Demon's Night

Right from the opening, depicting something resembling a customized mobile home floating through space, you know this is something special. A low budget space ship lands in the middle of the woods - this contains alien scientists John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and Tina Louise. Using a hospital as a base of operations, they set out to fulfill their mission; to gather blood platelets from young Earth people and send the stuff back to their home planet. Platelets, it seems, are the key to eternal life. They hire two mechanics (Aldo Ray and Neville Brand) to handle the dirty work of capturing unwilling donors. And what luck - nearby there are a group of perfect specimens on a camping trip...

First of all, the cast is amazing. Carradine and Newmar - no strangers to this terrain - actually manage to pull their roles off with style and dignity. Aldo Ray was probably used to this kind of movie as well, having already appeared in such things as Mongrel and Biohazard - while Tina Louise was `Ginger' on Gilligan's Island. Neville Brand had a distinguished record in World War 2, and afterward found his way into a major Hollywood career, specializing in westerns during the fifties - and notably played Duke, the embittered POW in Stalag 17. In this, his last film, he plays the role of Ray's lackey - and actually appears to be enjoying himself, even while unpleasantly ogling and pawing his captured female victims. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the victims and potential victims are not just cardboard cut-outs, and you actually like them.

Is this movie any good? Well, let me put it this way - it's dumb and cheap and sleazy - but that's exactly what it's intended to be. It would have been a perfect feature on the late, great USA Up All Night, as it's very much in that "style". For the people who consider that a recommendation, dive right in.

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.

Five of Hollywood's legends get a chance to embarrass themselves in this brainless science fiction film where some healthy teens are captured and used as lab rats for experiments. John Carradine is our head alien scientist and he's assisted by Julie Newmar and Tina Louise.

Gathering subjects and there are plenty around with buff boys and gorgeous girls at a lake nearby. Also nearby are a pair of garage mechanics, Aldo Ray and Neville Brand who are in the employ of the aliens to bring subjects.

This movie is about as bad as it gets unless you are into scantily clad teens and if you're gay really studly boys. Funny thing is that 30 years earlier I would have looked forward to a film with those five in the cast.

Hope their paychecks cleared.

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.

The weakest element is the alien thing, the alien ships are stock footage from Battlestar Galactica and Project UFO and there are only three shots of these ships.

Pretty cast and lots of things that seem to be building to porno scenes that then stop give this the things you'd fast forward to to get to the sex scenes feel of most of what's left.

Cast of fun and cheesy guest roles are mostly wasted in nothing or slightly silly parts--though all of them seem to try. As to the few porn actors guesting here and the rest, well they are pretty but they really do mostly define "porn" acting at its bad norm.

Film has no sense of style or comedy but the taste in attractive female and male flesh must be praised for what it's worth.

Aliens hang out at a hospital that seems to have no one else in it but the aliens, who are just girls in left over Flash Gordon outfits and John Carradine in a silver jump suit, playing it sober.

Aldo Ray and Neville Brand seem to be having some sleazy fun as the sleazes and they trap some of our young pretty non actors and torture them in what briefly becomes a bit serious and suspenseful.

Lots of flesh, not much sense, a fair amount of boredom, very Little blood, no real alien creatures, perhaps a great porn film that wasn't... or parts of a horror film which does kill some characters you'd not expect to have die.

Not much though really, the director has no clear sense of how to make a film and certainly not how to make a genre blending one like this. Re release poster art removes the large cartoon nipples that adorned the original box and poster art, a really silly badly done poster, now stripped of its most outlandish element. Shows how times have changed.