Evils of the Night


Alien vampires have just landed from outer space... in search of the one substance they need to survive... TEENAGE BLOOD!



Year of Release: 1985
Also Known As: Demon's Night
Genre: Horror/Science Fiction
Rated: R
Running Time: 85 minutes (1:25)
Director: Mohammed Rustam


Cast:

Bridget Holloman ... Heather
David Hawk ... Brian
Karrie Emerson ... Nancy
Keith Fisher ... Ron
G.T. Taylor ... Connie
Neville Brand ... Kurt
Aldo Ray ... Fred
Tina Louise ... Cora
John Carradine ... Dr. Kozmar
Julie Newmar ... Dr. Zarma
Amber Lynn ... Joyce



Summary:

Brian, Connie, Ron, Heather and Nancy go into the woods for a fun-filled weekend camping trip. The first night Ron and Nancy disappear. The others don't think anything about it until the next night when they are all abducted and reunited with Ron and Nancy at an abandoned clinic. There they discover that their captors are not human but aliens in need of their blood. Their only hope of survival is when one of them manages to get free. But the night is blackened with fear and the woods are alive with horror.


Review:

Evils of the Night, the movie that *finally* explains the reason behind those flaps in tighty whities. Evidently, they're there so's you don't hafta sacrifice your keister's modesty durin' B-movie sex scenes. It's either that, or all the women in this movie're so hot that everybody just tears a boner hole right through those sumbitches like the Hulkster rippin' through a t-shirt; an if that's the case, these gals prolly aughta be forced to wear ski masks or somethin' to prevent a national denim shortage.

An speakin' of things that'd do well to keep themselves concealed, we got big news this week from our little backwater burg; there's been a fresh sightin' of the illusive Chickawalka Stalka. Course, the International Society of Cryptozoology (a buncha guys who like to go on all expenses paid expeditions to exotic locales an sip fizzy drinks with little umbrellas in the name of zoological discovery) refuse to include The Stalka on their list of cryptids (alleged undiscovered critters), partly cause nobody who's ever reported a sightin' ever made it to the age of 19 without a DUI arrest, but mostly it's because they're stuck up, discriminatory intellectuals. So since they refuse to publicize any details about the sightins, I'll go ahead an give a little background for all you foreign readers who might not be familiar with him. The Stalka's a local legend that dates all the way back to 1988 when he was allegedly struck by a 1966 International Harvester driven by Raymundo Hernandez. Raymundo'd only had 7 beers that mornin', so most of us tended to believe his account of runnin' the thing over an watchin' it flee, encased in hay, towards the sewage lagoons on the far side of Outhouse Creek. But the legend goes back a lot farther'n that, cause several public access cable cryptozoologists from the surroundin' area discovered depictions of The Stalka on totem poles constructed by the local Chickawalka Indians. In their interpretations of the critter, it seems to closely resemble Peter Lorre with a pan of Spam casserole drippin' down his face. The Chickawalkas call it "makra taso piktaka," which translated into English means "skanky placenta beast." But the really weird thing is that no two eyewitnesses have ever described the same creature. Descriptions range from a bipedal octopus with Richard Nixon jowls, to a flyin' hippopotamus with eyebrow herpes wearin' a Hawaiian shirt, but if you ask the old timers out at Mom & Poop's Senility Acres Hospice Care, they'll tell ya that's cause The Stalka can shapeshift. Legend has it that if you fail to leave a dish drainer containin' a bottle of horseradish, a Motel 6 ashtray, a go-kart piston, and an LP of Frank Sinatra Jr.'s greatest hits on your front porch durin' the Spring Equinox, The Stalka will become angered an make love to your outdoor breaker box, so most of us keep the items stored in our hall closets to set out every year, just in case. I don't really know what it USES these particular items for, but I heard from Bernard McGowan that it's got somethin' to do with the rituals of Communist voodoo practitioners from Fiji. This latest sightin' had all the hallmarks of The Stalka too; green goo in the guy's breaker box, distributor cap stolen off his '78 Datsun pickup, an most chilling of all: a piece of expired Camel Cash currency from 1991 slipped under his door. Folks wonder where he got all that cash an why he never sent it in for a Club Camel wall clock like everybody else, an even though nobody really knows what it all means, one thing's for certain: it might be real, an I don't mind tellin' ya, we're all a little spooked.

