IMDb RATING
3.4/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
Richard Ramirez, aka the Nightstalker, who terrorized people in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and the police had no clue with him.Richard Ramirez, aka the Nightstalker, who terrorized people in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and the police had no clue with him.Richard Ramirez, aka the Nightstalker, who terrorized people in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and the police had no clue with him.
- Awards
- 2 nominations total
Evan Parke
- Lieutenant Mayberry
- (as Evan Dexter Parke)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
First, its nice to see a horror film that ably represents the Puerto Rican community. What a shame its so terrible. Far more funny than frightening, the killer seems to be a deranged My Chemical Romance fan who has violent delusions that he is Satan. He only murders females, and he likes a bit'o necrophilia after the event. YUCK. The black cop in charge brings in an ethnic gal in on the investigation to combat claims the department isn't 'inclusive' enough, but this little lady doesn't take any crap and refuses to be sidelined. But what will she do when the long-haired goth wannabe targets her? DUN DUN DUNNNNN..
Advice to the director: shaking the camera up and down and putting a rubbish black metal song on in the background does not make a movie scary. Rather, the killer's manic fits and hallucinations that he sees the devil are portrayed so OTT you're be rolling on the floor laughing rather than cowering behind a cushion. You also get the usual clichés of the heroine's elderly partner and mentor in the force being killed, and even the compulsory scene of her having to hand over her gun and badge after messing up. The rampant unoriginality could be forgiven if the rest of the film were up to scratch, but alas it's so boring you'll be itching to turn off the disc and stare at TV static for 90 minutes.
Not recommended, but the disc makes a nice coaster!! *Sips hot beverage* 2/10
Advice to the director: shaking the camera up and down and putting a rubbish black metal song on in the background does not make a movie scary. Rather, the killer's manic fits and hallucinations that he sees the devil are portrayed so OTT you're be rolling on the floor laughing rather than cowering behind a cushion. You also get the usual clichés of the heroine's elderly partner and mentor in the force being killed, and even the compulsory scene of her having to hand over her gun and badge after messing up. The rampant unoriginality could be forgiven if the rest of the film were up to scratch, but alas it's so boring you'll be itching to turn off the disc and stare at TV static for 90 minutes.
Not recommended, but the disc makes a nice coaster!! *Sips hot beverage* 2/10
Nightstalker is a waste of time and money. For starters, it's not even about Richard Ramirez. The main character of the film is a female detective on the hunt for the nightstalker. The other killer films Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Gacy, etc., all have their fair share of fictionalized events but Nightstalker is the most inaccurate of them all. The film dosn't even get his capture right. Instead of getting beat down by an angry mob, which is what really happened, he is arrested by the fictional detective after a shootout. Also, maybe I'm blind but the actor who played Ramirez looked to be white, not hispanic. Dahmer and Ted Bundy, despite their own flaws, are far superior to this piece of trash.
This film made me feel travel sick from the start. I was expecting horror, gore and action i got neither!! The story only covered about 4 days of his life and hardly featured anything of any real importance at all it didn't give any background on him and it didn't show any detective work in detail.
Waste of my time!!
Waste of my time!!
I have to agree with the other reviewers. There are several things wrong with this film: The real night stalker killed people of all races, not just hispanics. The focus of the story was not on the killer Ramirez, it was on the fictional character officer Martinez. If it was on Ramirez, we would have seen him watch his sister-in-law's murder at a young age, get in and out of trouble, and watch his progress into a serial killer. There is no background given. Also, the way he was apprehended never happened. I wanted to see the chase through a Latino LA neighbourhood, where locals chased Ramirez, and nearly beat him to death. And the car he was driving - where is the orange Corolla? The appearance of the cast was HORRIBLE. Take a look at detective Elliot (the white guy). Did ANYONE have combed hair in 1985? How about the black detective? Did anyone have a Boston Public bald hairstyle in 1985? All of the women's hairstyle were inaccurate. Yet they kept trying to throw in video clips from Iran and Bhopal India to set the era up. It's amazing they would overlook the casts appearance. The guy who played Ramirez looked the part - except for those pearly whites. The real Ramirez had rotting teeth with a foul odour. Martinez's coke-sniffing partner, played by Danny Trejo did an awful acting job. It was fake & forced. Oh, and they could have afforded to loose all of those demon scenes. They grew tiresome quickly and made me dizzy. 3/10
This movie makes Paul W. S. Anderson and Uwe Boll look talented, and their flicks appear enjoyable. Unbelievably, Fisher's "Nighstalker" manages to be, simultaneously, campy and filthy, annoying and dull, unnerving and boring, ridiculous and repulsive. There is really nothing good about it, apart from perhaps the cover and Bret Roberts - the actor who portrays Ramirez (and even he looks - expectedly - embarrassed when the hack "director", Fisher, has him play a flour-covered "vampire" weirdo, which, in Fisher's 12-year-old mentality was intended as a "symbolic" representation of what Ramirez sees in his "possessed" mind during the crime spree).
The "story" is sub-imbecilic and is not in fact even loosely based on the actual events. Fisher's "writing" skills are almost as high as those of a drug-induced 13 year old metalhead, fresh after drinking a sixpack of beer and viewing "House of 1000 Corpses" with his Deicide tape playing right into his ears. In fact, said metalhead would probably write and direct a better movie than Fisher's (well, it certainly could not be any worse!) - at least in *his* film, there would be no unnerving stroboscopic Pokemon "techniques", which Fisher loves so much.
