The Night Brings Charlie

I really like slasher movies,but this one is truly awful.The acting is lame,the script is bad,and the atmosphere is non-existent.The plot is as follows:a deformed gardener Charlie Puckett slaughters people in a small American town.That's right-this is the plot.Very original,eh!"The Night Brings Charlie" isn't even gory enough-if the film ain't gonna be scary,at least they should make it bloody.Avoid this cheap piece of trash at all costs.If you want to see some good slasher flicks check out "Madman","The Burning","The Prowler","Just Before Dawn" or "Humongous"- just don't waste your precious time with this worthless piece of garbage.

I rented this movie because I was browsing through the horror movie section for those movies that no one's heard of and could be a possible gem. I saw this and, since I'm a fan of violence and gore, I got it. It got the rating of EM which means: Extremely Mature. Thinking that this rare and high rating was totally meant for violence and everything else, I got it. The warning on the box said: Extreme Violence, Extreme Langauge, and Nudity. The "extreme violence" struck my fancy. The movie ended being a pretty tame slasher flick. It had one or two gory scenes but I've seen worse in a PG-13 movie. Of course the amount of gore in a movie isn't all that counts, right? You have plot also. Well, the plot was boring and there nothing really special about it. Don't rent it. I speak the truth. I can't imagine how someone could really enjoy it to the point where they say: "I'm gonna rent that again." It had it's moments where it kept you going but I'm never going to see that film again.

I'm not a big fan of slasher flicks as a genre, but even by the standards of low-low-budget exploitation, this one is really lame. Even on a nudity-and-gore level, it's incredibly boring (there is some of both, but it's all sort of...meh). Before the home video revolution, it might not even have been released theatrically (though it might have; after all, *Plan 9 From Outer Space* played in theaters). There is precisely one good (and competently-delivered) line in the entire movie; I assume they stole it from somewhere.

The acting is among the worst I have ever seen. I mean, even Ed Wood had a couple of competent actors, and the rest tended to be ludicrously hammy, which can be fun to watch. Anyway, most of his actors could pretty much pass as literate. Here, those who don't read their lines like cigar-store Indians sound like they learned them phonetically. And this film does have one distinction: it manages to be badly underplotted for most of the movie, then laughably overplotted for the ending.

(Update: I should have singled out the actress playing the receptionist as an exception. She is by no means wooden. Not that she's good, but she certainly isn't wooden.)

Even the worst slasher flicks are generally good for a few Puritan meditations on their grotesque offensiveness, but with this one, there doesn't even seem to be anything there to work up a moral outrage about.

And you know the funniest thing? They clearly expected to make a sequel!

It's so bad and boring that it actually becomes fascinating in a weird way. I sat enrapt through much of the video wondering why anyone would go to the bother of making it.

Murders start happening in a small Texas town where the heads of the victims are taken. The cops are investigating and Charlie turns out to be suspect # 1. I know that might sound interesting, but this amateurish early 90s horror flick isn't as good as it sounds. As well the sub-par acting brings this down. Not worth your time seeking out this rare horror movie.

It really boggles my mind when someone comes across a movie like this and claims it to be one of the worst slasher films out there. This is by far not one of the worst out there, still not a good movie, but not the worst nonetheless. Go see something like Death Nurse or Blood Lake and then come back to me and tell me if you think the Night Brings Charlie is the worst. The film has decent camera work and editing, which is way more than I can say for many more extremely obscure slasher films.

The film doesn't deliver on the on-screen deaths, there's one death where you see his pruning saw rip into a neck, but all other deaths are hardly interesting. But the lack of on-screen graphic violence doesn't mean this isn't a slasher film, just a bad one.

The film was obviously intended not to be taken too seriously. The film came in at the end of the second slasher cycle, so it certainly was a reflection on traditional slasher elements, done in a tongue in cheek way. For example, after a kill, Charlie goes to the town's 'welcome' sign and marks the population down one less. This is something that can only get a laugh.

If you're into slasher films, definitely give this film a watch. It is slightly different than your usual slasher film with possibility of two killers, but not by much. The comedy of the movie is pretty much telling the audience to relax and not take the movie so god darn serious. You may forget the movie, you may remember it. I'll remember it because I love the name.