In the meantime I'll try to maintain my composure, cause it's gonna take every ounce of concentration I got to make sure everybody obtains a complete understandin' of the goins-on in Evils of the Night. See, some people, they don't seem to understand all the different levels this flick is workin' on when you show 'em a scene with a guy bein' garrotted while some girl's doin' squat thrusts on his oyster mallet, an they end up walkin' away thinkin' it's nothin' more'n tawdry exploitation, when in fact, it's tryin' to make a serious statement about the breakdown of the American family unit an our unendin' quests to find somethin' on late night cable that'll help ease the pain of goin' to work the next mornin'. It's really pretty powerful stuff if you can look a little further beneath the surface; an if you don't believe me, just take a look at these nifty little tidbits that I plucked from the dozens of fascinatin' facts designed to help us, the viewin' public, expand our horizons to become the best damned couch potatoes we can be. First, sendin' an expedition to another planet to secure material for your civilization's immortality is only worthwhile if it can be pulled off in a week's time. Anything more'n that is considered a waste of extraterrestrial tax dollars. Second, dildos are not an effective tool for bludgeoning the skulls of auto mechanics, cause after about 5 years in that business you've cracked your head more'n enough times to build up an impenetrable layer of brain paddin'. An third, always pack a snorkel if you intend to give underwater head.

Gettin' back to what I was sayin' earlier though, about the flick's dizzyin' complexity, I think maybe the reason people don't give this movie the respect it deserves is cause they're a little confused about the plot structuring. That's where this Mardi Rustam guy's genius really starts to shine through as a director, cause the movie only makes sense if you're watchin' it with the proper perspective. See, by 1985 we'd become so used to teenagers bein' the protagonists that some folks' brains go on autopilot an they never stop to really contemplate the aliens' motive. Cause everything makes PERFECT sense when you realize that John Carradine is tryin' to restore the youth of Tina Louise an Julie Newmar. John's the hero in all this, not the teenagers with persistent vegetative brain syndrome. John wants to tighten up the unsightly wrinkles, elbow waddle, an bustlines of Ginger an The Catwoman, an the teenagers are so goddamned chunkheaded that they wanna STOP this. Everything startin' to make sense now? I thought so. I mean, think about it, if John's experiments work we can firm up Sophia Loren, Raquel Welch, Loni Anderson, an anybody else who needs it. Thus restorin' 'em to peak perkage an preventin' the impendin' mosquito bite boob epidemic of the 1990s. But does anybody stop to consider just how important John's work is? Hell no they don't. Nobody gets it. Now look what's happened; suddenly women're judged not by the content of their bras, but by their "character" an their "contributions to society." It's actually a pretty tragic picture when you get right down to it. A cry for help that went unanswered, an the beginnin' of the end for a simpler, more pendulous era in American history. Kinda brings a tear to your eye.

The movie begins with an illuminated washin' machine basin landin' in the woods where some college girls're out gettin' their bushes rustled, only before too long somethin' comes along an cinches a rope around one guy's neck while his girlfriend's playin' hopscrotch on his toadstool an she hasta abandon tip before all that extra blood floods his pecker pole an explodes like a cheese filled hotdog on a hot dashboard. We don't really get to see what happens to 'er cause that'd cost money, but a little ways away another couple's down at the lake workin' through the kinks of the underwater blowjob theory, cept the guy hasta stop to go potty so he won't cross-contaminate his urethra, an while he's out waterin' the skunk cabbage he ends up gettin' stuffed in a Hefty bag like Howard the Duck an we're again asked to use our imaginations when whatever it is starts menacin' the girl from the shoreline cause it's afraid it'll get the camera wet an end up ruinin' its final project for film school. Then, awhile later, these two Venusian stewardesses wheel the guy who got bagged into the local hospital, where John Carradine's explainin' to Ginger an The Cat Woman that the blood of humans has the power to extend their lives long enough to regain their cinematic dignity if only they can extract enough of it. Unfortunately, the guy wakes up before the prop master can transform any of the hotel rooms into a sick bay, an he ends up rollin' off the gurney while the stewardesses inspect each other's melons for succulence, only to be shot by one of the RNs with a laserblastin' mood ring that causes 'im to flop around like a spring loaded steelhead til he dies of an acting overdose. The next day, more teenagers head down to the lake to frolic an get sand down their skivvies, til Amber Lynn catches 'er boyfriend watchin' these lesbians give each other nipple noogies an demands he take 'er someplace to prove his labian loyalty to 'er. Which he does, only before he finishes nibblin' at 'er fish an nips basket she starts hearin' weird noises an the two of 'em decide to grab their checks an get the heck outta there before the studio folds.

