Night of Horror

Night of Horror (1981)

BOMB (out of 4)

Ridiculous horror movie has four people traveling to a cabin, which just so happens to be on a Civil War battlefield. After reading a story from the one and only Poe, soon the four are haunted by the ghosts of some dead soldiers.

NIGHT OF HORROR really should be a better known movie. Not because it's good or contains some great death scene. No, this film should be better known because of how downright horrible it is. There's really not a single good thing that I can say about this movie, which was apparently made for four thousands dollars. Even at that low of a budget I'm questioning whether someone was stealing money.

I'm really not sure if this thing actually played in a movie theater but I can't imagine how the people felt watching it if it did. As I said, there's really nothing good that can be said about this movie and it's really hard to sit through even with a short 72-minute running time. The majority of that time is devoted to character sitting around talking or else having some bad dialogue from the ghosts being whispered to them.

The film has some Civil War footage towards the end of the movie and I'm going to guess that the director just filmed this at a re-enactment battle. I guess you could say this footage was the best thing about the picture but even this gets dragged out and eventually gets boring. Normally I can recommend movies like NIGHT OF HORROR to bad movie lovers but this one here is so bad that it's hard to even do that.

You know how in most cheaply made B-movies from the 70s, the build-up tends to be endless because they're saving every penny for some good stuff in the third act? Well, "Night Of Horror" is kind of like that, only without that third act. The entire movie is people sitting around in an RV, then in the last ten minutes they hear a ghost whisper for what feels like eight hours, bury a plastic skull, then they all go home alive. If I'm going to sit through scene after scene of long-winded narrations with fantastically interesting lines like "we drove several more hours, the girls made some sandwiches en we all had some beers" (the plot thickens!), you better kill this entire bunch in the end. This movie is only 76 minutes long, but it's still one of the most unbearable things I've ever sat through. The audio is terrible, which is a problem when your movie is nothing but talking. Lighting seems to be achieved by pointing the camera directly at the sun. The background changes from sunny afternoon to pitch black night roughly sixteen times each scene. A dark basement with four stools in it and absolutely nothing else serves as a bar: dear Lord, at least get someone's dad to play a bartender. I know this was made by amateur filmmakers and the entire cast and crew is family and friends, but how do you watch this end product and still decide to release it?

Quite amazingly, director Tony Malanowski would actually go on to have a career in films. He's credited as the editor for several Troma movies, it's not much but it's more than you'd expect from watching this movie.

Well it was a cold, bitter cold, night and I was on my way to the local video store. This old Mom n' Pop place that I had only been to a few times, the owners were very nice and had an extremely nice collection of horror films. All kinds of em' lined the shelves, zombies, vampires, werewolves, mummies, you name it and it was probably there. Growing up I had long loved a film called "Curse of the Screaming Dead" and still think it's a pretty decent flick (okay it's crap but it's crap I like). So when I found out there was another movie called "Night of Horror" which was supposedly the original film that "Curse of the Screaming Dead" was based on I was a little giddy. At the time I had just found a copy of the original "Curse of the Screaming Dead" on it's original label Mogul so finding "Night of Horror" was a must for me. God I wished I had slapped myself...

So there I am in the video store searching the shelves for something to catch my eye and there it is, "Night of Horror". The movie I thought I'd probably never find was sitting right in front of me. I was a little surprised but I expected them to have a movie like this because they had been open since the dawn of video and the owner bought every movie he could get his hands on. So I bring "Night of Horror" up to the counter and I look up at the woman who has her usual smile and I asked if I could possibly buy the movie. I figured I should like it somewhat if I liked "Curse of the Screaming Dead". She looked at the box and then at her husband and he just looked at me. He looked up the film and nodded yes, come to find out the last time the tape had been rented Reagan was president so it was okay. I got the video for $2 (that should have been a huge sign if you're paying less than what it costs to rent) and I thought I made out like a bandit. Boy was I wrong.

