One Dark Night

Meg Tilly plays a girl that has to spend the night in a mausoleum as part of a club initiation. The club is basically just three chicks, one of which is Dottie from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Why Meg wants to be a part of this club is silly. It's pretty much the same motivation used on Leave It to Beaver whenever Beaver let his friends talk him into something stupid. Anyway, turns out a psychic vampire named Karl Raymar has been buried in the crypt Meg's spending the night. Wouldn't you know it, he returns from the dead this night and terrorizes Meg and the other girls.

It's a fun little movie if you don't have high expectations. There's zombies, lots of cool electrical effects, and some nice creepy atmosphere. Don't let the rating dissuade you from trying it out. It may not please the gore & guts crowd but it's a pretty good low-budget horror movie.

I was kinda surprised by the PG rating on the back of the DVD case. I certainly wouldn't want my kids watching this one. I think this would scare the crap out of a 10 year old.

Plot: A girl trying to fit in to the clique is hazed and tormented by the 'in crowd.' They talk her into spending the night in this creepy mausoleum (that reminded me of Phantasm...) and they proceed to torment her in the night. Little do they know, a recently deceased clairvoyant is coming back to life and raising the dead around them! It sounds awfully cheesy, but given the age and the budget, which was no doubt pretty small, this film is fun on many levels.

Watch for an early EG Daily as one of the in crowd brats. I enjoyed it and it scared my girlfriend.

7 out of 10, kids.

As part of an initiation prank Julie (Meg Tilly of Psycho 2) has to spend the night in a mausoleum, but Karl Rhamarevich, a master of telekinesis has recently died and been put in there. When Julie's fellow sorority sisters desecrate where he's housed the real terror starts.

This little flick had a good deal of atmosphere and I enjoyed the build up, plus the last twenty minutes are just plain great. Anyone who's looking for a lost gem of an '80's horror movie needn't look any further. Highly under-appreciated. Plus Elizabeth Daily is adorable.

My Grade: B

Media Blaster DVD Extras: Disc 1) Commentary with director Tom McLoughlin and co-writer Michael Hawes; and trailers for "the Being", "Frankestien's Bloody Terror", "Just Before Dawn", & "Devil Dog" Disc 2) Alternate director's cut (that's almost unwatchable due to a bad print) & Behind-the-scenes featurette

Unlike the other movie with the occasional alternate title "Mauseoleum"; this one has a few great things going for it IMO. The effects were much better... the amateurish dialog writen to justify teenagers hanging out in the place was kept to a bare minimum (Thankfully) and the atmosphere was dark and very cool. I even like the concept and fee of the film. It is fairly original as far as you can say any horror movie is. Some other readers seemed confused about the "zombies" not moving their feet. They were not zombies at all!!!... The audio tape that 'Ramar's' daughter listens to explains that he used to like to 'move' a dead animal to scare the other still living animals in their cage to freak them out. His draining people of their life force psychically and using the corpses to scare the girls in the mauseoleum was a pretty cool story line and idea. I'm not suggesting this deserves any awards but the major flaws inherent in almost all horror movies did not render their ugly heads enough to detract me from enjoying this when I saw it years ago.. and a few days ago. It holds up pretty well for a 20 year old flick with a tiny budget and 'Batman's' pseudo dramatic line delivery. Don't expect an academy award winner... but watch it if you can locate it and see if you can get past it's flaws... I think you'll find a diamond in the rough.

Apparently Adam West's presence here has some fans referring to this movie as such. More about Adam in a moment...

Three cool sorority chicks (we know they're 'cool' because they talk 'cool', swagger in a 'cool' way, and have 'cool' jackets with 'The Sisters' printed across the backs which doesn't in any way look dorky) are overseeing the initiation of Julie, a girl desperate to join. However, lead 'cool' girl Carol has got it in for Julie because Julie is in a relationship with Carol's ex; so Carol decides the final part of Julie's initiation will be for her to spend a night in a mausoleum (where an incredibly powerful psychic was recently interred). The plan is that once Julie has been locked inside, Carol and the other girls will sneak back and frighten the life out of her. If Julie quits, she fails.

So, a pretty standard sorority hazing horror. What *isn't* standard is how unbelievably slow it is, how long it takes before anything remotely 'horrific' happens onscreen. We get an hour and a quarter of teen relationship drama, jealousy, and snarkiness - plus every now and then someone reminding us how powerful the aforementioned psychic was - before things finally start to happen. It's a shame, because when things do start happening they're quite good (in an '80s horror' kind of way).

As for Adam West... I love West. I loved his Batman show. But his character here is completely - and very obviously - utterly superfluous. He plays the husband of the daughter of the psychic. The only characters he interacts with are his wife and some weird Andy Warhol lookalike who turns up at their house (and who acts like West isn't there most of the time!). I've read that West was given the part because the director sympathised with his difficulty in finding work after Batman; looking at this I could believe the role was actually *created* solely for this reason, as it serves no other purpose.

Meg Tilly plays Julie and gives the best performance (although that's not saying much). Robin Evans is hot as Carol, and Elizabeth Daily is CUTE as Carol's friend, Leslie. That, plus a fun final 15 minutes, just scrapes this a 6/10. It's not one I'll watch again.