Meanwhile, the new primary cast (consisting of Brian, Connie, Heather, Ron, an Nancy) are campin' not too far from the lake, when all the sudden these two grease monkeys throw Ron an Nancy into the back of their pickup an threaten to screen Bedtime for Bonzo on the White House lawn if they don't renege on that whole amnesty deal. Then Nancy ends up drugged inside the hospital while Ron wrestles with Mondale's goons out front until they surround 'im an wrap a 2x4 around his skull, effectively explainin' a whole lot about national politics between 1985 - 1988. The next mornin', the rest of the kids go lookin' for 'em an end up at Aldo Ray an Neville Brand's auto body shop where the wrench jockeys sputter somethin' about Ron an Nancy hitchhikin' to Reno to try talkin' some guy named Hinckley off Jodie Foster's lawn, so they decide to drop the issue an go back to playin' grab-ass. Then Ginger calls an tells Aldo to "get one" for 'er, so he an Neville hafta crack the skull of this ivy league douche canoe who's whinin' about how long it's takin' to gap his spark plugs, an by the time Ginger gets down there to claim the body her order's increased to 10 nubile young bodies cause they've apparently been bringin' 'er elementary school kids an they're no good cause their blood's been tainted by excessive crayon consumption or somethin'. Put simply, she's runnin' a medical lab, not a gott-danged gingerbread house. Meanwhile, Brian's still tryin' to figure out why the girls cringe every time he offers 'em a weenie an why they sleep together in the car an make noises like a coupla constipated bull moose in the middle of the night, while Aldo slips into their woody station wagon an starts drivin' Heather an Connie toward their auto shop to inspect their headlights an prep 'em for system flushes.

The girls are P.O.'d, an they let Aldo know it by pullin' out their premarital aids an teachin' 'im the dil-dos an dil-don'ts of courtship rituals as they bash 'im about the skull with their prefab penii. Unfortunately, their rubber clubbers prove ineffective against Aldo's Neanderthal cranium, an they end up back at the auto body tied to a coupla pillars like Andromeda in Clash of the Titans, where they're soon joined by Brian, who hitches a ride with one of the alien babes drivin' a '64 Mercedes. After awhile Connie wiggles an jiggles 'erself free, only when Neville comes in an goes for 'er gobstoppers she plays hard to get an he ends up havin' to put a power drill into 'er gut bucket an twist it all around until the place looks like a crockpot exploded in an Italian test kitchen. But while that's goin' on, Nancy wakes up over at the clinic, finds Ronnie's corpse, an starts blubberin' about all the income inequality they'll never exacerbate, which eventually makes 'er so mad that she hasta smash a jar fulla pickle brine over one of the aliens' heads an escape in the bed of Aldo's pickup, an by the time Aldo makes it back to the shop Neville's doubled down on the double d's an started gettin' fresh with Heather's tube toppers. Bad news though, cause the only thing that goes down on Neville is the shop's vehicle lift when Heather bamboobles 'im an ties his shoelaces around the support pole. We're talkin' open-faced Neville Brandwich here, it's pretty disgustin'. Suffice to say, when Aldo sees what's become of his bestie, he's P.O.'d. So he starts slappin' Heather around like he's auditionin' for Days of Our Lives, cept then Nancy hops outta the pickup an jams a compressor nozzle into Aldo's ear an inflates 'im to 35lbs, causin' his eardrums to rupture like coupla frozen sewer pipes. Think I'll cut the summary off here, but do be advised that it's gonna take more'n havin' his head turned into a wind tunnel to stop Aldo, an don't forget that the faded starlet aliens're still on the loose, so this thing ain't over yet.