I bring the movie home and do the usual, popcorn, soda, and other assorted snacks. I sat down and pushed play on my remote and once the film started I wanted nothing more than to go both deaf and blind. First off if you're going to make a movie, learn how to light the damn thing, when there was a light it looked like someone had gotten a giant spotlight and set it down in front of the camera. And the night shots...don't even get me started. Then there's the acting...wait that was there? I don't remember acting, oh those people who were walking around and babbling incoherently those were actors? Were they trying to act bad because they pulled it off brilliantly. As for the effects, what effects!? There was a freaking' fake skull and a fog machine with a raspy, and I mean raspy, voice attached to it. That's an effect!? Bah! After it was over and I slipped out of the coma I attempted to return the movie to the store simply saying it didn't work. I told them they could keep the money but the tape was broken. They wouldn't take it...they looked at me straight in the face and said no. The nice old couple soon became the devil and his bride incarnate. I wanted to scream, they knew what they were doing the whole time. They sold me the movie because they knew it was terrible. Argh! I threw the movie back into my room and it hasn't moved from the spot it's been in for over 2 years.

Until now, I reviewed it before writing this review and I have to say I hate IMDb.com, and I hate you all for making me re-watch this movie again for the purpose of this review. Oh what a tangled web you all weave...please for the love of all that's holy; avoid this movie like it were the plague, like it was a possessed horned up monkey with crabs that could very well be cooked and feed a family of 4.

STAY AWAY!

It took a very strong Long Island Iced Tea and a couple of other cocktails, but I managed to sit through this one from beginning to end. Mostly I stared at the ceiling, listened to the radio, or contemplated the massive pile of laundry that needed to be washed, because looking at the screen while trying to make sense out of the inaudible dialogue and threadbare plot was something I could do only sporadically. I always try to find some words of meager praise for even the worst movies, but staring into the empty void that is "Night of Horror" renders me too anaesthetised to pay compliments. I would not say that this film is actually painful to watch; rather, it is a black hole, a concatenation of nothingnesses, the bewildering cinematic equivalent of formless scribbles on a plain canvas. It induces no reaction in the viewer other than confusion and perplexity... and perhaps wonderment at Mr. Malanowski's ability to find a distributor. A person could make a more incomprehensible excuse for a film, but it would require an active hostility to the audience on his part. In Mr. Malanowski's case, I think this is just a particularly remarkable example of extreme laziness.

Night of Horror is a thing of wonder, a film so self contained, so tightly bound it functions as black hole cinema, the viewer drawn in, shrunk to lightless atoms able only to contemplate their own operation as observer. Which makes it remarkable amongst horror cinema of the early 80's a film that not only encourages but actually aids the viewer in the pursuit of self knowledge. Director Tony Malanowski has here truly crafted a scintillating, awe inspiring... Christ, I can't go on like this, I'm trying, I'm trying real hard but I just gotta level. Night of Horror sucks ass. I have huge respect for anyone who can put a film together and get distribution, it's not an easy thing for anyone, but despite this I have to recommend with some ferocity against watching this one. Among genre films, it must surely be one of the absolute worst and I say this not lightly. I also specify genre films, as I would still rather re-watch Night of Horror than re-watch Forrest Gump, though to be honest I would sooner eat a literal bag of dicks (Armin Meiwes apparently has a recipe book coming out) than re-watch that POS. But as far as genre films go, there really isn't much worse. Monster a Go Go has Henry Hite and some amusing dialogue, Blood Lake has the righteous Li'l Tony (most punchable kid in all of the 980's?), heck even Savage Water has cool scenery. Night of Horror has, lets see, fog, the worst ever excuse for a bar, a driving scene that'll have you longing for the genius of Hal Warren, unnatractive, lifeless actors and tiresome characters, demented continuity, a heroic lens smudge a gratuitously lengthy Civil War re-enactment scene, talkative ghosts and a plastic skull. It doesn't even have the good grace to be innovatively bad, its characters are routinely tiresome, its repetitive score isn't maddening enough to be memorable and its plot is void of suspense or even any real conflict. Flashback to a tedious tale of supernatural redemption recounted in the worst imaginable excuse for a bar set, zero gore, tits or excitement, it's a film of nothing, a 70 odd minute celluloid zero. Watching it will show you things about yourself, but only bad ones like the futility of your existence and endeavour, and these not even in a good way. Basically its 1/10 stuff all the way, don't watch it.