80's American Horror Part Forty-One

NIGHTBEAST

(1982)

Dir - Don Dohler

Overall: WOOF

 

This no budget, no talent crap-job from amateur filmmaker Don Dohler acts as a part remake to his debut The Alien Factor.  Done with some of the same "actors" and about ten thousand extra dollars, (not that you would notice), Nightbeast is embarrassing from top to bottom.  Dohler has absolutely no sense of pacing or staging and not one line reading from his unprofessional, unphotogenic, and uncharasmatic cast comes off as anything except unintentionally hilarious.  The cinematography is exclusively flat and made up of nothing except stock wide shots and closeups, all of which garnish no atmosphere whatsoever.  When the movie does try and spice things up with a strobe-light and some slow motion, the results are just as laughably pathetic.  Same goes for some limb-ripping gore and occasional nudity, including a sex scene that is just as laugh-out-loud awkward as it is random.  The creature design is also quite lame, but the movie may be of some interest for having a musical score done by a sixteen year-old J.J. Abrams which is probably the only moderately acceptable production aspect present.

VAMP

(1986)

Dir - Richard Wenk

Overall: MEH

 

The first full-length from writer/director Richard Wenk, Vamp is an average, occasionally clever vampire comedy from a decade ripe with them.  The premise of an undead-infested strip club would be put to far more outrageous and better use in Robert Rodriguez' From Dusk till Dawn ten years later, but Wenk gets some solid mileage out of it here, (even if this fits into that rather silly category of strippers who never actually get naked).  The art direction and set design is fantastic, with fog-drenched, vivid greens and purples constantly playing against each other.  There is hardly a shot in the film that is not atmospheric and stylized, plus Grace Jones as the non-speaking, head vampiress is perfectly cast in such a regard.  While some of the jokes land and most of the horror set pieces deliver, the script just as frequently loses its footing.  Things meander a bit in the third act, some characters are given underdeveloped quirks, plot holes are present, and there are a handful of would-be funny gags that instead lean on the side of groan-worthy.  It is frequently entertaining, but nevertheless falls short of the seminal status your Fright Nights and Lost Boys far more prominently achieve.

NIGHTMARE AT NOON

(1988)

Dir - Nico Mastorakis

Overall: MEH

 

Another half-baked genre attempt from co-writer/director Nico Mastorakis, Nightmare at Noon, (Death Street USA), has some nice, rural Utah location shooting, a hilariously forced "case of the not-gays", Brion James as an albino/government agent mute, Wings Hauser being an asshole, and green slime that shoots out of people when bullets hit them.  Despite such factors making it all sound like a hoot, it is actually a monotonous slog, with one of the least exciting final acts in B-movie history that sees Bo Hopkins venturing into the desert to have a shoot-out which is boring enough to sleep through, followed by a helicopter chase that is equally as stodgy.  George Kennedy seemed hellbent on appearing in as many horror movies as he was offered during the 1980s and he fits the small town sheriff tag well enough here, but he and rest of the cast are powerless against such a bare-bones story that never picks up momentum and blows its initial premise where random citizens start turning into rage zombies.  Characters seem to hate each other until they do not, Hopskins is frustratingly aloof as a drifter ex-cop who is too old fashioned to settle down, (and is also apparently irresistible to women who look half his age), James is completely wasted, and it all ends as if the creative parties involved hardly cared about what they were making in the first place.