Alrighty, Evils of the Night... somethin' you're bound to find a *lot* of inside cheap motels made up to resemble hospitals. I especially liked the air conditioners sittin' in the windows in those hospital rooms, but credit where it's due; they did at least have enough sense to drag the ice machine outta the shot. This flick's kinda hard to get a handle on, cause it seems like it's just a thoroughly botched satire on '50s science fiction flicks, but the badness is so all-encompassing that you can't quite be sure it wasn't made this terribly on purpose like a Troma flick, and when you get right down to it I'm not even sure it really matters which solution is the correct one. Pretty much perfect for a second feature at a drive-in though, cause there's practically no plot to get in the way of the story, the first 15 minutes of the movie is comprised almost entirely of sex scenes (although they'd have done well to spread them out a little more), and they've got FIVE recognizable to semi-recognizable faces in the cast. The IMDB estimates the budget at just below $200,000, and I'd estimate that about $150,000 of that went to the salaries of John Carradine, Julie Newmar, Tina Louise, Neville Brand and Aldo Ray, cause all the porno stars in this thing were prolly so happy to have a gig where they don't hafta wash genetic material outta their hair that they couldn't have cost more'n about $100 each. It's real obvious that they're porn stars too, cause even though you might not know who they are as individuals, there's no mistakin' that excessive tongue action. That level of enthusiasm isn't exactly typical of a B-movie sex scene, particularly cause most of the actors are amateurs to begin with, and now the director's wantin' them to pretend to root around in the grass with somebody they don't know when they're already wound up tighter'n a cheap pocket watch. Seriously though, if we're being honest with ourselves, the only thing this the movie has going for it is the semi-star studded cast, and with the exceptions of Brand and Ray, the characters are played too straight to make for a picture that could ever be considered anything more than a curiosity piece. Seems to me that they just didn't have any idea what they were going for with this script, which isn't too surprising, given that it was co-written by the director (who had only one writing credit prior), and a guy whose writing credits were all porno movies, the scripts for which probably don't often top more than about three pages of dialog. Nothing seems to fit together, is what I'm saying. Half the actors play it straight, while the other half play it for laughs, thus making it clear that nobody's actually got control of the production. I did like the allusion to the Reagans though, with the Ron and Nancy characters. That's the kinda subtle detail you'd expect out of a man whose writing credits include titles like: Backdoor Summer II, and The Million Dollar Screw.

Anyhow, time to take stock of the inventory and find out whether the porn stars can class this sucker up, or whether their rampant blowing somehow became contagious and sabotaged the movie. The plot is pretty cliched, although that is to be expected given that it is, at its most basic level, a spoof of '50s science fiction flicks. At least I'm almost certain it is. I'll tell you one thing though; I haven't seen many movies this bereft of a story. This sucker doesn't just play like the script wasn't quite fleshed out yet, it plays like there wasn't one, and that they were working off of an outline or a short story that somebody churned out in 7th grade creative writing class. Detail is practically nonexistent, there really isn't anything in the way of surprises, and the pacing bogs down after the first twenty minutes, so... I guess in a way, you could say it's the best '50s science fiction flick of 1985 if you're so inclined. The acting is disappointing, primarily because you expect things to get really ridiculous the moment you see the cheesy costumes the aliens are wearing, but that expectation never comes to fruition. The worst part of it is that you know damn well John Carradine and Julie Newmar can do goofy, because we've seen it before, but the writing is so generic and empty that there's virtually nothing for anybody to work with. Neville Brand and Aldo Ray get some lines that they're able to do a *little* with, but even then, you almost wonder if they realized how bad the script was and opted to *make* them silly because it was clear the director was never going attempt to rein them in. Essentially, one can't help but feel an opportunity to make something incomparably stupid was lost in all this, and it kinda bums you out when the credits roll. As for the teenagers, well, they make the cast of a Friday the 13th Part 3 sequel look like a MENSA meeting, and there ain't a damn thing to like about any of them when they aren't pointing their butts at the camera for a solid minute fiddling with a radio dial.

