Night Trap

When a slew of bodies starts piling up on Mardi Gras, a detective realizes the killer's an immortal Satan-possessed madman who's targeting him and his loved ones during his spree and must find a way to stop him before it's too late.

This turned out to be quite the enjoyable pseudo-slasher with a lot of great points. The main thing here is the fact that this one tends to have more of an Action film feel throughout, which is quite enjoyable since it provides a pace and tone early on that keeps this entertaining and enjoyable enough while featuring enough to keep it interesting. With a large section of time devoted to stopping his different rampages, including a chase through a slew of back-alleys and apartment buildings, a car chase through a deserted train-yard and a multi-car chase through the city streets to save another victim at the end, this has more than enough to stay interesting throughout with plenty of fine action scenes within even before getting into all the shootings and explosions that pop up within this. All-told, it makes for quite an exciting and enjoyable series of scenes before getting into the far-more-suspenseful than expected stalking scenes here as the immortality makes it quite obvious what's going to happen to the potential victims. That makes the sequences stand out a little more than usual because there's far more at stake than just a typical slasher villain and throws the sequences such as the assault on the voodoo queen or the encounter in the strip club into more suspenseful areas due to the rather creepy vibe that goes along with such a character interacting with someone unaware of that condition, and that both are among the film's highlights is a good sign of that. After that, though, this one does tend to fall off slightly with the fact that the film does tend to solve absolutely nothing about the killer. We get so little about his intent as well as his back-story, which makes the rampage far more confusing than anything due to the incessant and rather unnecessary lack of knowledge we get here since there's even a plot-point in the second half about the killer being in the area once before and how it relates to the situation at the time, but yet nothing is done with it and none of what's revealed there gets any closer to solving the mystery of what's going on. The finale comes off as an after-thought as well, being so ho-hum about it's resolution that there's not a lot to like about it, and the fact that there's just such a strong Action-film feel here that it does tend to supersede the Horror enough to make it feel a lot less creepy than it could've been since it does work when it tries at doing so. All told, this is a fine if slightly uneven effort.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and a sex scene.

When running Action International Pictures, filmmaker David A. Prior made a bunch of ultra cheap and tacky B movies. When A.I.P. transformed into West Side Pictures, things improved - but not by much. For this West Side production, Prior was able to afford a decent cast with talented actors Michael Ironside and Robert Davi. And the movie looks somewhat slicker than Prior's past productions. But apart from those things, not much else in this movie succeeds. Ironside and Davi give decent performances, but you don't see them acting to their full potential. Maybe it was because of the low budget, which constantly films in run-down and anonymous locations. It might also be because of the script, which is sorely lacking a decent explanation for Ironside's villain character. But the biggest problem is that the movie unfolds very slowly and with little excitement. Oh, there are a few unintentional laughs along the way (a car manages to overturn and explode while going five miles an hour, and Davi keeps on all his clothes during a sex scene), but there are not enough to even recommend this movie as camp. One final word of warning: the DVD release just copied an ex-rental VHS tape, which makes the movie look even more tacky.

It's just slow. There was so little to the plot that the director had to stretch out each scene until even the action seemed slow motion. The camera work as noticeably stiff and fixed in many scenes. The acting by the main protagonists was uninspired, but consistent.

The concept of whether Michael Ironside's character is the devil, or merely one of his overconfident myrmidons, is vague at best; as are his motives. But then one seems not to actually require motives in a horror film. It isn't something I fret about.

Still, Night Trap has some qualities to recommend it. Robert Davi, stone-faced, and purposeful, is interesting to watch as a cop who is just not quite the classic loner/rebel. John Amos is there too, but his performance is much too understated. I kept watching for him to fall asleep. Michael Ironside is more or less wasted in his part. He just struts around most of the time, and occasionally makes some threat or pejorative pronouncement in a stentorian and rather flat basso voice. The supporting cast did a good job though; and their characters were engaging. Everyone comes together to work out the meagre plot in a way that makes the film at least good escapism; and weak but reasonable horror. I'll often watch it if I see it come on cable. It's one of those "guy" films for when you just want to lean back in the recliner and escape for a while; and perhaps take a nap or two. If only it moved a little faster.

Pretty bad. The obviously low budget results in fairly poor production values. Also, there was a lot of bad acting. Louisiana accents appeared and disappeared. The opaque plot may have benefitted from some more exposition about Ironside's character. The only redeeming feature I found in this movie was the lovely Lydie Denier.

"Night Trap" is a slow, plodding thriller from AIP regular David A. Prior.

New Orleans Detective Mike Turner (Davi) is trying to catch a devious criminal named Bishop (Ironside). Bishop has magical powers that include flying, and having a cool but pasted on beard. No one believes Turner that Bishop is evil, especially his captain who thinks he is "on the sauce" again. Turner is then partnered with Williams (Starr) to find suspects who have seen Bishop....as usual in other cop flicks, Williams and Turner bicker and eventually become buddies during their pursuit. Can they find and destroy Bishop before he strikes again? The main problem with "Night Trap" is that it really wants to be good, but possibly out of guilt, it sabotages itself at every turn.

Every time Night Trap gets a good rhythm going, it pulls back for a ridiculous action scene and it loses focus. There is one scene where Bishop jumps over a car and the driver inside covers his eyes and then he slowly crashes into another car. 30 seconds later, the car blows up.

Davi puts in a good performance. Ironside has been in better work and he looks like he wants to take a nap. Starr tries his hardest to breathe life into his character, but the script fails him.

Every scene feels like it is in slow motion to stretch out the running time. There are a bunch of scenes with Davi just standing around doing absolutely nothing.

Overall, if you are a fan of Robert Davi, watch it. Anybody else should stay away.

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