A Noite dos Tommyknockers

I can unequivocally say Night of the Tommyknockers is Mahal Empire's greatest movie to date. I say that as someone who really enjoyed their previous outings, including Party Bus to Hell, Attack of the Unknown, Death Count, and Bridge of the Doomed.

There is a real dearth of Western-Horror movies but Night of the Tommyknockers is a quality addition to the genre. It has a real western feel, but it doesn't skimp on the horror. Fans of the genre will be very pleased with the result.

Robert LaSardo (CSI Miami) and Richard Grieco (21 Jump Street) put in outstanding performances as outlaw bank robbers while Hollywood legend Tom Sizemore (Blackhawk Down, Heat, Natural Born Killers) shines as the local lawman. Shout out to Indie Horror staple Shawn C Phillips for his great performance in Tommyknockers. Always love seeing Shawn show up when we're watching a movie.

The practical effects in Tommyknockers are top notch. The creatures look fantastic. Mahal Empire movies have higher budgets than your average indie horror movies, and it shows. Most of the action takes place at night, but this movie is well lit and you can always see what is happening. Too often lately movies are so dark it's impossible to follow what is going on, Tommyknockers does not make this mistake. The sound mixing is excellent, and volume levels are consistent, I find too often with Indie Horror I'm always adjusting the volume but again, Mahal Empire movies have more of a big budget feel and are very well polished when it comes to lighting and sound. Director Michael Su (Death Count, Bridge of the Doomed) really outdoes himself with Night of the Tommyknockers, which I think is his best effort to date.

If you like western movies and horror, you'll definitely want to check out Night of the Tommyknockers!

Watched this film since the same team made another film with an actress I adore. She wasn't in this one, unfortunately. SHE would have elevated it, no doubt.

Man, was this worse than expected.

Script was all over the place. Lighting who? DAY/NIGHT? Light poured through windows when it was night outside.

Costumes were straight out of a high school performance of Oklahoma, along with the acting performances. Aside from the plethora of non-actors all whom paid for their few lines, the leads were all over the place. No one seemed to be in the same movie- tone ranged from over the top stage musical-like theatrics to barely-there performing. Tough to find any real substance in the muck.

Tons of micro-budget westerns flood the DTV space yearly, most best left unseen, but sometimes worthwhile fare emerges. The itch for more horror-westerns led me to Night of the Tommyknockers. Not good but not a disaster; it's under 90 minutes and doesn't shy away from monster gore once the bandits-vs-lawmen first half leaves its outlaws in a gold-rush ghost town besieged by gnarled Descent rejects.

If you can accept the meager production values this kind of film must scrounge up today, then this is an overly-talky obviously-cheap yet still enjoyable creature feature. Just mind the acting; although even that in regard, the actual character dynamics were fun in spite of the bad-to-average performances but I got to grade on a curve considering how rare horror-westerns are, let alone ones as relatively focused and action-filled as this.

The movie opens with the Dirk Gang robbing a bank somewhere. One of them guts the bank manager because he's a psycho and likes to stab people I guess. They get away with the loot but a bounty hunter is on their trail and the brother of the murdered bank manager vows revenge. They decide to head to the town of...(Google)...the generically named town of Deer Creek because there's supposed to be gold there. They arrive in town to find it apparently deserted. Their plan to rob the bank fails because there's no one there to open the safe. They soon find some survivors holed up in the saloon and some monsters attack. They are supposed to be Tommyknockers but they bear pretty much no resemblance to the Tommyknockers of folklore.

This movie is all over the place. Some of the cast are veteran actors like Robert LaSordo while others seem like friends of the filmmakers that were given small parts. Some of the gore effects are passable and some are laughable. The monster costumes are not bad for a low budget movie but they aren't very good either. The story is really disjointed. There are little Western movie vignettes that don't really have much to do with anything. Characters appear only to get killed off almost immediately. Things just happen without a lot of rhyme or reason. At one point, a character has a revelation about the monsters that isn't really based on anything and makes no sense considering what they have been doing but is, of course, entirely correct. Things happen that leave you wondering why that didn't happen a while ago. The ending is really rushed.

The movie isn't terrible. I have certainly seen much worse Western horror movies. It's just kind of disjointed and meandering. There's a lot of stuff that seems to have been just thrown in to pad the run time or because Western movies have this.

Oh my, I can't believe I wasted my time on this. The intro was just PAINFUL ... I have seen better acting at the community playhouse downtown.

Then the meat of the movie started. I am not sure what was worse, the absolutely waste of a script, the poor timing of the directing, the even poorer camera work, or the even worse scene staging.

Sad too. It seemed a few of the actors actually had some talent and were hoping to make a go of it. And unlike many low budget films, this one actually sported more than just 4 people for the entirety of the movie. There were actually moments of good acting, but a VERY few bright spots can't make up for the rest of the problems.

Hope no one was hoping this film was gong to be their 'big break'.