Here's who matters and why (besides John Carradine, who's a low budget legend): Neville Brand (Without Warning 1980, The Return, The Ninth Configuration, Eaten Alive 1976, Psychic Killer, Killdozer), Aldo Ray (Shock 'Em Dead, Night Shadow, Terror Night, Terror on Alcatraz, Vultures, Evils of the Night, Biohazard, Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie, Dark Sanity, Mongrel, Don't Go Near the Park, The Lucifer Complex, Haunted, Haunts, Psychic Killer), Tina Louise (The Stepford Wives, Late Phases, Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby), Julie Newmar (Oblivion I & II, Deep Space, Hystericals), Karrie Emerson (Chopping Mall, White Dog), Tony O'Dell (Chopping Mall), Scott Hunter (Evil Town), Cynthia Windham (Class of Nuke 'Em High II & III). Of course Tina Louise will always be best known as Ginger from Gilligan's Island, but she also played Dorcas in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, just in case anyone was looking to make a serious career study of the life and times of sitcom stars of the 1960s.

The special effects are decidedly meager, which is always a useful metric in determining an exploitation film's budget. The "exploitation" part of the equation is important, because a lot of low budget directors get it into their heads that they're gonna become the next Spielberg and *choose* to rein in the gore so that people who sit at 20' long tables and decide what movies are gonna get made won't blackball 'em if they happen to see their names in the credits. To his credit, Mardi Rustam, despite his other shortcomings, isn't one of those jagoffs. All that really means is that when he refuses to show you what actually happens to somebody, he's doing it because he's cheap and/or lazy, but it still keeps ya from wantin' to puke. So basically, all we got here is a severed arm (okay), a gut drillin' (blood's too bright, but there's plenty of it), super cheesy laser beams, god awful props (wrench, axe, tire iron, etc.) the compressor nozzle in Aldo's ear (not that graphic, but just the *idea* of that is pretty horrifying, so extra points for creativity) and Neville gettin' crushed by the vehicle lift (we only get to see the aftermath, though it's not all that bad). There's also a coupla completely different spaceship designs that were almost certainly pulled from other movies (one looks like it was originally from Battlestar Galactica, not sure about the other), and they really stand out, because anytime an effect looks like it cost more than a coupla bucks, it's assumed it probably wasn't native to this movie.

The shooting locations are kinda pitiful, particularly the motel that's trying to be passed off as a hospital. On the plus side, it's actually bad enough to be funny, so that counts for something. The pond where the teens hang out isn't too bad though, and the sparsely wooded area surrounding it serves its purpose. There's really not that much to discuss on this front, as you've only got the two locations, so don't expect this aspect of the movie to bail it out. The soundtrack is all over the place, with some decent (if silly) synthesized tunes, including one that sounds like a cross between the opening track from Friday the 13th and the theme from Knight Rider. Then you've got the ultra cheesy '80s pop songs: "Boys Will Be Boys," "Smile," "That's Alright," and "Everynight," which are sometimes helpful, but occasionally damaging to the movie's tone. There's also a really sappy romantic ballad that plays while the guy with the Gene Simmons tongue is slobberin' all over Amber Lynn's chest protectors, complete with sad trumpet music that leaves you with no option but to pause the movie while you wipe away the tears of hilarity that've begun streaming down your face. This is to say nothing of the deliberately dated sound effects that were likely lifted from Star Trek and/or The Outer Limits, which really only work if the movie is pure science fiction. Here, they just seem out of place. Overall, Evils of the Night is a long way from being passable on a technical level, which is a statement that even its fans are not likely to dispute. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much to like about it to help negate the damage done by the abysmal production values, and for that reason I can't find any justification for a recommendation. No doubt there will be those who seek it out due to the interesting casting, but I think most will find even that aspect unincredible and disappointing.


Rating: 42%