Directed by:
Hal Miles (uncredited)
Rocco Karega
Fred Olen Ray (uncredited)
It doesn't happen too often, but I actually
had to stop this film 15 minutes in and take a deep, mind-emptying breath.
"How in the hell was I going to write this thing up?," I wondered.
That was soon followed by "How in the hell am I going to watch 70 more minutes
of this crap without pouring bleach into my eyeballs?" Nothing, and I mean nothing was
making a lick of sense. I was overwhelmed by the vast amount of
characters, the constant hopping around from scene to scene, close-ups of
eyes darting around and mouths talking about murders and gang-bangers and
AIDS and black men giving other black men a bad name and this and that,
shots of people's backs as they talked, shots of buildings as random people
inside talked and multiple voice-overs from multiple characters. A
tacked-on pre-credits intro of special guest star Cameron Mitchell
sitting behind a desk chain smoking didn't help matters and neither did
the seemingly random shots of a monster face inserted here and there. Were
these flashbacks, flash-forwards or were they currently going on? Well, it
seemed to be a little bit of everything. I just couldn't tell what was
what, who was who or what the hell this was even about. Thankfully, it starts making a little more sense after the first 20 or so minutes. Even
better, it also becomes absolutely hilarious.
I suppose right now's about as good a time as any to point out that -
despite the title - this film has no demon cop. Nope; no demon cop
anywhere to be found. It was originally filmed under the title The
Curse of Something Bestial and this new moniker was just an enticing
bogus re-titling for the home video release. Then again, I guess an honest
title like "Demon
Former Probation Officer" may not have roped in much of an audience. At some
point, Fred Olen Ray got his hands on it. I'm not sure if he had
anything to do with the hatchet-job editing, but he did add all of
the footage of Mitchell to bookend the film. As he often did, Ray hired a
formerly known star on their last legs for a day's shoot and filmed generic footage of them that could be
used in later projects. He did it with John Carradine, who shot
scenes as a mad doctor speaking in very vague terms that later popped up in EVIL SPAWN (1987), and did
the same thing with Mitchell here, who plays a doctor at the Ravenwood Asylum
for the Criminally Insane. In his brief scenes, Mitchell smokes
cigarettes, opens a "file of the damned" and then says that this will be
"...the type of tale that would drive Edgar Allan Poe to the brink of
madness." Indeed! Interestingly, leftover footage from this same Mitchell
shoot also ended up in the Steve Latshaw directed / FOR produced
pumpkin-head-killer slash flick Jack-O (1995) years later,
which also featured generic footage of Carradine sitting in a field
talking. Ray's quite thrifty like that.
Of what I could make of the plot, someone is going around the Denver
suburb of Aurora Hills killing gang members. A pair of cops; Logan (Ray
Klein) and Spence (Tony Zotta), are put on the case and start
interviewing possible suspects. Meanwhile, Edward Thurman ("R.M. Anthony"),
a Vietnam vet and former probation officer who'd been wounded by a drive
by a year earlier is showing strange signs of not being himself. After
getting shot, he was given a blood transfusion and ever since has
developed quite the murderous streak. Testing for various diseases has turned up nothing in the
process. Thurman's girlfriend Kelly (Julia M. Westland) knows
what's going on, but she's intentionally withholding information from the
cops unless they can help cure him. Maria (Theresa Fenneaux), a
wheelchair-bound pathologist with a bleached poodle perm who is given a ton of dialogue and can't stop
flubbing her lines, helps in the investigation. Interpol agent
Horst Steinfeldt aka "Bloodhound" (Duncan Larson), who also seems to
have difficulty remembering his lines and forgetting he's supposed
to be from Germany, shows up in town and seems to be
tracking Thurman.
As it turns out, our sickly-looking killer has been the unlucky recipient of the
500-year-old "demon of retribution;" which he received during his
transfusion. The donor was a Jewish immigrant who'd been infected himself
and was wiping out Nazis. Now that the demon is inside a man who was
gunned down by thugs, he's drawn to killing the "mother fuckers who are
the cause of my suffering" (i.e. other gang-bangers). The curse is
activated by cycles of the moon and turn him into a barrel-chested,
deep-voiced, rubber-faced demon. During one hilarious sub Troma-esque scene, he takes on
three gang members; two male and one female, armed with chains, baseball
bats and a Tommy gun. But nothing prepares one for the big taser gun finale, which is a
laugh riot of almost unparalleled proportions. I had a strong hunch that leading
man "R.M. Anthony" was director Karega before I actually
verified it online. Why? Well, once you see him in action, the answer will be
pretty obvious. Not content with subjecting viewers to his laughable anguished
over-emoting, he shows a genuine cruel streak by also forcing us to look at his
scrawny ass naked. I know nudity is supposedly a selling point but that rule
doesn't apply when it's being provided by some balding, bug-eyed troll who looks
like he just spent a year in a crack house.
IMDb lists three directors: Karega (the only credited director on the
print I watched), Ray (who released it through his company American
Independent Productions) and Hal Miles (though he's listed in the credits
as just being the producer, makeup designer, photographer and 2nd unit
director). Ray Harryhausen, Dick Smith and Forry Ackerman
are all thanked at the end.
SBIG
