Demon's Night

An alien craft lands on our beloved planet. Close by, couples engaging in naked frivolity are rudely interrupted. The aliens (John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and Tina Louise!) need human blood to survive, leading to the amorous couples being taken away to the aliens' secret lair for draining.

Soon, a fresh supply of bubble-headed young people arrive, and, since it's the 1980's, they only have one thing in mind. Yep, unconvincing, simulated sex! According to this movie, they couldn't possibly do anything else. Seriously, people this stupid could forget how to breathe!

Enter Fred and Kurt (Aldo Ray and Neville Brand!), who nab more youths for exsanguination.

EVILS OF THE NIGHT is two movies in one. The first half is a cheeezey soft core film, turning into a cheeezey slasher film for the second half, while the aliens do a lot of standing around. All together, this is a deep-dish, sub-sludge pizza!

While Carradine and Newmar weren't given much to do, Ms. Louise is actually pretty good in this. In fact, she's easily the best thing about this entire project!

P.S.- Neville Brand gives us an idea of what a sequel to his EATEN ALIVE might have looked like, since he basically reprises that movie's totally bananas "Judd" role...

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.

A small contingent of aliens have landed near a resort area frequented by college students and have hired two auto mechanics to kidnap as many of these students as possible because they need their blood to stay alive. Unfortunately, these aliens have very little time before they must return to their home planet and the two mechanics named "Fred" (Aldo Ray) and "Kurt" (Neville Brand) are more than a little incompetent and seem to kill more college students than they bring in alive. Now rather than reveal any more of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this picture turned out to be pretty much what I expected--a campy, low-budget movie. However, when I saw that it featured Tina Louise (as "Cora") and Julie Newmar ("Dr. Zarma") I knew that I had to give this film a try. Surprisingly, the movie didn't actually depend on them as much as I thought it would. Instead, what kept this movie entertaining was the presence of three lovely young coeds named "Nancy" (Karrie Emerson), "Heather" (Bridget Holloman) and "Connie" (G. T. Taylor) in various stages of undress. Naturally, there were other actors and a very basic plot as well but neither of these issues really amounted to much. In any case, while this movie clearly won't win any Academy Awards and has any number of flaws, I still somewhat enjoyed it and as a result I rate it as only slightly below average.

"Evils of the Night" involves two extraterrestrial women (Tina Louise and Julie Newmar) who hire a couple of idiot rednecks to kidnap and kill 'teens for them, so that they can use the blood to prolong their race (or something like that). I saw this movie in a theater by a fortuitous accident when it was released in 1986: the print of the just-released "Nightmare on Elm Street" had failed to arrive, so the theater owners were showing "Evils..." in its place. My friends and I laughed the whole way through, and were delighted by the many familiar faces in the cast - we never thought we'd see Julie Newmar again! If, like myself, you enjoy following the careers of grade-B stars, you'll get a kick out of this obscure piece of low-budget gore/horror schlock.