Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul: Joel DeMott’s 'Demon Lover Diary' (1980)

DeMott’s classic 1980 documentary is a volatile portrait of a crew trying, and often failing, to summon a horror movie out of very thin air

The Demon Lover (1976) is marginally notorious for well-deserved reasons. Co-directed by Donald G. Jackson and Jerry Younkins, the film is about a cult leader named Laval (played by Younkins under the alias Christmas Robbins) who decides to get revenge on his followers after they ditch him at a ceremonial orgy. Laval goes on to summon a furry devil, murder his ex-followers with spells, get his ass kicked in karate class, start a bar fight, and eventually die at the hands of the demon he conjured. There’s a lot going on in there — too much to cover in this brief space. But Joel DeMott’s documentary of The Demon Lover’s production, Demon Lover Diary (1980), charts terrors that are perhaps even more grueling than anything Laval could muster with his black magic. Made as a one-woman crew, Demon Lover Diary is a multifaceted, warts-and-all vision of a should’ve-been doomed creative nightmare. DeMott travels with two fellow filmmakers to document their experience working on the amateur horror production. Don Jackson is the heart of the project. He’s a first-time feature filmmaker and he has pinned his, and his family’s, future on a bargain-bin horror flick with little idea of how to make it a reality. To make matters worse, he has a loudmouthed co-director/producer/star in Younkins, plus DeMott following him around with a camera capturing his every blunder and indecision — and there are many. All of this adds up in Demon Lover Diary to a volatile portrait of the oddest assortment of people trying, and often failing, to work together to summon a horror movie out of very thin air.

Before going further, it should be restated that despite the lack of experience, meltdowns on set, and guns — borrowed from the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent — being fired at DeMott and her friends on their final day of filming, The Demon Lover was in fact completed and distributed. You can probably find it buried in the horror section of our nation’s few remaining video stores. It’s ideal programming for Tubi, where it occasionally surfaces. But while just about any movie has a decent chance of receiving a pristine release on Blu-ray these days, DeMott’s film currently remains a neglected gem. Demon Lover Diary has long been unavailable for home viewing save for an ugly, nearly unwatchable VHS-rip on YouTube. Restorations have screened across the US — sometimes on a double bill with The Demon Lover — and filmmakers as far ranging as Kelly Reichardt¹ and Rodney Ascher have expressed their admiration. Meanwhile, Jackson and others have claimed the film misrepresents the truth of The Demon Lover’s production, and some have suggested that DeMott was willfully trying to derail Jackson’s movie for the sake of her own project.² Everyone involved seems to have their own perception of what DeMott’s intentions were in bringing a camera onto Jackson’s set. What I aim to explore below is not “what really happened” during the making of The Demon Lover, but what happens in Demon Lover Diary. I’m after what DeMott’s film expresses on its own terms. Not behind-the-scenes facts, but within-the-scenes truths, about people trying to create something together and the characters they assume, and are consumed by, in the process.

The film begins with DeMott explaining that the opportunity to make Demon Lover Diary came about because her partner, Jeff Kreines, was hired by Jackson to work on a low-budget horror movie in the Midwest. With friend Mark Rance joining to help on sound for the horror film, the young filmmakers strike out for Michigan from Boston. Kreines, an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, was hired because Jackson loved his short film Ricky and Rocky (co-directed with Tom Palazzolo, 1971) when he saw it at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.³ But when DeMott, Kreines, and Rance arrive at Jackson’s house there is immediate tension. Kreines has already been fired and rehired once over the phone for being so late to the set. From his first look at DeMott’s camera, Jackson gives the impression that he is not exactly happy to have her around. He tells the group that Kreines is the only one who will be joining him for the shoot. DeMott and Rance, if they wish to be involved, can stay at Jackson’s house to answer the phone. Arguments ensue, but Kreines holds his ground and his friends are allowed to tag along.

