Terror al anochecer

If this reviews' corresponding rating were based on technical prowess or filmmaking / story quality, it would naturally be low indeed. But it supplies a substantial amount of entertainment value. This is cheeseball crud at its finest. While on one hand this viewer did feel bad for the veteran actors involved (more to the point, it's sad that THIS was Neville Brands' final film), they help to make this fun. "Evils of the Night" is tacky, it's trashy, and it's downright silly.

The plot has a team of aliens - Dr. Kozmar (John Carradine), Dr. Zarma (Julie Newmar), and Cora (Tina Louise) among them - arriving on Earth. They manipulate two ceaselessly stupid and sleazy garage mechanics, Kurt (Mr. Brand), and Fred (Aldo Ray) into abducting as many of the local airhead oversexed college students as possible, to be used in biological experiments.

Since the victims here are so utterly pathetic (they sure don't do a very good job of trying to save their own worthless asses), one may end up rooting for the antagonists by default.

Add to this mix some painfully loud and peppy pop tunes, a respectable amount of female nudity, and the fumbling direction of Mohammed "Mardi" Rustam, and you get fromage writ large, a cheap genre item that's pretty hard to resist. Rustam had worked as a producer of 70s favourites such as "Psychic Killer" and Tobe Hoopers' "Eaten Alive", and this was his only feature length directing credit on a motion picture.

Newmar and Louise look quite good, as do many of their young co-stars. Carradine may have appeared in a lot of junk unworthy of his talents over the years, but the fact remains that even in stuff like this, he never seemed to phone it in; his performance is the most fun.

Buffs will note that two of the younger cast members, Karrie Emerson and Tony O'Dell, also worked together subsequently in "Chopping Mall".

Eight out of 10.

"Evils of the Night" involves two extraterrestrial women (Tina Louise and Julie Newmar) who hire a couple of idiot rednecks to kidnap and kill 'teens for them, so that they can use the blood to prolong their race (or something like that). I saw this movie in a theater by a fortuitous accident when it was released in 1986: the print of the just-released "Nightmare on Elm Street" had failed to arrive, so the theater owners were showing "Evils..." in its place. My friends and I laughed the whole way through, and were delighted by the many familiar faces in the cast - we never thought we'd see Julie Newmar again! If, like myself, you enjoy following the careers of grade-B stars, you'll get a kick out of this obscure piece of low-budget gore/horror schlock.

Evils of the Night (1985)

** (out of 4)

Now here's a strange little oddity. A group of aliens come to Earth where they hire a couple masked men to go out and bring teenagers back to their lair. Once there, the aliens drain them of blood so that they can live.

EVILS OF THE NIGHT is a pretty bad movie but at the same time it has such a fascinating cast that you can't help but be slightly entertained by the madness as long as you're fans of the actors. You've got TV legends Tina Louise and Julie Newmar playing the female aliens in need of blood. You've got John Carradine playing the person that they follow. Then you've got Neville Brand and Aldo Ray playing a couple no-good characters. Five famous and well-known stars surrounded by some young talent with many of them having adult titles to their credit.

Mardi Rustam produced some well-known films ranging from Al Adamson junk to Tobe Hooper's second film. It's clear from this movie that he wasn't meant to be a director but what's really strange about this film is the fact that it looks like a decade too late. If you've seen Jerry Warren's FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND then you know that film seems to be about thirty-years too late and that the director didn't progress with the times. The same can be said here because this is just such an old-fashioned film that you can't help but wonder who it was aimed at.

Of course, the director was at least smart enough to throw some blood to the viewers and there's quite a bit of nudity early on. There are also some pretty silly sex scenes where the women are totally naked and being nailed by men who are still wearing their pants. I'm not sure why but I've always found this to be quite funny. The only saving grace to this picture is the fact that it have five well-known faces.

A small contingent of aliens have landed near a resort area frequented by college students and have hired two auto mechanics to kidnap as many of these students as possible because they need their blood to stay alive. Unfortunately, these aliens have very little time before they must return to their home planet and the two mechanics named "Fred" (Aldo Ray) and "Kurt" (Neville Brand) are more than a little incompetent and seem to kill more college students than they bring in alive. Now rather than reveal any more of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this picture turned out to be pretty much what I expected--a campy, low-budget movie. However, when I saw that it featured Tina Louise (as "Cora") and Julie Newmar ("Dr. Zarma") I knew that I had to give this film a try. Surprisingly, the movie didn't actually depend on them as much as I thought it would. Instead, what kept this movie entertaining was the presence of three lovely young coeds named "Nancy" (Karrie Emerson), "Heather" (Bridget Holloman) and "Connie" (G. T. Taylor) in various stages of undress. Naturally, there were other actors and a very basic plot as well but neither of these issues really amounted to much. In any case, while this movie clearly won't win any Academy Awards and has any number of flaws, I still somewhat enjoyed it and as a result I rate it as only slightly below average.

This wacky and exploitative sci-fi horror flick features John Carradine as an alien doctor who needs blood of horny teenagers,so he enlists for help two sleazy mechanics Aldo Ray and Neville Brand.There are also two sexy alien nurses and dumb/sexually active teenagers constantly hooking up including two porn starlets Amber Lynn and Crystal Breeze."Evils of the Night" has to be seen to be believed.The plot is weird and the acting of teens is diabolical.There is plenty of sex and nudity plus some nasty drill/axe violence during the last half of the movie.I can't say that I really liked Mardi Rustam's crazy film debut,but I certainly enjoyed Neville Brand and Aldo Ray performances.6 green laser rings out of 10.