Demon Knight

For the similarly named author, see Damon Knight.

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ernest R. Dickerson Gilbert Adler
Produced by	Gilbert Adler
Written by	Ethan Reiff Cyrus Voris Mark Bishop
Starring	William Sadler Billy Zane Jada Pinkett Smith Thomas Haden Church CCH Pounder John Kassir (voice of The Crypt Keeper)
Music by	Edward Shearmur
Cinematography	Rick Bota
Editing by	Stephen Lovejoy
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	January 13, 1995 (1995-01-13)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12 million
Box office	$21,088,568 (USA)

Demon Knight (also known as Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight) is a 1995 horror film directed by Ernest Dickerson, and starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, and Jada Pinkett Smith. Brenda Bakke, CCH Pounder, Dick Miller, and Thomas Haden Church co-star. Demon Knight is a feature-length film presented by the HBO series Tales from the Crypt, and features scenes with the Crypt Keeper (once again voiced by John Kassir) at the beginning and end of the movie. The film was followed by Bordello of Blood; although it is not a direct sequel, the key artifact from this film makes an appearance.

Plot

The Key

The story of Demon Knight revolves around an artifact and its guardian. The artifact is a key, one of seven keys that can open the gates of Hell and unleash darkness across the universe.

In the beginning, before the Earth was formed, demons used these seven keys to focus the power of the cosmos into their hands, but after God created the world, He scattered the demons and then scattered the keys all throughout the universe. After millions of years of searching, they retrieve six of the keys and find the location of the seventh on Earth. To prevent the key from falling into the demon's hands, it was filled with the blood of the dying Jesus Christ, obtained during his crucifixion.

The blood in the key has the power to create barriers on entrances where it prevents demons from entering. These barriers can, however, be broken by either removing the blood from where it was poured, or if the structure creating the barrier is destroyed.

If the blood runs out, the key can be refilled with the blood of the latest guardian of the artifact; the new supply of blood still has the same power, due to it still having some (however diluted) blood left in it from Christ or possibly because the sacrifice of the knight's life re-empowers the blood.

The Demon Knight

The Demon Knight is the guardian of the key and appears to be immune to aging and natural death, but is, apparently, still vulnerable to death through other means. On their hand, there is a kind of tattoo of seven stars that eventually will form a circle. When the stars form into a circle, it signals to The Demon Knight when the most important night has come: the night when a group formed only by seven persons and The Demon Knight will fight the demons and pass on his/her duties to the only survivor of the group, once the night is over.

The first Demon Knight was a thief named Sirach. Almost 2000 years later, during World War I, a soldier named Dickerson passed the key and his responsibilities to a soldier named Frank Brayker on August 23, 1917. This was the night that Brayker became the Demon Knight. It is unknown how many Demon Knights came before Dickerson.

Brayker's fight

Nearly nine decades after receiving the key from Dickerson, Brayker is being pursued by the charismatic Collector, a higher-level demon tasked with retrieving the key. Arriving in New Mexico and narrowly eluding the Collector on the highway, Brayker heads into a nearby town where he runs into Uncle Willy, an alcoholic who takes Brayker to a boarding house that used to be a church. There, Brayker meets the landlady Irene, young criminal on work release Jeryline, postal worker Wally, prostitute Cordelia and her crooked boyfriend Roach.

Shortly after, the Collector arrives at the hotel with Sheriff Tupper and Deputy Bob, who arrest Brayker and question him about the artifact. The two police officers find the artifact, but the Collector can't touch it as long as there is blood in it and needs it emptied out. Uncle Willy starts to empty it, but Tupper takes the key. As they are about to leave, the Collector punches the sheriff, driving his fist right through his head. Brayker scuffles with the Collector, driving him off with the key. The Collector jumps out the window and summons a legion of skeletal, lower-level demons that can possess people after they've been killed. To complicate things, the Collector tempts the people inside the hotel with promises of getting things they want if they join him.

