When Jill Godmilow’s documentary Roy Cohn/Jack Smith premiered at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival, the number of AIDS-related deaths was reaching an all-time high in the United States (over 270,000). In New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, many artists and filmmakers were grappling with the disease. While Broadway was hosting the second part of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America, downtown New Yorkers were fondly recalling another recent production, Ron Vawter’s one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which the actor, who died of AIDS in April 1994, performed two monologues, first as Cohn, the conservative lawyer, and secondly, as Smith, the flamboyant experimental filmmaker—both of whom died of AIDS-related causes in the late 1980s.

Demons is a dramatic horror story set in the rural Midwest in the late 1950's. The narrative focuses on Allie, a recently widowed woman struggling to operate a small hog farm with the support of her teenage son, Dayton. Allie's autonomy is repeatedly challenged as she staves off the vulturous opportunism of a corporate land prospector and the debts her husband left behind. In the midst of her difficulties arrives her brother-in-law, Gray, returning to the farm he fled fifteen years earlier. A suspect individual with rumors of mental illness in his past, Gray's attempts to insinuate himself back on the farm are repeatedly thwarted by Allie. Circumstances begin to knot as Gray pursues Dayton who reciprocates with the full passion of his burgeoning sexuality. In desperation, Allie devises a plan to circumvent the desire between Gray and Dayton; an effort as much to maintain control of her son as the land she tenuously possesses. Demons is a story of three individuals caught in the struggle to survive; fighting for their own autonomy and the often competing strength of sexual desire.

In a Canadian metropolis, failed actor David shares a place with the bookish Candy, whom he dated before coming out as gay. While David, who now waits tables, pursues an aimless romance with a younger coworker, Candy dabbles in both same-sex and heterosexual affairs. As David and Candy’s odd assortment of friends — including a telepathic sex worker and an ill-tempered yuppie — pass in and out of their beds, a serial murder stalks the city’s women.