"He's less than a man but more than a man. Much more". A mysterious masked maniac is stalking, kidnapping and killing his young victims, the parents of a missing 14 year old girl employ psychic detective Col. Bill Carson (Cameron Mitchell) to help find her (and the fiend). Meanwhile two young attractive cousins Mary and Jo are happily loving life until The Demon starts stalking Mary. This South African horror movie is odd because the two story lines don't really intertwine, if feels more like two separate films stuck together. Cameron Mitchell was a very prolific American actor appearing on both the small and big screens, I am a bit of a fan but sadly his performance here is awful and to be honest his part, other than being a big name, is a waste of time. Shame. The other half of the film with the two cousins is the more interesting one, though it borrows heavily from John Carpenter's classic "Halloween" (1978). This is a slasher movie with very little slashing, the killer's main murder method is suffocation by clear plastic bags! At least there is quite a lot of female topless nudity. Predictably one of them is a Final Girl, the Demon breaks into her house but why call the police when she can phone her boyfriend instead!? And then his car doesn't start! That being said the finale is quite suspenseful although the abrupt ending is a let down. Despite the title The Demon does not appear to be supernatural in nature, though amazingly his masks comes and goes and comes back again in the same scene! I have the UK DVD release and the picture quality is awful, it is fuzzy and in dark scenes it is very difficult to see what is happening. If it was restored and put out on blu-ray it would obviously look better but it would still be quite a poor entry in the Golden Era of the Slasher Movie. For die-hard stalk and slash or Cameron Mitchell fans only.
Review of The Demon
