After George A. Romero's success with "Dawn of The Dead", Dario Argento continued to produce other directors, working on such films as "Demons" by Lamberto Bava, son of Mario Bava, the great master of Italian horror ("Black Sunday", "Blood and Black Lace"...). "Demons" can be seen as the swan song of the Italian horror genre: it's one of the last large-scale productions of a cinema whose golden age was in the 60s-70s and whose screams began to die down by the 80s. Yet it remains one of the great Italian gore movies. The story is mid-way between "Dawn of The Dead" and "Evil Dead", only with a quite novel location: the film takes place in a movie theater, where on-screen demons come alive to turn the theater into a bloody massacre! The cast includes former Italian-horror child star Nicolette Elmi ("Deep Red") in one of her rare adult appearances, as well as the director of "Bloody Bird", Michele Soavi. The soundtrack is also quite original, compiled out of songs by Claudio Simonetti (central figure of the Italian prog-rock band Goblin and responsible for the mythical soundtracks of "Suspiria" and "Deep Red") mixed with hard rock hits by Mötley Crüe, Billy Idol, and others...

"Evil Dead" is the quintessential cult horror film of the 80s, a mix of terror and cartoon. It's the first film by Sam Raimi, known today as the famous Hollywood director of the "Spider-man" trilogy. "Evil Dead", however, is pretty much an amateur film, made for a handful of dollars under rudimentary conditions. Still, the destructive energy in its directorial style and a mythical main character played by Bruce Campbell helped it to make its mark and push the boundaries of the genre. Riding off this success, the film has since been reincarnated in two sequels, a Broadway musical and soon a remake...