User reviews

This debut feature from Shaky Gonzalez is a sort of fill-in-the-blanks John Woo/Robert Rodriguez/Lucio Fulci wannabe that while entertaining enough is still so obviously derivative that there´s a heavy feeling of deja-vu over the entire film. Its impressive cast (which seems to be missing only Kim Bodnia) is mostly wasted, but Erik Holmey easily steals the film with his intimidating vampire leader, Rico Mortiz (great name!). It´s hard to completely dislike an attempt at a full-blooded Danish supernatural horror movie, but the result is a bit too loose and even amateurish at times, but Gonzalez earns an A for effort and is a talent to watch out for. Definite cult possibilities, though.

Shaky González' "Nattens Engel" aka "Angel Of The Night" of 1998 is a bearable, but disappointing vampire flick, that was obviously intended to be kind of a Danish "From Dusk Till Dawn", but it seems more like a Danish "Texas Blood Money" to me.

When Rebecca (Maria Stokholm), her boyfriend Mads (Tomas Villum Jensen) and her best friend Charlotte (Mette Louise Holland) come to a Gothic mansion, which Rebecca has inherited, they find an old book which tells the tale of a powerful vampire. As they read it, they find out that the vampire described in the book is actually Rebecca's great-grandfather, a priest who was turned into a vampire 100 years ago when fighting a maiden-ripping monster.

Most of the performances in "Nattens Engel" are not even that bad, and the supporting cast contains three well-known Danish actors, Ulrich Thomsen, Mads Michelsen and Thomas Bo Larsen in small roles. But the director Shaky González just seems to try too hard to resemble movies like "From Dusk Till Dawn" and doesn't manage to mix vampire horror, with lots of gun-play and action and some martial-arts-style fighting sequences in an appropriate way. Over all, the script is simply pretty bad and the plot has huge holes. In some parts the movie is shot in fairly cool camera angles, which look OK but in no way original or imaginative.

"Nattens Engel" is a rather disappointing film with a weak plot, but it's not one of those films that have to be avoided at all costs. Some of the women are lovely to look at and there is a fair amount of gore. As a big fan of B-Horror and exploitation, I personally found it bearable, though disappointing. I wouldn't recommend "Angel Of The Night", but if you want to watch it, make sure you have enough beer at home. 3/10

One should never expect too much of a movie directed by a guy called Shaky, but this vampire tale from Denmark is at least only mediocre rather than offensively bad. It's a neotraditionalist affair that would have been very different had it been made before the pop cultural impact of Anne Rice and BUFFY. A girl inherits the classic, dusty old family mansion in the middle of nowhere. She goes there with her boyfriend (a guy with a very short attention span) and a sleazy over-sexed gal-pal. The trio finds an old book about her great-grandfather, a cloaked vampire with the unforgivably silly name of Rico Mortiz. (Feel free to go ahead and take a moment to groan here.) Of course the heroine discovers something rotten in Denmark, namely old Rico's remains (a huge mutant bat skeleton) and manages to spill a few drops of blood thereupon. Rico is up and at 'em again briefly for the climax but most of the movie is devoted to the flashbacks about his original reign of terror. Considering they're supposed to be her great-grandmother's memoirs, it seems odd that some of the vignettes appear to be taking place in the 1980s. The movie's raison d'etre is its special effects, which consist of too much gunplay, several gruesome vampire bites, and a very impressive giant hairy bat monster with huge fangs. The monster FX and the fangs look great but some of the action is a bit much. There's even one of those ridiculous shots of a guy repeatedly firing two guns while jumping sideways and flying across the screen in slow motion. Credibility is further compromised by trendy footage of the vampire's evil minions in their long overcoats walking toward the camera in pretentious backlit slo-mo. Rico's vampire looks older and curiously different from his original "human" self, and when he gets really mad his forehead turns into what looks like one of STAR TREK's Klingon prosthetics. A scene in which a vampire suddenly transforms himself into a rat looks great. ANGEL OF THE NIGHT really has nothing on its mind and brings nothing new to the vampire genre, but I found it consistently watchable and reasonably entertaining. If you like bloodsucker movies then you're probably seen far worse ones.

~Spoiler~

If Robert Rodriguez made a vampire flick it would be...From Dusk Till Dawn. If someone who obviously admired Robert Rodriguez made a vampire flick, it would be Angel of the Night. From the get-go of this Fangoria release the bad dubbing stirs a lot of laughter but by the second act everyone is usually into it. There are a hundred flaws like this, but I'm going to forgive most of them because the movie wasn't unwatchable. It borrows heavily from many other films, such as From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, Kindred: The Embraced, and even Demon Knight. The action is very stylized and the gunfights are straight out of the John Woo/Robert Rodriguez handbook. At one point a Spanish character with long hair is even called Banderas. That same scene is the one to watch for: the hallway shootout. It's nicely done. I absolutely love the part when the vampire morphs into the mouse and then gets blown away by the sawed off, double barrel (which is used in practically every scene). Angel of the Night is an excellent, although very corny, low-budgeter. I wasn't expecting too much when I watched it, but I got a little more than I bargained for. That's what usually makes for the best movies.

I assumed a Danish vampire movie could be an original and exotic thing. I now believe I'll have to keep my eyes open and wait for the next one to come. Director Shaky Gonzales apparently just wanted to copy a bunch of successful American films such as From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado and even The Lost Boys! Needless to say that the result is quite scrappy and insignificant. Besides, every bloodsucker in this film looks totally ridiculous! Come on, this was shot just a few years ago! How is it still possible to make vampires look (and act!) like this!? Well, I don't know, maybe the Gonzales family is in the fancy dressing business. Or maybe Gonzales just wanted to be funny... Oh! This is a scary thought, isn't it?

