Two guys are driving from Mexico with a load of Spanish flies which they are planning to sell to college kids. While discussing the actual seduction effects caused by their chemical components, one of them challenges the other to prove if they really work as they should. In that same moment, the guys see a strip joint just in front of them. After entering, they get much more than a few beers and a lap dance.
After watching the first 25 minutes of the movie I was really puzzled as I didn't know if the extremely obvious connection to the mishaps of the Gecko brothers in a cult favorite "From Dusk Till Dawn" was a good or a bad thing. I liked the Robert Rodriguez movie a lot and as it turned out "The Devil's Den" was a new take on the "Titty Twister" bar from the movie. In this case we have two friends entering a strip joint located in the middle of nowhere and they very soon find out that the good looking chicks inside are effectively transforming into killing monsters.
To make things more interesting for the viewers, besides the goofy friends that don't have any fighting skills, we are introduced with two different modern warriors - Caitlin, a good looking professional assassin and Leonard, a professional monster hunter. Together they must fight to survive and kill the root of all evil - the Queen.
I saw the full page advert for the movie in one of the latest issues of Fangoria magazine, but my interest was raised when I read a simple plot synopsis on IMDB. Every average (B) horror movie lover couldn't step back from a movie that combines murderous strippers, sword waving demon hunters and mysterious assassin. Unfortunately, the idea was there, but I wasn't a bit impressed by the execution.
 
The movie hosts a variety of names that horror fans are familiar with - Dewon Sava that escaped the Death in "Final Destination" and had love interest towards super cute Jessica Alba in "Idle Hands", legendary "Dawn of the Dead" hero Ken Foree, a bit more mainstream actress Kelly Hu and sitting in the director's chair was "the sequel king" Jeff Burr (Pumpkinhead II, Stepfather II, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 and a couple of Puppet Master flicks). All of their performances were solid, especially for this kind of movie that doesn't take itself very serious.
"The Devil's Den" is a combination of horror, comedy and an action movie. While I personally like to come across a horror movie that has its funny moments, it looks like this kind of movies are missing the target audience. Some great ones like let's say "Slither" end up box office flops, and the majority of others with lesser budgets usually prove to be just plain bad. I must say that "The Devil's Den" would fit in the latter category and I was a bit sorry because the basic idea looked interesting.
Some of the jokes, fighting and kicking ghoul asses in the first 1/3 of the movie was pretty good and the movie had a feeling of a bit trashy take on "From Dusk Till Dawn". Then after ten minutes of stagnation, you would hope the things to sky rocket, but the story just goes plummeting down. Besides just filling the screen time, there was no point of going deeper in discussions that are giving the viewers unnecessary character driven information. In one of the useless conversations I think that the writer was even metaphorically trying to criticize some of the current events related to the politics in the US.
I had an impression that the movie script was being built on blocks taken from or referencing other movies. Besides the obvious connections to the Rodriguez movie and even "Bordello of Blood" there is also a rather lengthy reference to Zat˘ichi, a popular Japanese blind swordsman who was featured in a number of movies. Personally the only blind fighter I saw was Rutger Hauer in "Blind Fury", but surely the Zat˘ichi reference will be a bit over the top to many of the viewers unfamiliar with its fame.
It was a shame that the only interesting part was the kicking and screaming mayhem, and even those scenes had its bad sides. While the ghoul effects and the slaughter looked very good, there were scenes that showed lack of perfection - continuity errors such as a ghoul that would have bullet wounds on the back before even she was being shot at, clear physical differences between actors and stuntmen and even badly done fighting choreography where it was so clear that the punches were not even close to someones body.
Characters were absolutely flat and because of this I couldn't be amused by latter interactions between them, especially in the final fight between Caitlin and the main ghoul. The main problem with "The Devil's Den" is that after a good start it quickly became boring.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Jeff Burr
WRITING CREDITS: Mitch Gould
GENRE: Horror, Comedy, Action
CAST: Kelly Hu, Devon Sawa, Ken Foree
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 84 min
RATING: 3/10
Devil's Den, The Website/IMDB Click here
Devil's Den, The Trailer Click here
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