Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

A Major Disappointment

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I hated Lamberto Bava's bafflingly popular DEMONS (1985) and DEMONS 2 (1986); later unrelated Italian horror films were inexplicably passed off as sequels to them – Michele Soavi's THE CHURCH (1989) and THE SECT (1991), Bava's own THE OGRE (1988) and THE DEVIL'S VEIL (1989), and this one by Cozzi (which is also known as DEMONS 6: DE PROFUNDIS, actually the title borne by the copy I watched)! Truth be told, neither does it have anything to do with Edgar Allan Poe – despite fleetingly irrelevant appearances by the titular creature (by the way, the same source also inspired Sergio Martino's YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY {1972}, Lucio Fulci's 1981 namesake and, again Dario Argento's episode in the two-part compendium TWO EVIL EYES {1990})! This 'version' also purports to be an unofficial continuation of Argento's "Three Mothers" saga (complete with cues from the famous SUSPIRIA {1977} soundtrack), years before the third entry got made! Whatever the film strives to be, it is perhaps the effort which definitively put the lid on the "Euro-Cult" style that had flourished for some 40 years! Anyway, the plot revolves around the attempts by a long-dead witch to stop an actress from playing her on-screen in a proposed movie about her exploits (I wonder whether she demanded a casting director credit!). That is it, basically – but the result displays a stupefying ineptness in every department and, as was often the case with this type of film, the script does not make a lick of sense (at the climax, the actress is possessed by the spirit of a dead child in order to combat the witch's evil force – with extraneous cutaways to outer space reportedly lifted from Cozzi's "Hercules" flicks)! The latter 'recruits' a number of people for this purpose – including fellow actress and rival for the part Caroline Munro, temperamental wheelchair-bound producer Brett Halsey, his female secretary, a refrigerator repair-man(!), a young boy, the heroine's baby's nanny and, in the very last shot, the toddler itself!; on the side of good, we get the scriptwriter (Munro's husband), the director (the protagonist's own hubby and Munro's lover!) and a female occult expert (who spectacularly expires from an exploding heart!). As I said, events follow one another without any rhyme or reason – which is not necessarily a bad thing, when it manages to create a dream-like aura (and the only such instance here is a nightmare sequence in which the actress attempts to stab her own child under the witch's influence, is stopped by her husband, whom she then attacks but he, in turn, removes the knife and sticks it in her) yet, as a rule, here it is just a succession of repugnant make-up and cheesy effects.

'Black Cat' (1989) (aka 'Demons 6: De Profundis') I saw this today on Amazon Prime Videos. It's an Italian made horror film. This description intrigued me "Ann Pritcher is a new mother and actress in her husband's film. A film about a terrible witch, Levana, whom Ann is playing. But when Ann starts researching the part of Levana, she is haunted by visions." I like older Italian made horror films like those starring Barbara Steele. Often they had a haunting Gothic look and off beat stories compared to run of the mill American made movies. I cut all foreign films some slack because maybe the English dubbing isn't always the best and the film might be better in its native language. This film even beyond the laughable dubbed English is a total mess. The effects are laughable and the story is dragged out with nothing of real interest to it. Who ever did this seems obsessed with bright neon like lights for a scary effect. They like to have the bright light, especially green, emitting from windows, refrigerators, drinking glasses, eyes...everything but the black cat's butt. And the gore was also laughable. They also seem to like using green goo...just looks like pea soup. I don't like overly gory films, this didn't bother me because it was so phony looking. It seems anyone using the title 'Black Cat' or the like can pretend it's based on a story by Edar Allen Poe to attract viewers. About the only tie in to this is Mr. Poe's name may have been mentioned someplace in the dialog. Frankly this film, and I use the word "film" loosely, was not worth my time. I give it a 0 rating but the IMDb forces me to make 1 the lowest.

This film bears the title of Demons 6, with either a title of Armageddon or De Profundis, with the latter being the more apt title. However, the film itself holds no real connections to Demoni 1 or 2 or any of the other in name only sequels. The only real connection to the demons films is that the leading man from Demoni, Urbano Barberini, plays the husband to the leading lady. Instead, this film is a loose sequel to Argento's, at the time unfinished, Three Mothers Trilogy. All of which are loosely based on a section of Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria De Profundis (which even makes an appearance!) entitled "Levana and our ladies of Sorrow". Luigi Cozzi's script even acknowledges the existence of Argento's film Suspiria and extends on the idea that the three ladies of sorrow are evil witches who rule the world. Specifically focusing on Mater Lachrymarum, The Mother of Tears. The film centers around Anna Raveanna (Florence Guérin) who is an actress who is set to play the witch Levana in a film that her husband Marc (Urbano Barberini) is making. Levana is not pleased with this and declares that Anna will never be her on the screen and begins spreading madness into Anna's world and using those around her to do her bidding - including kidnapping and planning to sacrifice Anna's newborn baby.There are plenty of similarities between this film and Argento's eventual final film in the trilogy which begs the question of if Luigi had at some point read an early draft of 'The Mother of Tears'. The two share a few common themes, such as a supernatural mentor (Argento's version was her dead mother who was a witch, and in Cozzi's the mentor is a fairy who mentions that fairies and witches are about the same) who eventually guides the leading lady on how to use her own powers to stop Mater Lachrymarum. Even the death of Mater Lachrymarum in both versions are strikingly similar.While this film is nowhere near as good as Suspiria, it is a decent if not official entry in the 'Three Mother Trilogy'. Yes, it has its silly parts (the refrigerator) but it also has its accomplishments. It also of course helps that they chose a great theme song for the film, which is almost as haunting as the original Suspiria theme and attempt to recreate (although not as well) the colored nightmare atmosphere of the superior Suspiria. And of course, there is plenty of gore!

"The Black Cat" is regarded as a third part of Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy(two first parts are "Suspiria" and "Inferno").Of course it's not as good as those masterpieces,but it's quite atmospheric and enjoyable.The gore effects are well-done,the script is okay,but the acting is pretty bad.Overall I liked this one so check it out for yourself.Cult actress Caroline Munro("Maniac","Kronos")and Urbano Barberini("Opera")are among the cast.