Sinners received a record 16 Oscar nominations. That officially makes it the best movie ever according to Internet shills.
Sinners is often compared to From Dusk Till Dawn, but Demon Knight is a more apt comparison, as both movies feature protagonists trapped in a building with an antagonist, who can’t enter, laying siege.
Guess how many Oscar nominations Demon Knight received?
ZERO.
Is this the greatest crime in cinema history? My answer, with zero hyperbole, is…sure!
Let’s compare the two films and see how Demon Knight fares against the greatest film of all time, which is Sinners.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The plainly accepted fact is black don’t crack. On the other hand, black hair is more difficult to style, according to Michelle Obama. Add that up, and Sinners had an easier time with makeup and a harder time with hair wrangling.
Demon Knight dealt with William Sadler, who has Angela Lansbury Syndrome, in that he looks seventy at all ages. Demon Knight had to try to make him only look sixty. Plus, Thomas Haden Church had a mullet, luxuriant in its gloriousness, to wrangle. Jada Pinkett provides no help because she went cropped, which short-circuited the entire process.
(GET. MY WIFE’S NAME. OFF’N YORE KEYBOARD!)
Regarding monster makeup, Sinners featured vampires with glowing red eyes and fangs. Demon Knight featured zombified humans with glowing yellow eyes and fangs.
Demon Knight also had C.C.H. Pounder (what kind of name is that anyway?) missing an arm, which required her face to be sufficiently pained.
Sinners displayed Hailee Steinfeld, but Demon Knight displayed Brenda Bakke. They are basically the same person. Both films are neck-and-neck in this category. In the end, we are going to have to go to a tiebreaker.
Which movie had Billy Zane?
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Casting
This category should be straightforward. Sinners main players: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Delroy Lindo and Li Jun Li…
I know what you’re thinking. I know some of those people, and I will pretend I recognize the rest, lest folks think me uninformed.
Meanwhile, Demon Knight: Billy Zane, William Sadler, Thomas Hayden Church, C.C.H. Pounder, Brenda Bakke, John Larroquette, Charles Fleischer, Dick Miller and Jada Pinkett.
(GET. MY WIFE’S NAME. OFF’N YORE KEYBOARD!)
That is a tour de force of heavy hitters, up there with the cast of How The West Was Won. But, in case you aren’t fully onboard…
Demon Knight also had Chasey Lain as a “Party Babe.” She had a song written about her by the Bloodhound Gang called The Ballad of Chasey Lain. It was the third single from their third studio album: Hooray for Boobies. Terrible song, but it is still a feather in Demon Knight’s cap.
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Production Design
Sinners did a nice job depicting rural 1930s Mississippi, or I should say, Sinners did a nice job programming a computer to depict rural 1930s Mississippi in multiple scenes.
Sinners also had a juke joint that looked sufficiently juke joint-like, in that it was made of wood, had walls, a floor and a ceiling.
Demon Knight featured a desert location that was likely a real desert. It also had an abandoned church repurposed to be a boarding house. It had stained glass windows, a balcony converted to rooms and a worship area converted to a common area. Plus, it had a steeple and a basement, and Demon Knight made unique use of each feature.
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Costume Design
Sinners dressed people in 1930s attire, from suits to farmer clothes to town clothes. But you know what Sinners didn’t do?
It didn’t dress Thomas Haden Church in a Hawaiian shirt over a netted T-shirt combined with leather pants. Can we also count Thomas Haden Church wearing alligator clamps on his moob’s as “costume?”
Regardless, clear winner: Demon Knight.
Best Original Song
Sinners has I Lied To You:
Demon Knight as Cemetery Gates (Demon Knight Edit):
I can’t even hum the melody of the Sinners song after hearing it. Phil, Dimebag, Vinnie and Rex, on the other hand, rock our socks off.
As for the soundtrack, Sinners covers a bunch of old-timey songs. Old-timey soundtracks can be great fun: see O Brother, Where Art Thou? and even The Ladykillers, for example.
But Demon Knight worked. It went out and got songs by Pantera, Megadeth, Ministry, Machine Head, Melvins, Sepultura, Filter, Biohazard, Rollins Band and Gravediggaz.
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Original Score
Sinners composer is Ludwig Goransson. He has worked with dudes like Nolan on Oppenheimer and Coogler on Black Panther.
Demon Knight composer is Edward Shearmur, who also wrote the soundtrack for films like Species II and Reign of Fire.
Aha, Sinners aficionados say, certainly, Demon Knight will lose this category!
Not so fast. Goransson also worked with Disney, so he can go take a long screen door off a short leave, make like a submarine and tree a pier…
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Sound
Sinners is known for being a sound film because it has a lot of music. People sing and dance and play guitars. They even talk. Some yelling and screaming also happens.
Guess what, yelling and screaming happens in Demon Knight, too. Characters talk. Singing occurs in Demon Knight, as well, when songs from its soundtrack play over the proceedings. Plus, Billy Zane and Jada Pinkett dance.