We learn that Jackson and Younkins are friends who worked in a factory together. On set, Jackson will be directing the cameras, while Younkins — of whom the only other information available on IMDb is that he “has authored several good books on knives” — will be in charge of the actors. Jackson wrote the script and describes the film as a long-time passion project. Younkins helped partially fund The Demon Lover by chopping off a finger at work. Clearly a hardcore cinephile, Jackson has waited his entire life to make a feature film and talks about The Demon Lover with over-the-top enthusiasm and hubris. He describes the film like it’s the next Citizen Kane and also requests that no one tell his religious mother that he is making a horror movie.

As filming begins, a disorganized, often toxic environment is established where egos flare and a lack of know-how rules supreme. DeMott and the females who are starring in the film — some disturbingly young for what they are being asked to do — are often treated carelessly by the men attempting to run the production. Even the seemingly more sympathetic members of the crew have disturbing blindspots regarding their own life choices, particularly an affable fellow who talks of his tangled sexual relations with a friend’s wife and his own foster sister. DeMott somehow gets everyone to speak about their various life dramas with a reckless openness for her camera.

It’s often hard not to laugh at the Demon Lover crew, especially Jackson and Younkins, but this is not through any malicious editorial decisions from DeMott. There are ellipses in her presentation of the production, but rarely within each scene, where she lets the cameras run just as long as her subjects’ mouths. At the beginning, Jackson is excited and nervous. He’s a middle-aged factory worker who is about to make his dream film, albeit a heavily compromised version of it. According to Jackson, The Demon Lover is going to be “pure entertainment” — a huge hit that will also be very controversial. He talks of his years of planning and his stamina to create. “It’s worth spending two years to do a masterpiece,” he tells a reporter who visits the set. “And that’s what we’re trying to do — all the heart, mind, body, and soul trying to create a masterpiece.”

But it’s a lack of perspective that mostly shows through during his rants. Doubt that The Demon Lover will be finished sets in quickly. There is little proof that any of the planning Jackson boasts of ever took place. He is clearly acting for DeMott’s camera, as well as for his cast, crew, and anyone else who will listen. He talks about what his film will be without ever laying out a course for how to achieve it. We see hopes and dreams clashing against the wall of practicality and actuality. Jackson begins to defer many of the creative decisions to Kreines. He also expresses a desire to take charge of camera duties throughout the shoot. DeMott sequences one of Jackson’s most passionate monologues about the film’s potential with one of her harshest, but seemingly accurate, voice-over commentaries of Jackson. Over footage of Jackson and Kreines at a Chicago rental house trying out equipment, she describes Jackson as being too scared to shoot the film himself, despite how obvious it is that he wants to. We see several indications of his ambitions to be behind the camera in low-stakes situations; first at the rental house and later as he zips around documenting the Demon Lover set with a home movie camera. Even the film he is making seems to express some of these insecurities and desires to be the mastermind behind the camera. Several scenes in The Demon Lover feature Laval talking to his followers about his magical abilities, much like a director trying to rally a crew. For instance, as his coven is about to leave him, Laval declares that it takes a group’s soul “to explore and create,” and that “every vehicle must have a pilot. You must have a focusing point for directing energy, and I understand what’s going on!” They don’t buy it and walk out on him, leaving him alone with his magic.

