Night of Horror (1981) User Reviews

We're There.

[eminges · 1/10 · 12 August 2001]

Evil has many dimensions. It can make you angry, it can make you quiver with fear, it can make you doubt the existence of a kind and loving Supreme Being. For years I've sought Ultimate Evil, ever since I discovered that Plan 9 not only isn't the worst film ever made, it probably shouldn't make the Bottom 20.

And, while I'm always ready & eager to audition new candidates, "Night of Horror" may be -- IT. This film turns ALL the dials on the Evil Meter to 11. It will make you angry AND afraid AND plunge you into blackest despair.

Picture this. You take three or four of your lumpiest mullet-headed male buddies and dress them in Confederate uniforms. Put a bucket of dry ice in front of a Ford Gran Torino and turn on the headlights. Have your buddies stand in front of the lights and shift from one foot to the other. That's the sum of your horrifying FX.

Picture this. You see some goat-roper in line at Wal-Mart with 1978 REO Speedwagon hair and so skinny, his jeans fit exactly the same with the fly in the front or the back. That's your male lead. Oh - identify him as a "California rock singer" so everybody will know that he's supposed to be terminally hip.

Picture this. You want to establish your female lead as being hopelessly sensitive. So you have her read an Edgar Allen Poe poem to the male lead in the back of an RV. It works too well - his voice-over tells us he's now afraid of losing his cool.

This doesn't give you even a hint of how loathsome Night of Horror is. I've seen it cause even hardened veterans of the Bad Movie Wars to hit the Eject button screaming after the first twenty minutes. Manos at least had the studly cape. Zombie Lake had the naked girls' basketball team treading water. They Saved Hitler's Brain at least had Hitler's head mugging it up in the back seat. But Night of Horror has NOTHING. NOTHING. NOT ONE MOMENT of inspiration, humor, or gratuitous nay-nays. NOT ONE FRAME that doesn't look like it was shot in a koi pond and processed in bongwater.

And this turkey di tutti turkeys ACTUALLY FOUND A DISTRIBUTOR. Do you understand what that means? I have no doubt that all around the world people have worse films sitting in cans in ancient Kelvinators rattling away in mouldering tool sheds, that they just can't make themselves take to the dump. But Night of Horror actually caused money to change hands - somebody screened this excrescence, said, "Yeah, I think I can make a buck off that," and cut Malanowski a check.

We're there. This is it. We've touched bottom. Until Battlefield Earth 2 premieres, The Worst Movie Ever Made.

Thanks to liberal alcohol intake, I was able to slog my way through this mess

[TheWildGoose · 1/10 · 9 January 2012]

It took a very strong Long Island Iced Tea and a couple of other cocktails, but I managed to sit through this one from beginning to end. Mostly I stared at the ceiling, listened to the radio, or contemplated the massive pile of laundry that needed to be washed, because looking at the screen while trying to make sense out of the inaudible dialogue and threadbare plot was something I could do only sporadically. I always try to find some words of meager praise for even the worst movies, but staring into the empty void that is "Night of Horror" renders me too anaesthetised to pay compliments. I would not say that this film is actually painful to watch; rather, it is a black hole, a concatenation of nothingnesses, the bewildering cinematic equivalent of formless scribbles on a plain canvas. It induces no reaction in the viewer other than confusion and perplexity... and perhaps wonderment at Mr. Malanowski's ability to find a distributor. A person could make a more incomprehensible excuse for a film, but it would require an active hostility to the audience on his part. In Mr. Malanowski's case, I think this is just a particularly remarkable example of extreme laziness.

Where do I even start with this one?

[Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki · 1/10 · 31 October 2017]

"The film you​ are about to see, ( sic ) is a depiction of an actual event​, well documented in the annals of the paranormal" - I should have gone with my instinct, and immediately​ switched off the film when I read that statement.