After inheriting a mansion in a remote part of Denmark, an attractive young woman by the name of "Rebecca" (Maria Stokholm) invites her boyfriend "Mads" (Tomas Villum Jensen) and her best-friend "Charlotte" (Mette Louis Holland) to come with her to check it out. Once they get there, she explains that her grandmother was a historian who spent a great deal of her time researching vampires. Not long afterward, Charlotte takes them down into the basement where there find some extremely old books on the shelf. As it so happens, one book in particular catches her eye and, since it involves the history of her ancestors, she begins to read it out loud to her friends. The scene then shifts to 100 years earlier with a priest named "Rikard" (Christian Gronvall) being bitten by a vampire. He subsequently assumes the name "Rico Mortiz" (now played by Erik Holmey) and goes on a murderous rampage which is outlined in the book and takes us up to the present. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I was extremely disappointed with this film for a number of reasons. For starters, this film is billed as both a comedy and a horror. But the problem is that there really isn't much humor here so I'm not sure why anyone would think it was a comedy. The second problem concerns the fact that the director (Shaky Gonzalez) apparently chose to focus on action scenes instead of tried-and-true elements like suspense to liven up the horror. And that was a big mistake, in my opinion, as these action scenes were quite unimaginative. To further compound the problem is the fact that he kept repeating the same action formula again and again. To that effect, what the viewer is left with is a good-looking cast and a lot of inane action scenes which go absolutely nowhere. In short, I was not at all impressed with this film and I have rated it accordingly.

I also saw this at 'Dead By Dawn', and was blown away.

Briefly: Woman inherits house, reputedly the last resting place of the dreaded Rico Mortiz- a priest who got bitten and was cursed with vampirism. On her first night there, she and some friends find the skeleton of a huge bat, and a book of her family history. As the tale unfolds, we see in flashback how the curse grew, and how it affects her now.

It really couldn't be more entertaining if it tried, and seems to have something for everyone. Okay, it's another vampire movie, and as such, says and shows absolutely nothing new or innovative- but everything is done with such style and charisma that I found myself completely ignoring all that and just hanging on and enjoying the ride. The pacing is breakneck, the script is hilarious- but played mostly, wonderfully, straight- the actors know their jobs and do them well, and the effects are over-the-top and fabulous. All this is overseen by the assured, surprising direction of Shaky Gonzales- a man of whom you will be hearing a lot more from.

It looks like it cost four times what it did. It's shiny and gorgeous and you will fall in love with it. Go and find it before all your friends- and gloat later at your leisure.

The film is made over 2 years. original it was meant to be a short film school movie, first they shoot 20 min. and got some money and shoot the rest over some years. It was so funny and to do, i won i price for best special Fx in Denmark when it came out many years ago. A lot of the things is done almost whit out any money in a simple way but i think that a lot of the scenes in the film is working so fine. I have been working on Shaky Gonzales other movies and we are having so much fun on the set doing these films. Shaky Gonzales Direktor on the movies is so good to worked with, he loves to blow things up, shoot outs, breakaway windows to jump through, bullet hits, stunts and so on, i love it to. So i can wait for the next movie to work on whit him

This is something as unusual as a Danish vampire movie. What can I say? It is not the best vampire movie I've ever seen, but absolutely the funniest. The film makers has used some elements from the role-playing game "Vampire: The Masquerade" and the effects of this is quite amusing, if you happen to play it, like I do. Nonetheless, the movie is definitely worth seeing if you're a fan of vampire movies.

Denmark has many attractions. Not only smörgåsbord or blond beauties or the Lego park. It also has a dark side - vampires! A hundred years ago, or so the story goes, a vampire named Rico Mortis roamed the Copenhagen streets in search for young women's blood. Every hundred years he has to sleep with a woman, make her pregnant and drink his own child's blood in order to survive. Well, Rico Mortis fails, and a young woman resurrects him a hundred years later. That's when the real trouble starts... "Angel of the Night" is a well done Danish vampire movie with lots of blood and gore and action. The action scenes are as drastic as in a Tarantino movie, and the vampire effects are excellent. The only bad thing about the movie was the German dubbing - that was really awful and I could easily have done without it. But if you love vampire movies, you definitely should watch this one. It's worth every minute of your time. Jasper P. Morgan

I picked this up as a rental one weekend. I didn't have any expectations, as all I knew about it was what the back of the box had to say. Overall, I was somewhat disappointed. Some of the scenes in the movie really worked well. Unfortunately other scenes played more like a music video. The story wasn't new or strong, but other movies have overcome weak plots. The acting was surprisingly good, but most of the story unfolds in flashbacks fed to the viewer in small, disjointed chunks. The English dubbing started off badly but quickly improved. The director drew heavily on John Woo style action, not always a bad thing, but I think the diving across a room firing two handguns at once thing was a little overdone. I also can't help wonder where everyone kept coming up with the sawed-off shotguns. In a nutshell, this probably won't become a classic, but I don't think it's a waste of time either. I think once the director discovers his own style, we will be in for some excellent movies.

I saw this film at the "Dead By Dawn" festival, half way through an all-nighter. I was expecting to watch 10 mins and then sleep through the rest. How wrong I was! If you can look past the influence from "From Dusk Till Dawn", there lies a absolutely great film - funny, gory and highly intelligent. It's a crime that a film of such high quality will unlikely see a proper UK theatrical release, and will probably not see a DVD or video release either.