Noites de Terror

This is one of the smaller films Tobe Hooper directed in the 80s and 90s but one of his darkest in subject matter. There are quite a few thematic links to Texas Chainsaw Massacre: we had a virginal girl getting wrapped up in an underground cabal or torture and black magic. This is not as intense but keeps you invested with its bizarre style and solid performances. Hooper fans won't be turned off by the absurd and symbolic moments, but mainstream horror fans won't get it. This is not a slasher film, but all Hooper films get unfairly graded as such. He works with very esoteric and macabre stories that are not supposed to be realistic. They are old school horror movies with a more intelligent knowledge of evil and depravity. Hooper may have topped himself 2 years later with the similar film "The Mangler" which also starred Robert Englund, who is really having fun in both films. Big recommendation to fans of David Lynch or Jess Franco, whose sometimes producer Harry Allan Towers produced this film!

Genie (Zoe Trilling) arrives in Egypt to visit her hypocritical, bible-quoting archeologist father (William Finley) and attracts the attention of a group of cultists led by a descendant of the Marquis de Sade (Robert Englund). Englund also plays de Sade in flashbacks, ranting in his cell. Genie is led astray by Mohammed (Juliano Merr), who rides around naked on a horse and Sabina (Alona Kamhi), a bisexual who introduces her to opium smoking, which leads to a wild hallucination featuring topless harem dancers, a woman simulating oral sex on a snake, an orgy and her father preaching in the background! Meanwhile, black hooded cult members decapitate, gouge out eyeballs and slit throats. When Genie is slipped drugs in her tea, she imagines de Sade hanging from a cross, a gold-painted woman in a leafy g-string and herself bloody on a bed covered in snakes. It's all because she's the reincarnation of de Sade's lost love.

This typically sleazy Harry Alan Towers production is redundant, seedy and pretty senseless, but the sets, costumes, cinematography and location work are all excellent and at least there's always something going on.

Score: 3 out of 10

Tobe Hooper, may he rest in peace, had a well-filled career of hits and misses. The hits are widely considered as bona-fide masterpieces ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Poltergeist", "Lifeforce"), while the misses are seen as total failures even by the most hardened horror fanatics ("Crocodile", "Mortuary", "Djinn"). Personally, I wouldn't dare to refer to Tobe's nineties movies as failures, but they are an acquired taste, for sure. "The Mangler" is such a pleasantly deranged mess, and this "Night Terrors" is even more bonkers!

This flick is a wildly incoherent hodgepodge of crazy half-processed ideas, extravagant characters, gratuitous sex, and even more gratuitous violence. Ravishing teenager Eugenie "Genie" Mattheson visits her archeologist father in Alexandria, Egypt, but quickly gets involved with the local jet set that throws wicked costume parties and orgies. The MC of these parties claims to be a direct descendant of none other than Marquis de Sade himself, and he also believes that Genie is the reincarnation of the Marquis' wife.

It's an intriguing enough plot, but the handling of it is overly hectic and unsatisfying. The film constantly bounces back and forth between the events in present day Egypt and flashbacks of a 18th century prison dungeon in which the Marquis himself is raving madly and yelling to a picture of his muse. It doesn't exactly help that Robert Englund, in a large dual role, gives a god-awful performance and that the gory highlights come too late in the film.

And yet, it doesn't matter how good or bad "Night Terrors" is. The most important thing you need to know is that the one and only Zoe Trilling stars as the female lead. Who? Trilling is one the most gorgeous girls to appear in horror movies during the late 80s and early 90s. She may not be the greatest actress of her generation, but she's unbelievably hot and sexy. "Night Terrors" and - of course - "Night of the Demons 2" were the high points of her career, but then she inexplicably vanished from acting. With a cherubic face and a dreamy body like hers, that decision hurts for almost 30 years already.

I don't know much about Tobe Hooper, or why he gets his name in the title, but maybe he shouldn't have bothered. As another commenter mentioned, there isn't really enough horror or erotica to bring in fans of either genre. The plot is incoherent, the Sade sequences are gratuitous, and most of the acting is so-so. Englund was doing his best with weak material, and Zoe Trilling has a really great bottom, but neither is enough to carry this film. This one's a tape-over. Grade: F

1st watched 8/26/2001 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Tobe Hooper): Scary, yet sadistic(which makes sense) portrayal of a relative of the Marquis De Sade carrying out the same sadistic acts and enjoying it that supposedly his predecessor did. This Tobe Hooper film really doesn't do a whole lot different than his similar in style Freddy Krueger movies with the same star (Freddy himself - Robert Englund) playing a dual role(the Marquis De Sade and his relative). It is also seems like it wants to really poke at Christianity but then loses that in the end much to my chagrin but leaving an inconsistent feel to the movie. Could have been much worse if excesses were taken in sex and violence, but they try to keep this at a minimal despite some disgusting scenes. My final thought is why would Hooper want to make this movie. It obviously took awhile to actually get distributed, then it has to be advertised gruesomely and with Hooper's name in the title to hopefully make some money on his name and his gore. It's obvious this didn't work.