Night of Horror

You just might think you have seen the worst film ever. "Manos" the Hands of fate, Plan 9 form Outer Space, Monster-A-Go-Go, or even House of the Dead....Trust me when I tell you that you do not know real pain until you have seen the thankfully almost unknown Night of Horror.

If would be different if something happened at all in the film...it does not. Just try to think of Curse of the Screaming Dead/Curse of the Cannibal Confederates WITHOUT ANY ZOMBIES. Yes, I am serious. That is just what this film is.

Honestly...this is the worst movie of all time, and I don't mean that in a good way at all. Let's put it this way I LIKE "Manos" the hands of fate, and even I can hardly take "Night of Horror". I have now seen it twice and will never ever watch it again for any reason.

I can tell you of only one slightly entertaining thing about this flick....a lens smudge It is by far the highpoint in the film and when it went away I was sad to see it go. At least while it was on screen it took my attention away from the movie.

Night of Horror (1981)

BOMB (out of 4)

Ridiculous horror movie has four people traveling to a cabin, which just so happens to be on a Civil War battlefield. After reading a story from the one and only Poe, soon the four are haunted by the ghosts of some dead soldiers.

NIGHT OF HORROR really should be a better known movie. Not because it's good or contains some great death scene. No, this film should be better known because of how downright horrible it is. There's really not a single good thing that I can say about this movie, which was apparently made for four thousands dollars. Even at that low of a budget I'm questioning whether someone was stealing money.

I'm really not sure if this thing actually played in a movie theater but I can't imagine how the people felt watching it if it did. As I said, there's really nothing good that can be said about this movie and it's really hard to sit through even with a short 72-minute running time. The majority of that time is devoted to character sitting around talking or else having some bad dialogue from the ghosts being whispered to them.

The film has some Civil War footage towards the end of the movie and I'm going to guess that the director just filmed this at a re-enactment battle. I guess you could say this footage was the best thing about the picture but even this gets dragged out and eventually gets boring. Normally I can recommend movies like NIGHT OF HORROR to bad movie lovers but this one here is so bad that it's hard to even do that.

"Night of Horror" by Tony Malanowski is an absolute torture to sit through.It's about civil war spirits that tell the viewer "Hatred and fear ruled our lives,ruled our thoughts,caused our deaths.But love kept us sane and now...brings us back!".So prepare for the night of sheer horror...no,wait...sheer boredom.Steve Sandkuhler plays musician and Tony Malanowski shines as his half-brother Chris Marker.Their deceased father has left them a cabin in the remote Virginia Mountain country.So Steve,Chris,Chris' wife and Steve's now unattainable love interest Colleen and her sister Susan take RV out to the cabin for incredibly dull weekend.But the woods are dark and there are spirits of three Civil War soldiers,who were killed by Union soldiers.Sleep-inducing piece of crap with monotonous music and bad acting."Night of Horror" was later remade by Malanowski as much more entertaining and well-made "Curse of the Screaming Dead".2 out of 10.

A downcast member of a rock band sits in a self-service bar, recalling to an acquaintance the bewildering details of a road trip he took the year prior with a group of friends, one of whom was touched with extrasensory perception. Their relaxing getaway was interrupted by spirits of Confederate soldiers in desperate need of human help to free their tormented souls.

NIGHT OF HORROR is a cataclysmically poor film on every level imaginable, and the mind boggles as to how this minutiae of provisions could possibly have received even scant video distribution. Unappealing people doing nothing to speak of...that is the whole of this Godforsaken nonmovie. Just to hint at what a slop-job of amateur immersion it is, understand that a lengthy duration is prominently accented by a dust-bunny sticking to the camera lens. The sound and lighting appear to have been supervised by Helen Keller, the sets are a pathetic scramble of whatever fundamentals happened to be on-hand, and most importantly.... WHERE IS THE "HORROR"? A couple of immobile Southern Graybacks in the blaze of a floodlight who mumble indiscernably, and a single plaster skull? There's absolutely nothing...no bloodshed, no atmosphere, not even a single boob to breathe life into this rudderless tabula-rasa. All you get with this nothing-burger is a long stretch of coarse home movie footage showing some southern-fried Civil War battle reenactment, set to the tune of a nerve-raking folk ballad. It's so apocalyptically awful that it nearly qualifies as an act of aesthetic terrorism.

My rating? "The Finger".

You know how in most cheaply made B-movies from the 70s, the build-up tends to be endless because they're saving every penny for some good stuff in the third act? Well, "Night Of Horror" is kind of like that, only without that third act. The entire movie is people sitting around in an RV, then in the last ten minutes they hear a ghost whisper for what feels like eight hours, bury a plastic skull, then they all go home alive. If I'm going to sit through scene after scene of long-winded narrations with fantastically interesting lines like "we drove several more hours, the girls made some sandwiches en we all had some beers" (the plot thickens!), you better kill this entire bunch in the end. This movie is only 76 minutes long, but it's still one of the most unbearable things I've ever sat through. The audio is terrible, which is a problem when your movie is nothing but talking. Lighting seems to be achieved by pointing the camera directly at the sun. The background changes from sunny afternoon to pitch black night roughly sixteen times each scene. A dark basement with four stools in it and absolutely nothing else serves as a bar: dear Lord, at least get someone's dad to play a bartender. I know this was made by amateur filmmakers and the entire cast and crew is family and friends, but how do you watch this end product and still decide to release it?

Quite amazingly, director Tony Malanowski would actually go on to have a career in films. He's credited as the editor for several Troma movies, it's not much but it's more than you'd expect from watching this movie.