Umberto Lenzi's diabolical native-sploitation, zombie cash-in madness. Being Lenzi's only true entry into the zombie genre it's a bit of a mixed effort; he's gone on record denying Nightmare City (1980) to be a zombie film and while you can agree or disagree with that, it is in essence more akin to the likes of Romero's The Crazies (1973), Cronenberg's Rabid (1977), or even David E. Durston's I Drink Your Blood (1970), as a bit of a generalised outbreak type film.

The plot consists of three students who are vacationing / traveling through Brazil. We're introduced to two Americans Dick (Joe Balogh), his sister Jessica (Sonia Curtis) and her British boyfriend Kevin (Keith Van Hoven). Dick attends a top secret voodoo ceremony, so secret that he needs to be being blindfolded for the duration of the car ride to get there.

The ceremony sequence is actually quite a bit of fun, detailed and not-unbelievable. As the ritual becomes more intense and frenetic, Dick passes out, but not before hitting record on his tape recorder. Upon awakening we, the audience, learn that he's more than a little bit possessed. He records the ritual on a dictaphone, as we see him becoming slowly entranced by the drums and the native's chants the camera cuts to a set of graves which suddenly burst open, followed by black decaying arms reaching up to grasp the surface soil. One shot in particular is extremely reminiscent to the hand rising up from the ground in Lucio Fulci's voodoo zombie epic, Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979).
For absolutely no reason other than to inject a bit of action to the flick, the tombstones inexplicably burst into flames and the dead slaves slowly begin to rise from their graves. Slightly dodgy effects aside, the sequence is actually fairly well done, there's a decent amount of atmosphere present and while cheesy is not entirely cracked.



The student's jeep breaks down near a small plantation in the jungle near Rio. Which just so happens to be the site of a slave rebellion 150 years ago. Dick somehow using his newly acquired powers forces these black slaves to return from the grave...with a vengeance. Taking cues from yet another film this time Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground (1981), the zombie slaves begin using tools/weapons to help gain entrance to the house and dispatch their living foe.

Alongside the story's gradual progression, so does Dick's possession; beginning with the voodoo ceremony, he becomes more and more enthralled by whatever force it is that's possessing him. Dick turns on his sister when she realises that he's "one of them."



The movie really comes together in the last 20 minutes with the students being besieged by the zombified slaves. Unfortunately the film suffers from a sluggish pace, too little happens between "events" to really get too excited and it takes quite a while until you even catch a glimpse of a zombie, or some poor fucker getting their eyeballs poked-out in a wonderfully grotesque fashion.

I feel that Black Demons is a huge missed opportunity for Lenzi, there's a considerable amount of potential that this could have been a standout movie. It's replete with stunning backdrops of the jungle, surprisingly good zombie makeup and better than average gore effects. There's a nice amount of atmosphere throughout, plenty of spooky mist and smoke, unfortunately the film is really hindered by the performances of the entire cast, everybody sucks, the standout performances are each of the black dudes covered in make-up & contact lenses, portraying the titular "demons". Bravo, sirs!



It kinda goes without saying that Black Demons is a must for any fan of zombie cinema, there's no real "demons" so to speak of - so don't be fooled - this is an out-and-out zombie movie. Would honestly pair nicely with Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground: Nights of Terror / Le Notti del terrore (1981) for a double bill of Italian zombie splatter, both are of a similar calibre and if you dig Burial Ground you'll probably get a kick out of Black Demons.
Also a must for any Lenzi fans, or those who have a real penchant for Italian gorefests.