(GET. MY WIFE’S NAME. OFF’N YORE KEYBOARD!)
Does anyone play the guitar in Demon Knight? Yes! Again, the soundtrack! Regardless, Billy Zane plays our hearts. That is more important than anything entering our ears.
Winner: Demon Knight.
Best Cinematography
I liked some of the cinematography in Sinners. The CGI shots of rural Mississippi were nice, along with shots of the CGI sunrise. The film had nice lighting during the night scenes. All in all, Sinners deserves kudos here. Props to Autumn Durald for her work.
Meanwhile, Rick Bota performed cinematographer duties on Demon Knight. Again, this is an easy one to score because Bota caught one of the finest scenes in cinema history: the sponge scene…
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Visual Effects
We don’t even need to talk about Sinners here because Demon Knight has creature effects. Plus, it turned a boy into a hunchbacked monster with a three-foot tongue that probed William Sandler’s chest cavity.
‘Nuff said…
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Film Editing
Michael Shawver (Abigail) edited Sinners. Steven Lovejoy edited Demon Knight. Let’s look at the runtimes. Sinners: 137 minutes. Demon Knight: 92 minutes.
Demon Knight is 33 percent shorter and packs 33 percent more story into its runtime, complete with more memorable characters who do more memorable things.
Lovejoy was clearly operating at a demi-god editorial level.
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Original Screenplay
Sinners getting nominated for Best Original Screenplay is one of the more questionable award nominations of the year. Sinners is clearly another Night of the Living Dead, Dusk Till Dawn, Demon Knight kind of siege film. It likely got credit because it went with a racism metaphor, so it has layers.
I say…
You want to talk about layers? Check out Demon Knight. It has a wraparound Cryptkeeper sequence that skewers Hollywood and slasher films. It even goes in and out of a comic book at one point. Then you throw in a fun, original story about a guardian of an ancient key fueled by Christ’s blood battling demons, and you are in uncharted territory.
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Supporting Actress
This comes down to Wunmi Mosaku vs. Jada Pinkett.
(GET. MY WIFE’S NAME. OFF’N YORE KEYBOARD!)
Again, why is this even a discussion? Did Mosaku strip down to her underwear, cover herself in blood and tango? No, she merely spouted exposition here and there.
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Supporting Actor
Here we got Delroy Lindo vs. William Sadler.
Sinners reduced Lindo to an old black dude who quips wisdom and jokes about pooping himself. Demon Knight made Sadler a world-weary hero out to save the universe that shoots and stabs the eyes of demons. At no point is he a joke. Any wisdom he dispenses is driven by desperation to keep people alive. Plus, he has his chest cavity probed by the three-foot tongue of a hunchbacked monster boy.
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Actor
Let’s give credit where credit is due. Michael B. Jordon gave one of the finest twin portrayals ever in film, right behind Hayley Mills, Nicolas Cage, Armie Hammer, Jeremy Irons, Adam Sandler, Paul Dano, Lisa Kudrow, Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, and, of course, the definitive twin performance of Jean-Claude Van Damme who did it twice (Double Impact and Maximum Risk)!
Speaking of MBJ…I watched Chronicle again recently. Neat little flick, and MBJ is so happy and charismatic in it. Now he is trending toward glowering hulk territory. Hollywood is wrecking him by putting the weight of the world on his shoulders. It’s like he feels forced to be taken seriously now.
Anyway, we all know where this category is going. Billy Zane gives the performance of his illustrious career in Demon Knight as an arch-demon out to destroy the world. He is chilling, funny, romantic, exasperated and all things life and love.
The fact that Billy Zane was not even nominated in 1995 is a travesty. It goes to show that the whole Oscar thing is nothing but a gigantic scam to never take as seriously as Hollywood makes MBJ take himself.
Plus, Billy Zane did this!
Best Director
I know what you are thinking here. We have to DEI it up and give this one to Coogler for Sinners, but here is the twist…The director of Demon Knight, Ernest Dickerson, is also black! In fact, Demon Knight is considered to be a “black” horror film with its black director and black female lead that survives to be the final girl: Jada Pinkett.
(GET. MY WIFE’S NAME. OFF’N YORE KEYBOARD!)
Dickerson cooked on Demon Knight, bringing a film to viewers that is funny, exciting, scary and packed into a tight package that delivers in all areas.
By the way, what is up with the weird sexual component of Sinners? You know what I’m talking about. It’s kind of weird, right? Why did Coogler put that weirdness in there? It was cringy. A sexual component exists to Demon Knight, too, but it is trashy rather than weird because Demon Knight knows its lane.
Winner: Demon Knight
Best Picture
We are only finishing out this last category via a sense of duty. Demon Knight beat Sinners handily in all categories.
And, really, all of this is unnecessary anyway. Just ask yourself a simple question, within your heart of hearts, which film would you rather watch again?
All-Time-Best-Film-Ever-Winner: Demon Knight…
