the quality of the film bears that out, when compared to Lamberto's other offerings) and Demons 2 (if it's not Bava's worst outing, that's only because Shock exists). That said, this movie is not without its charms; it's so over-the-top stupid, with unintentionally hilarious monster makeup, some of the dumbest dialogue you've ever heard ("reality doesn't include handprints!"), and a complete lack of originality, that you just can't take it in any way seriously, even though you know full well Lamberto did. It's so monstrously awful that it's actually become my favorite Bava film. I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone with a functioning brain, a pulse, or other various signs of life, but if you unfortunately stumble across it on late-night cable or something, don't immediately change the channel. It's better than watching Ron Popeil demonstrate cooking devices. * ½

I hate this movie. No connection to Demons 1&2. Its like the Halloween III of the Demons movies.

I'm not hard to please when it comes to horror films (I gave Jeepers Creepers five stars!); but this one is absolutely the pits. I can't even imagine how you would go about making a worse film. The story makes the term "non-story" seem respectable; whatever the story was, it didn't work on any level: not horror, not thriller, certainly not physchological. The best actor in the film, by far, was the little white Teddy Bear, who spent most of the time on the basement floor. Runner-up was the Jeep Cherokee, whose performance was flawless (it even started right up when it was needed). The set was interesting: it was filmed in a real Italian castle; that's about it though. It's hard to believe this film was made by Lamberto Bava, who helped created Demons and Demons II - two of the greatest horror films of all time. Maybe somebody slipped him a rejected Antonioni script as a joke and he ran with it. One thing is clear though: the village people at the beginning who wanted nothing to do with the family seeking the castle were spot on.

THE OGRE is one of three unofficial sequels to the original DEMONS, the others being BLACK DEMONS and Michele Soavi's nightmarish THE CHURCH. Of the three, this is easily the weakest option. If it were not bad enough that DEMONS 3: THE OGRE was a made-for-TV sequel in-name-only, the fact that it doesn't contain any demons makes things that much worse. Instead, a writer and her family are terrorized by a savage ogre that lives beneath their vacation villa in Northern Italy. With the excessive gore, nudity, and violence removed in order to make it suitable for television, all that is left is a dry and dreadfully boring fantasy horror flick that seems to be geared towards a younger audience. The few creepy moments that do exist in the film can only be attributed to the sinister set designs found in the villa's subterranean crypts. Lamberto Bava does as much as he can on the scaled-down budget, but THE OGRE is better left to obscurity.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

For all the hype he has gotten in recent years (some of it, admittedly, well deserved and long overdue), I must say that I find Mario Bava to be an uneven filmmaker at best. The movies of his that I love ("Lisa and the Devil", "Hatchet for the Honeymoon", "Black Sabbath") I REALLY love. The majority of his work, however, leaves me wanting. I understand the historical significance and stylistic influences to be found in flicks like "Twitch of the Death Nerve" and "Black Sunday", I just don't find them particularly engaging. I think Mario's biggest weakness as a filmmaker lay in his almost total lack of storytelling ability. I'm not saying every film has to have a linear narrative. Indeed, "Lisa and the Devil" has anything but traditional narrative structure. I do think, however, that eskewing traditional narrative in favor of a more experimental approach is, by definition, a gamble. And you know how it is with gambling: Sometimes you win. Most times you lose.

Which brings us to the works of Mario's son Lamberto and the movie "The Ogre" in particular. While often lambasted by fans and critics alike for his stylistic debts to dear old dad and mentor Dario Argento, I find Lamberto's opus (while not always as risk-taking) far more consistently entertaining than either of these. This is not to say that the younger Bava does not stretch himself. One look at his resume reveals films running the gamet from psychological horror that would do Roman Polanski proud ("Macabre") to gross-out over-the-top horror/action/comedy hybrids that, twenty years later, should still please fans of the post-Raimi horror scene ("Demons" and "Demons 2") to works of dark fantasy that play like fairy tales come to life. It is in this latter category that I would place "The Ogre". Those looking for the kind of wacky-splatter on display in the two Demons films are strongly advised to look elsewhere. Indeed, I think the linking of this film with those earlier works does all involved a disservice. If you absolutely must see this film as a sequel to something, I advise you to see it under one of it's many other monikers: "Ghosthouse 2". Fans of Umberto Lenzi's original "Ghosthouse" would probably find much more to like here than those who go into this surprisingly gentle yarn expecting severed heads and wall-to-wall viscera. In a way, both films operate on a very similar level. They are both exercises in some well-worn genre trappings. Any fan of horror will almost immediately guess where both films are headed. Nonetheless, both manage to bring a sense of wonder and joy to the proceedings as well as a few new artistic flourishes that you may not see elsewhere. I would say "The Ogre" fares much better than "Ghosthouse" in terms of cinematography and production design. It is a beautiful looking film and, if given the chance, a very good old-style monster movie. Give it a shot.

I'm sorry but Demons 1 and 2 were good but Demons 3 was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. I'm upset that I wasted $3.00 on it...LOL!

BAD MOVIE! Was renamed for the US market (Demon3) to sell the movie. Has nothing to do with the movies.