As far as the director's "factual" treatment and "research" go, this flick's script was apparently based on Fisher's experience of trying to read a short, misspelled summary of an article reviewing a book with a chapter whose part described a documentary about comic books depicting serial killers, who happened to include Ramirez. Fisher's directing is, if possible, even worse than his "writing" - often, this flick is simply unwatchable, with its shaky, chaotic camera movement and ridiculous (and nauseatingly long) high-speed segments set to obnoxious, vomit-inducing, ear-shattering noise which Fisher apparently considers to be "music" (and which in fact did not even exist in 1985 - Night Stalker would listen to the likes of AC/DC and Springsteen, not some antitalent, late 1990s Death Metal bands).
The only potentially redeeming aspect of this movie might be the fact that, much like Ed Wood's movies (which are, of course, infinitely better, involve much more talent, decent music and superior directing), it often manages to be unintentionally funny. For instance, Fisher often makes an infantile attempt at inserting cheap "ambience" into scenes by filling their backgrounds with repeated white noise and incomprehensible mumbling done in a low bass. He intends this mumbling to be the "voice of Satan", but it sounds exactly like the Psychlos from John Travolta's
Therefore, every time I heard Fisher's "Satan", I would think "Ooh-oh, it's Travolta the Terl!" and burst out laughing. Fisher's ludicrous image of "Satan" himself - the aforementioned flour-covered bald Howard the Duck reject with sharp teeth - made the scenes even funnier.
As for the DVD itself, there were some deleted scenes (even though the whole film should have been one deleted scene), a trailer, a bit better than the flick itself (in the same sense as gonorrhea is better than AIDS), plus a commentary track from Mr Antitalent himself, Chris Fisher (at least I've read that there is a commentary, on the DVD box - I did not actually listen to it, since I have no intention to hear talentless dolts drone about themselves.)
A while ago I bought the DVD with the TV film about Ramirez ("Manhunt") from Amazon Europe, and any second of that film highly surpasses Fisher's lameness. I never thought I could see someone less talented than Paul W. S. Anderson and Uwe Boll actually find employment in Hollywood - but today I saw him, and his name was "Chris Fisher".
The "story" is sub-imbecilic and is not in fact even loosely based on the actual events. Fisher's "writing" skills are almost as high as those of a drug-induced 13 year old metalhead, fresh after drinking a sixpack of beer and viewing "House of 1000 Corpses" with his Deicide tape playing right into his ears. In fact, said metalhead would probably write and direct a better movie than Fisher's (well, it certainly could not be any worse!) - at least in *his* film, there would be no unnerving stroboscopic Pokemon "techniques", which Fisher loves so much.
As far as the director's "factual" treatment and "research" go, this flick's script was apparently based on Fisher's experience of trying to read a short, misspelled summary of an article reviewing a book with a chapter whose part described a documentary about comic books depicting serial killers, who happened to include Ramirez. Fisher's directing is, if possible, even worse than his "writing" - often, this flick is simply unwatchable, with its shaky, chaotic camera movement and ridiculous (and nauseatingly long) high-speed segments set to obnoxious, vomit-inducing, ear-shattering noise which Fisher apparently considers to be "music" (and which in fact did not even exist in 1985 - Night Stalker would listen to the likes of AC/DC and Springsteen, not some antitalent, late 1990s Death Metal bands).
The only potentially redeeming aspect of this movie might be the fact that, much like Ed Wood's movies (which are, of course, infinitely better, involve much more talent, decent music and superior directing), it often manages to be unintentionally funny. For instance, Fisher often makes an infantile attempt at inserting cheap "ambience" into scenes by filling their backgrounds with repeated white noise and incomprehensible mumbling done in a low bass. He intends this mumbling to be the "voice of Satan", but it sounds exactly like the Psychlos from John Travolta's
Therefore, every time I heard Fisher's "Satan", I would think "Ooh-oh, it's Travolta the Terl!" and burst out laughing. Fisher's ludicrous image of "Satan" himself - the aforementioned flour-covered bald Howard the Duck reject with sharp teeth - made the scenes even funnier.
As for the DVD itself, there were some deleted scenes (even though the whole film should have been one deleted scene), a trailer, a bit better than the flick itself (in the same sense as gonorrhea is better than AIDS), plus a commentary track from Mr Antitalent himself, Chris Fisher (at least I've read that there is a commentary, on the DVD box - I did not actually listen to it, since I have no intention to hear talentless dolts drone about themselves.)
A while ago I bought the DVD with the TV film about Ramirez ("Manhunt") from Amazon Europe, and any second of that film highly surpasses Fisher's lameness. I never thought I could see someone less talented than Paul W. S. Anderson and Uwe Boll actually find employment in Hollywood - but today I saw him, and his name was "Chris Fisher".
Did you know
- TriviaIt took about two hours to get Joseph McKelheer into the demon makeup.
- Quotes
Nightstalker: But I'm not gonna be gone, EVER
- ConnectionsReferences Family Feud (1976)
- SoundtracksHell Raiser
Written and Performed by Defile
Courtesy of Defile
- How long is Nightstalker?Powered by Alexa
Details
- Runtime1 hour 35 minutes
- Color
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