Spirit of the Night

A woman inherits her father's estate in Northern Wales, which is cursed. Eventually she succumbs to the curse, which transforms her into a black panther. The creature is never seen on screen. The acting and atmospherics were superb.

A young woman returns to her childhood home in Europe (somewhere in England, I think) to inherit her deceased father's mansion. She discovers a strange family curse that that leads her to the usual "sexual awakening" stuff.

First of all, Jenna Bodnar (who looks vaguely similar to Tawny Kitean) looks great in the film, with lovely curly red hair and high cheekbones. She gets some great sex scenes, most notably a half-a**ed threesome on a wooden bench, and a nice scene where she slithers and undulates in a dark cave for her prospective photographer boyfriend.

Sex aside though, this almost works as an actual film. Bodnar is a good enough actress to make me care (slightly) about her situation. The sets are nice, and the supporting cast helps. Only drawback: an ending so abrupt and inconclusive, I thought the director ran out of film. Maybe director Mark Manos meant for it to be metaphysical or something.

This film borrows heavily from "Cat People"; although here the lower production values actually add something to a guilty post-midnight-viewing pleasure.

Quite similar to some of the more horror based Full Moon pictures, this is quite atmospheric and focuses on Tara vising North Wales for her father's funeral and being overwhelmed by a strange sexual awakening (even stuffed animal heads seem to get her excited). Big City Releasing (Independent distribution comapny) are main producers here but Full Moon's scent is rife (the story was originally planned for a 1980's Empire release). Beautifully filmed, humorously acted. Soft core actress Jenna Bodner makes her debut as Tara and is watchable but relatively plain looking. Great music from Fuzzbee Morse (Full Moon composer of Dolls and Dark Angel amongst others). Director Manos did a few jobs at Full Moon (including editing on Dark Angel and directing Josh Kirby 4) and did a few years at Playboy editing their 'documentaries'. This film is slow paced - the sex scenes are okay but merely add to the length of the film. Odd mixture of fascinating old fashioned horror and sex flick, this is always entertaining but never as good as it could be. The ending is ridiculously abrupt, think short tapes were got as a 'job lot'. Fine.

Huntress: Spirit of the Night (1991) is a movie that's full of poppycock. What is this woman any way? Is she supposed to be a werewolf, a succubus, Cat-person or some sort of freak with black eyes? I dunno but she hot and takes of her clothes a lot.

If this movie had a theme to it or if they showed more of her "transformations" then it could have been something. But why did the filmmakers cut this movie down to an R-rating? Were they actually trying to market this sleaze to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? Maybe some questions are better left unanswered, I guess. Not a bad movie to own if you can find it for under $5 bucks and if you like red-heads, if you know what I mean (wink-wink).

I have to give it a C+. It's not bad or horrible, it's just bland, They should have went all the way with this movie. I hope they re-release it with the missing footage some day....

Some day...