First, he seduces Cordelia and uses her to get to Wally, who is then killed by a possessed Cordelia. In the following confrontation, Cordelia rips off Irene's arm before finally being killed by Brayker. Roach leads a revolt against Brayker, and everyone else agrees to head into an underground mine shaft in an effort to escape without the demons knowing it; Brayker grudgingly joins them. Jeryline gets separated from the others and finds Danny, a young boy whose parents were possessed by two of the Collector's minions. Just then, the demons in question attack. Jeryline and Danny join up with the others, and everyone returns to the hotel basement. Roach ends up destroying a blood barrier after shooting a demon, and everyone runs upstairs, where the demons are unable to get to them (earlier, a blood barrier was accidentally created at the top of the stairs).

Brayker explains the history of the key to everyone; at that moment, Jeryline realizes that Danny is missing. Everyone goes to look for Danny, but Roach manages to obtain the key from Brayker without his knowing it. The Collector tries to entice Jeryline into helping him retrieve the key, while Irene finds Danny in the attic with Uncle Willy and orders Uncle Willy to bring Brayker up into the attic. Uncle Willy takes Danny with him, only to fall victim to an illusion of being in a bar with beautiful, topless women. The Collector, posing as a bartender, goads Uncle Willy into drinking alcohol. Irene and Deputy Bob find a trunk loaded with weapons, and learn that Wally had been planning to attack the post office.

While looking for Uncle Willy, Brayker and Jeryline find Danny in a room, and encounter a possessed Uncle Willy. Brayker is barely able to fight Uncle Willy as he finds that he doesn't have the key, while Jeryline is torn between killing Uncle Willy and helping Brayker. Brayker grabs a machete and cuts off Uncle Willy's head, but that doesn't stop the possessed man. While Uncle Willy's headless body proceeds to attack Brayker, Danny takes Uncle Willy's disembodied head and stabs his eyes out with deer antlers, ending his menace.

Roach, meanwhile, has made a bargain with the Collector: the key in exchange for safe passage out of the hotel. Roach wipes away the blood on the stairwell to allow the Collector to past through, and gives him the key. However, once he finally gets the key, the Collector reneges on his bargain by saying, "Oh and Roach there is just one more thing I forgot to mention. I lied" and sics his minions on Roach, killing him. Victory is short-lived, though, when Brayker fires an arrow into his eye. The Collector drops the key and falls to the floor far below. Brayker gets the key and heads up into the attic with Jeryline and Danny, while Irene and Deputy Bob fight off the demons. Irene sets off a belt of hand grenades, and she and Deputy Bob sacrifice themselves to kill the minions.

Now alone with Jeryline and Danny, Brayker uses what little blood is left to make sure that Jeryline is not a demon by pouring it on her hand. Jeryline then takes some of the blood off her hand and creates a barrier on the attic window. Brayker hands the artifact to her, saying that she is the "chosen one", the one who, being the only person to survive the night, will receive the duties of guardian. Just then, a possessed Danny attacks Brayker, clawing into his chest. Jeryline kicks Danny through the window, and Danny is killed by the blood barrier. Before dying, Brayker gives Jeryline the key, which brands the gauge tattoo onto her palm. She then fills the key up with Brayker's blood, since he is now the last guardian of the key.

After Brayker dies, the Collector comes up into the attic and again tries to sway Jeryline to join him. Jeryline has slathered blood on her body; when she grabs the Collector's arm, the blood burns his skin. The Collector disappears, and Jeryline goes to confront him, only to be ambushed by him. The Collector washes the blood off of Jeryline's body, but she tries gouging him with the key; though it has no effect, since he is a higher-level demon, it distracts the Collector long enough for Jeryline to drink some of the blood. After one last attempt to get her to join him, the Collector is about to kill Jeryline until she spits the blood in his face. The Collector writhes in pain and goes up in flames before reverting to his true demonic form and exploding.

As a new day dawns, Jeryline refills the key with Brayker's blood and heads off into the world, boarding a bus and making a barrier at the door. A man in an overcoat and a black hat declines to board the bus, looks at Jeryline as she is going inside it, and walks down the road, following the trail of the bus while whistling the Tales from the Crypt theme...