DeMott has said her film is “about cultural snobbery, the disintegration of friendship, puppy love, violence, boredom, [and] money.” The cultural snobbery she mentions could certainly relate to the attitude she and her Northeastern friends brought to Jackson’s set. As the critic Kim Newman points out, DeMott “doesn’t always paint a flattering portrait of herself or Kreines.” She films her partner “in floppy y-fronts, on the toilet and having an extreme tantrum after whipped cream gets on his lens.” At the start of the film, as they prepare to leave for Michigan, DeMott presents a scene of herself and Kreines packing. They appear excited to embark on the trip — Kreines is even packing “clean” clothes to mark the occasion of shooting a feature film. But they are also presented as somewhat aloof and above-it-all and this attitude pervades over the film. They never take Jackson or The Demon Lover seriously. You can hear DeMott snickering from behind the camera during the group’s first meeting with Jackson. She includes scenes of herself, Kreines, and Rance laughing hysterically at the day’s mishaps on set. Just as Jackson performs for the camera, DeMott’s voiceover narration plays as if she is discovering everything as it appears on screen. This often lends a snarky tone to the film as she situates herself ever so slightly ahead of the immediate, and often absurd, action she is capturing. While this at times comes across quite cruelly, you really can’t blame her. Sometimes creating that cynical distance can be the only thing to keep one sane when surrounded by such a collective lack of awareness. But DeMott’s inclusion of those types of scenes suggests her own awareness of the role she and her friends had in adding to the production’s turmoil.

DeMott, with an immediacy that feels entirely unique, understands how to capture people relishing the opportunity afforded by a camera to “play themselves.” DeMott only made two features — the other being Seventeen, her 1983 masterpiece set among the student body of an Indiana high school, which she co-directed with Kreines — but her limited output demonstrates a remarkable ability to conjure the performer out of her subjects, an uncanny melding of who they are and who they urge to be. Jackson becomes a dime-store Wellesian braggart with an all-too visible insecurity streak; Younkins proves to be a clueless wannabe-power player. But the most charming instance of DeMott’s way of working in Demon Lover Diary comes when she sets up Rance with Carol, one of the film’s young actresses. After noticing some flirtation between the two, DeMott encourages Rance to make a move. He plays shy before going along with DeMott’s idea, and Carol is game as well — for the sake of the film, they want us to believe. They go through the motions for the camera but eventually end up in a bedroom kissing. As they are embracing on top of the sheets, DeMott includes an astute insight that relates not only to her instigated romance, but to everything she has pulled into her own production from the Demon Lover set. “They pretend they’re doing this for me,” she says in voice-over, as her lovers are cherishing the roles they have been assigned. DeMott’s comment draws us to how layered the performances are within her film. The camera gives its subjects a certain freedom; Rance and Carol tangle up on the bed like teenagers because it is, in fact, what their director called for. But from what we see, DeMott was paying attention to the details as they were flirting. Through DeMott’s guidance, desires are brought to the surface that might not have been acted on without her camera. As she films them on the bed, DeMott also recognizes how her role behind the camera plays into the lives before it. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” she says before cutting to a scene of the guys in the crew ribbing Rance over his time spent with Carol.

So often, documentary filmmakers present their work as if they blended entirely into the scenery in order to catch some impossibly pure form of “reality.” Others seem to indulge their subjects into becoming brash caricatures. DeMott’s approach is at once nuanced and aggressive. As in Seventeen, DeMott and her camera are as much a part of the scenes in Demon Lover Diary as her characters. You never get the sense that the people she is filming forget about the camera or the woman behind it. Rather than a “fly-on-the-wall” approach, DeMott’s style is more akin to sticking a hand inside a hornet’s nest; she and her camera stir and aggravate reality instead of merely reflecting it. The situations she works in are often scenes on the verge of blowing up and she positions herself in a way that allows her to poke and prod without exploiting her subjects. People say things into DeMott’s camera that they would probably hesitate to say into a mirror, but you never feel like you shouldn’t be there watching and listening to what is being presented. She often stages “behind the back” moments. In Seventeen, for instance, high schoolers who are navigating serious, often disturbing, social and racial tensions in their small town, act exceptionally bold for the camera — playing to it like it were someone to impress. They make rude comments about teachers just out of earshot and boast about what they plan to do to people and communities who have done them wrong. DeMott at one point situates herself in the middle of a note-passing chain throughout a classroom. The kids exaggerate their rebellion for the camera as they act like they aren’t worried about getting caught. You feel DeMott’s presence, and her instincts allow her to get exceptionally close to her subjects, as if she is infiltrating their personalities, or pressurizing them.

