In 1975, two recent film students Joel DeMott and her boyfriend Jeff Kreines embarked on a journey to the American Midwest to assist on the making of an independent horror movie called Demon Lover. It was being directed by two young horror fans, Donald G. Jackson and Jerry Younkins, who had scraped enough cash together to get the production off the ground, and wanted Jeff to be the cinematographer: they didn't actually want Joel around, but she was intent on trying out her newfound documentary skills as well as her 8mm camera, so elected to create a record of the film for posterity. However, whatever could go wrong, did go wrong...
Demon Lover Diary is one of the most obscure documentaries about the making of a movie ever produced, and in these days of endless DVD extras detailing just how swimmingly all went on the set, this belonged to that smaller subset where the "making of" director stumbled upon something far greater than the actual film it was detailing. Such films include Lost in La Mancha, where Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote work came to sorrow, or the most obvious descendant of this, American Movie, where some loveable misfits do their best to try and get something, anything finished just so they can be awarded with the epithet "Filmmaker". Except the filmmakers here were anything but loveable.
Now, there's a sense that introducing a camera into the equation, making a documentary or home movie or whatever, is not so much fly on the wall as it is an intrusive element hard for anyone around it to ignore, so there's always the possibility those being filmed will be playing up to that camera. Certainly Jackson and Younkins may have wanted to look aggressively professional when DeMott was capturing their work, but the effect was more pissy and clueless, as if they were talking up how great they were when in fact they couldn't get their act together at all, and this was the evidence. When both are introduced to us bitching about Kreines having the temerity to be late for the starting date when we can see no evidence they were ready, then alarm bells ring.
She only made one more film, also a documentary, just as underseen but not as notorious among those who had, and taking note of the way she invites Mark and a local actress to make out for her camera, complete with voiceover telling us she has set this in motion (because she thinks they would be good together), it does set you pondering if this is some sort of confession. And yet there are other scenes you cannot deny appear all too real: the details ranging from Don's ageing mother (who the crew are forced to live with) must be told the project is a police drama thanks to her strong religious beliefs to the implication Jerry's accident at work where two fingers were cut off was deliberate to raise production funds with the compensation money (!) had the ring of truth. And the utter shambles of the shoot, with nobody knowing what the hell was going on, not only are convincing, but may persuade budding moviemakers that their dreams are just not worth this pain and hassle. And yet, Demon Lover was finished, released, and Jackson did indeed have a career in (schlocky) film. Very odd.
