Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!! For my first BTS post for Spooky Season, I wanted to pay tribute to one of my favorite Halloween horror films, Night Of The Demons! This film had everything I could want in a Halloween holiday bash: scares, blood, and a thrilling race for survival. So, make sure you have plenty of Sour Balls, beware of strange faces in the mirror, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• During an interview, Linnea Quigley (Suzanne) was asked if she was ever in an audience of fans and just watched their reactions to one of her films. She replied, “I have and it’s really fun. Actually, when I first saw Night Of The Demons, I went to see it in a drive-in and it was a really great experience, except I forgot that the first scene I filmed was my bare butt bending over, and it was up on the screen really big, and I was like ‘Oh, God, no’ and a little embarrassed.”
• Because she was a professional dancer, Amelia Kinkade (Angela) was given the freedom to choreograph her character’s famous dance scene herself.
• When talking about filming the famous lipstick scene with Linnea Quigley, the film’s director, Kevin Tenney stated, “Linnea had been nude modeling long before she had been starring in movies, so she was completely comfortable doing the scene. She read the script. Saw what we were going to do. Sent her over to Steve Johnson, who made a cast of her breasts, and the rest is history.”
• Speaking of special effects artist, Steve Johnson, he and Linnea Quigley first met when she was getting the mold made of her breasts. They ended up married for two years.
• Production of the film cost an estimated $1.2 million.

• Because the filmmakers were big fans of the film The Return Of The Living Dead, they asked Linnea Quigley to come in and audition for this film. Because she believed she was too old to successfully portray a teenager, she initially turned down the audition. They asked a couple of more times, and even her agent asked her to do it. To her surprise, when she finally auditioned, they ended up casting her on the spot.
• After landing the role of Judy, Cathy Podewell quit her waitressing job.
• The voice of possessed Angela was provided by Frank Welker.
• This was the first film where Jill Terashita (Frannie) appeared nude. During an interview, she was asked if she was uncomfortable taking her clothes off for the film. She said she wasn’t uncomfortable at all, she went to nude beaches all the time and she was proud of her body.
• In the original draft, Judy’s little brother, Billy (Donnie Jeffcoat) was going to be a bigger character. He was going to sneak into Hull House for the party and end up an integral part of the story. Due to labor laws, this was going to be too expensive, so they reduced his character’s appearance to just the beginning of the film.

• Cathy Podewell stated that the cast grew very close because they were always together during filming. Because the building was so creepy, they were all too afraid to be alone in their dressing rooms in Hull House or any other parts of the location. They all stayed together, even in between scenes.
• According to Linnea Quigley, the filming location was in such bad shape, that the crew didn’t even have to dress the set up that much. Many of the items, furniture, and décor was authentic to the original building.
• The building used for Hull House was eventually demolished and replaces by a Ralph’s supermarket.
• In order to prepare for the film, Linnea Quigley had to practice eye-gouging.
• During the mooning scene, Hal Havins (Stooge) refused to actually show his bare butt, so they had him wear jack-o-lantern underwear instead.

• Kevin Tenney admitted that he was the one who came up with the idea for Suzanne’s lipstick scene. The more he thought about it, the more he felt the scene was too “out there.” The next day, he went to the office planning to cut the scene, but everyone else loved it, so he was convinced to keep it in.
• Amelia Kinkade’s aunt, Rue McClanahan (The Golden Girls) visited the set at one point.
• An earlier draft of the script had a priest blessing the audience at the start of the film.
• The film’s writer, Joe Augustyn stated that the original script had a gay couple and an interracial kiss. These elements were deemed too “radical” at the time by the film’s producers and Kevin Tenney, so they were removed.
• Amelia Kinkade said that the casting agent, Tedra Gabriel hired her because Gabriel said she scared her half to death, which made Kinkade very proud.

• This was Cathy Podewell’s only horror film for 33 years until she appeared in Reunion From Hell in 2021. She didn’t even know that this film had 2 sequels until 2003 when she talked to a big fan of the franchise.
• The film took 4 weeks to shoot.
• An ice bucket was provided for Amelia Kinkade for her “hand warming” scene. She needed to extinguish the liquid and fire from her hands immediately after the cameras stopped rolling to avoid permanent and painful burning.
• Having Stooge say “eat a bowl of f**k” was Hal Havins idea. He says he got the line from John Belushi, who said it while performing a live comedy routine on stage.
• The film was originally titled Halloween Party. The filmmakers later felt it was too similar to Halloween, so they changed it to Night Of The Demons.

• One of the proposed alternate titles for this film was Demon Boogie. This title was later used for a song in Night Of The Demons III.
• The cartoon that’s playing in Judy’s house is The Cobweb Hotel, which features flies kept captive in the rooms of a hotel run by an evil spider and how they escape.
• Sal’s (Billy Gallo) last name is revealed to be Romero. It’s speculated that this is an homage to horror director, George Romero.
• The beers that the characters drink in the film were indeed real beers. The crew originally filled the beer cans with water for the scene, but when no one was looking, Billy Gallo poured out the water, snuck to the nearest liquor store, and filled the cans with real beer.
• John Lafia was Joe Augustyn’s first choice to direct the film. It is unknown why he turned it down.

• Kevin Tenney has a small cameo in the film as one of the customers in the convenience store where Angela stole her party supplies.
• Propaganda Films was originally interested in Joe Augustyn’s script, but they offered him less money up front, and his agent talked him out of the deal.
• David Giler was interested in producing the film, but he wanted to set the story in Europe.
• Amelia Kimkade said that she wanted to play Angela because all the other girls were running around naked, getting killed, and she was the only character who got to keep her clothes on and kill everyone else. She stated, “Given the choice between screaming and being chased by a female demon, or being the female demon, I thought it was fun.”
• Angela starts out in the film wearing cross earrings. After she becomes possessed, you might notice her cross earrings are now upside down, which is a popular sign of “the devil.”
• Alvin Alexis (Rodger) was ecstatic to learn that his character survived the whole movie. It was a common and racist trope that the black character is usually the first to die in a horror film. Alexis described this film going against the trope to be “history in the making.”