Within her two films, DeMott captures some of the most complex displays of uncertainty and of people trying not to look vulnerable ever to appear in non-fiction filmmaking. Jackson subsequently told people that he was performing in Demon Lover Diary. This was perhaps his way of denying that he really believed Demon Lover was going to be a masterpiece, or that he really couldn’t help the crew carry equipment because, as the director, he was “carrying the weight of the film.” He certainly is performing in Demon Lover Diary, but not necessarily in the sense he later implied; it’s something more delicate than that and DeMott’s treatment is often harsh. Jackson is caught looking incredibly off-guard throughout the film. We see him at his mother’s house in the morning before going on set. He is visibly shaking and nearly out of breath as he asks Kreines about the day’s plan. We also get scenes where DeMott sits behind Jackson at the wheel of his car as he raves about what Demon Lover will be. He seems to have found a “character” for himself in these moments. But DeMott keeps turning her camera on Kreines and Rance to catch their reactions to their director’s words. Kreines can’t help but turn to snicker, while Rance goes stone faced, ignoring DeMott as she waits for a response. Her approach to this scene creates a situation where we almost can’t decide if she is being cruel by looking for reactions to Jackson’s bloviating, or if it’s a genuine disbelief at what is coming out of his mouth. Should we just give in and go ahead and laugh at the absurdity of how naive and loud this man is with his ambitions?

During the production, Jackson was under a lot of pressure from himself, his family, and the strange people and influences that surrounded him on this project. It is genuinely hard to watch him debate with himself and struggle to find the confidence to say he wants to shoot his own movie, all while his co-director and cinematographer bicker like children. It’s even harder to watch him tell a journalist visiting the set, in full self-conviction, about how much work he has put into his movie and how great it will be, only to have Younkins tell the same reporter that their film is “junk.” Jackson is on the cusp of making a dream come true. But no matter how many years he claims to have spent in preparation for his movie, he’s in the thick of it, and all the moving parts and the blindspots become threats to its existence. People who talk big might not come through. Scenes mapped out brilliantly on paper don’t always end up like you dreamed. As he is portrayed in the film, Jackson lacks the skills and knowledge to lead the production himself and is terrified of taking full responsibility. DeMott adds further weight to our understanding when she is held from going into Jackson’s house for a budget discussion. While the men talk, she parks herself on the porch and films some kids roughhousing in a yard — their antics not unlike the various scenes and stunts performed on the Demon Lover set. As the children play, she mentions that Jackson’s wife told her that Don has mortgaged his family’s house and his car in order to fund The Demon Lover. His superiors at his day job are also growing suspicious of his requests for extended sick time, which he attributes to “film fever.” This is almost endearing, but more than anything, it’s an indication of how unaware he is of the real world consequences of his decisions. Jackson has a lot to lose if his “pure entertainment” masterpiece doesn’t take off the way he promises. These are big risks that he is taking on a movie that will, at best, pass through the drive-in circuit. But perhaps telling the camera how great The Demon Lover will be is his way of trying to will it into existence.

Jackson did end up sustaining a career making movies. He went on to rack up 40 directing credits before his death in Los Angeles in 2003. His movies feature frog people, rollerblade ninjas, and ghost babies. Many have been deemed close to unwatchable. But Jackson did make it to Hollywood. At least part of his dream came true. But by the end of Demon Lover Diary, Jackson has reached another level of desperation. DeMott, Kreines, and Rance write a contract that guarantees they will be paid for their work. They don’t think he has any money left. The contract is presented to Jackson shortly after visiting rock star Ted Nugent’s house. Somehow Younkins and Jackson were set up with Nugent in order to acquire real guns to use in the film. Jackson reads and signs the contract just before a disastrous night shoot that ends with Jackson tearing down the set dressing and yelling at his crew before gunfire erupts in the direction of a fleeing DeMott, Kreines, and Rance in their car.