The Crypt Keeper

The Crypt Keeper appears in the film's prologue explaining that he is in Hollywood trying his luck as a movie director, and then he starts to unveil the story of Demon Knight.

The film ends with the Crypt Keeper attending the world premiere of the film. When he arrives at the theater, the producers confront him, revealing that they have a "final cut." The Crypt Keeper is decapitated by a guillotine, and the film ends with a shot of his head, laughing maniacally.

Following the credits, a brief post-credits scene of the Crypt Keeper plays, promising that the next film, supposedly titled Dead Easy, will appear in theaters soon. This post-credits scene only appears in a later DVD reissue of the movie. The title referenced was the working title of what would be Bordello of Blood.

Cast

Actor	Role
Billy Zane	The Collector
William Sadler	Frank Brayker
Jada Pinkett Smith	Jeryline
Brenda Bakke	Cordelia
CCH Pounder	Irene
Dick Miller	Uncle Willy
Thomas Haden Church	Roach
Gary Farmer	Deputy Bob
Charles Fleischer	Wally
Ryan O'Donohue	Danny
Sherrie Rose	Wanda
Chasey Lain	Party Babe
Traci Bingham	Party Babe
John Larroquette	Slasher
John Kassir	Voice of The Crypt Keeper

History

Unlike episodes of the HBO series, the story was not ripped from the pages of EC Comics. The first draft of the script was written in 1987,^[1] two years before the HBO series debuted, and it was first intended to be made into a film by director Tom Holland, who planned to shoot it as a followup to Child's Play. Holland hired an FX team to do preliminary sketches,^[2] but he ultimately went on to direct the box-office bomb Fatal Beauty.

Next the script wound up in the hands of Pumpkinhead screenwriter Mark Carducci, who sat on it for several years before it was given to Pet Semetary director Mary Lambert. Lambert had some radical ideas for the script, including casting an African American as Brayker to create a theme that the oppressed people of Earth were its also saviors.^[2] Once Lambert went on to direct Pet Sematary Two, which was a theatrical bomb, she couldn't get people to invest in the film.

The script later went to Charles Band's Full Moon Features, but budgetary constraints held up the production in limbo.^[2] When it finally made its way onto desks at Joel Silver's Silver Pictures, it was optioned to be the second in a trilogy of Tales from the Crypt theatrical spin-offs.^[2] Universal Pictures executives thought the script had more potential than the other two films (Dead Easy and Body Count, neither of which was ultimately produced) and the movie was quickly sent into production with a tentative release date of Halloween 1994^[2] (though the release was pushed back to January 1995).

At this point, two versions of the script were created to solve budgetary problems: one with demons and one without. In the latter, the Collector was a Bible salesman who was using a legion of fellow salesman clad in black suits and sunglasses (later revealed to be demons) as his minions.^[2] A film called Demon Knight with demons that looked like killer yuppies made everyone nervous, so Universal pitched in some additional money to get some demons on the screen.^[2]

Soundtrack

Main article: Demon Knight (soundtrack)

A soundtrack containing Heavy Metal and alternative rock was released on January 10, 1995 by Atlantic Records. It peaked at 157 on the Billboard 200.

Sequels

Demon Knight was supposed to be the second film in the trilogy, but Universal Pictures thought it should go first because it was the most Tales-Like feature out of the three proposed. Demon Knight was only one of the original titles planned that was actually made; Dead Easy (aka Fat Tuesday), a New Orleans zombie romp which was to possibly open the following Halloween, and the third film, Body Count, were never materialised as planned. The Key in Demon Knight was supposed to appear in every part of the trilogy. It appeared in Bordello of Blood, but not in Ritual.

References

1. ^ Diehl, Digby (1996). Tales from the Crypt: The Official Archives. St. Martin's Press. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Tales from the Script, by Anthony C. Ferrante, Fangoria Magazine, No. 140, March 1995

External links

• Demon Knight at the Internet Movie Database
• Demon Knight at AllRovi