It would take not saintliness, but delusion, to ignore the humor in the stupidity that ensues from Demon Lover’s haphazard leadership. It’s important to recognize that Demon Lover Diary also charts the difference between directing and acting like a director: Jackson talks like he’s making a masterpiece, but DeMott is an active creative force working with whatever she has in order to finish her documentary. There is something dangerous about her way of making movies. Many of the scenes in Demon Lover Diary feel like she is inviting us into a private joke said aloud — her narration style often doubles down on this. DeMott works her way into relationships with her subjects that appear to be very fragile. A personality is a complicated thing, and they are generally tied up under a mess of defenses and covers. When those covers are stripped away the way so many are in DeMott’s films, the realization of exposure or of having said too much often causes them to lash back with greater severity.

Demon Lover Diary’s ending, with DeMott and Co. running from gunfire, seems to capture the moment when her camera got too close to the raw and wild egos of her subjects. In the flurry of sound and shadowed image, we don’t see Jackson, Younkins, the crew, or the guns as they go off. It creates an impression similar to the conclusion of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, during which archeologists run frantically and blind through the dark from a creature they can only imagine the whole of from mere glances. Our final vision of DeMott addressing the camera is of someone struck with total fear. Absent is the levelheaded and playful spirit that has guided us through the mayhem, and gone is the smile she wears while testing her camera in the mirror at Jackson’s mother’s house. She sounds paranoid as she worries over every approaching car and whether it holds Jackson or one of his associates. The people that she and friends once laughed at after production hours have suddenly altered her understanding of the monstrous potentials of humanity.

DeMott counters these anxious moments by including an interview she conducts with a truck driver during their return trip to Boston. The trucker speaks of how sick and tired he is of driving and how much he hates his life out on the road after all the years. DeMott follows this with the final shot of the film pointing out the car window. It’s an entirely unromantic image, drained of the anticipation and any excitement DeMott and her fellow filmworkers may have had on their trip west to start work on Donald G. Jackson’s movie. Where the rest of the film has been penetrating and immersing itself in the madness of The Demon Lover and the lives of its crew, it is distressing to be faced with a final image that is so far removed from the world before it. One of the most remarkable aspects of Demon Lover Diary is that it reaches this point and captures such disturbing flashes of human nature from the unlikely vantage of documenting a cheap horror movie production. DeMott’s humble scale makes that escalation feel all the more relatable and unreal at the same time.

While Demon Lover Diary is currently only available in terrible shape on YouTube, we highly recommend you stream or purchase DeMott and Kreines’ 1983 film Seventeen from Icarus Films

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My first time seeing Demon Lover Diary was at a 2018 screening at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon, with Reichardt delivering the introduction. ↩︎
Some of these claims can be found in the YouTube comments for the VHS-rip of Demon Lover Diary. The comment in question was left by a user who goes by MrDogDollars, who says his father was Phil Foreman, the actor who played one of the cult members in The Demon Lover. MrDogDollars writes, “My father knew the movie was a piece of shit and the making of it was completely disorganized but DeMott and Kreines weren’t completely without blame. According the [sic] to him, on the days he shot his scenes it seemed like they were intentionally trying to sabotage or at least impede the making of the film on the down low so they could to [sic] make their own film more interesting.” (I normally would never dream of citing a YouTube commenter, even in casual conversation, but with this movie and the strange people and production it documents, it feels rather fitting to usher the netherworld of YouTube comment sections into the discussion.) ↩︎
Kreines was not the first cameraman to work on The Demon Lover and wouldn’t be the last. In the film Jackson says they went through four other cameramen before Kreines was called in. According to Paul Cokkum, one of the earlier hires was Daniel Pearl, the eye behind The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Pearl was involved until the production ran out of money and couldn’t afford him. His Chain Saw collaborator Gunnar Hansen also has a role in Demon Lover but avoids having to appear in Demon Lover Diary.
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