This " film " (and​ I use that word in the loosest sense) begins with a three minutes-long title scene, accompanied by a horrendous piano ballad by the filmmakers' own real life band, leading into an eight minutes-long conversation. Eight minutes of stationary, over-the- shoulder photography, meandering, nearly stream-of- consciousness conversation, barely audible in the crummy audio, with these two men babbling, name-dropping their band, eventually about a bizarre, boring experience one of them, Steve, had, as he obviously stutters his lines a couple of times. The audio is so garbled that much of it is unintelligible, but we do know they used lighting equipment, because it is clearly visible on the right centre of the frame, largely blowing out the shot. After so very slowly setting up the paper- thin plot in this over-the-shoulder prologue, the film lapses into flashback for some reason, as we're told the story of Steve, his half brother and his wife, and their friend driving. When asked what did he use for money, Steve responds, " Chocolate milk, and batteries. " What?

From 16 minutes on, they drive. We see them driving underneath a bridge, looking out the window at passing landscapes, passing ships on the river, one girl reads an Edgar Allan Poe story in its entirety, while literary critic Steve criticises it, then critiques their food and beer. Breathtaking.

From 23 minutes to 29 minutes, a triangular blotch appears at the bottom centre of the frame.

At 26 minutes, the quartet get out and argue, and it's difficult to take them seriously when Steve is obviously smiling and trying not to laugh. Characters interrupt each other, frames abruptly cut out, probably to avoid the awful dialogue. Back in the camper, for more driving.

At 29 minutes, they allegedly hit someone, off camera. If they couldn't get an actor to play the character they hit, why didn't they just take this scene out? It doesn't go anywhere, or lead to anything, so why is this scene even here?

At 30 minutes, back in the van for more driving, and awful piano balladry.

At 33 minutes, the camper breaks down. Good! No more driving. Day changes to night, and back and forth, many times, as they try to figure what to do. A real exchange of dialogue in this scene: Chris" " Don't tell me you're taking a coffee break? " to which Steve responds: " Nope, a beer break, and not even a beer break. " Again, what?

At 38 minutes, one girl begins having a one-sided conversation with a spirit ( I think. ) Footage here is so dark, I'm not sure even what the bloody hell we're looking at here. Tree limbs? Why don't we see, or more importantly hear, who she is speaking to? She convinced two of her three friends ( Steve was likely too drunk or too disinterested to show up to film this scene, so he is represented in voice over narration ) to hold a seance to speak to the spirits. Unfortunately, the spirits answer them.

At 40 minutes, the seance begins. We then catch a glimpse of the rare and elusive * flashback-within-a- flashback * , as the Civil War reenactment footage begins, and the piano balladry begins yet again. The actors' real life band performs seemingly endlessly ( " How manyyy mooooore? " ) Were they trying for an anti-war message here? I lost track of how long this putridity goes on for, but the seance, and Civil War reenactment footage, continues until 63 minutes.

Apparently, a Civil War captain lost his head, and needs their help to get it back, and bury it with his body, so he can at last rest in peace. The three of them ( again, Steve isn't in this scene, except for his voice over narration) dig up his skull, which is obviously plastic, and bury it with the rest of his plastic body.

I wish I could say I'm making that up, but I'm not. That's your plot right there.

Film concludes with an epilogue, and the stationary, over-the-shoulder photography, meandering, nearly stream-of- consciousness conversation, barely audible in the crummy audio, with these two men babbling, and the visible lighting equipment blowing out a lot of the frame return, before the piano muzak, again performed by the filmmakers' own real life band, returns yet again for the closing credits. This film seems merely an excuse to showcase their music, and name drop their no-name band.

Every single scene is just filler material. Nothing that happens sets up anything that happens later, and there isn't even any sex or nudity, no violence, there's not even a single bit of profanity, but yet this is supposedly " Rated R ". The cinematography is so faint and blurry, the " actors " ( again, used only in the loosest sense of the word ) look like spectral holograms drifting in the breeze. Speaking​ of breeze, the flickering, slightly wavy image looks like this entire film is being projected onto a sheet hung on the wall, and then filmed by someone else, using the lowest quality camera equipment possible, and microphone which sounds like it was in the cellar, while the actors were upstairs, and edited using child- proof scissors and duct tape. Furthermore, this was obviously filmed sometime in the 70s, judging by their hair, and clothing, and not released until quite some time later.Although, I must admit, a documentary about the making of this movie might be funny

Painful!

[Drive-In-Freak · 1/10 · 23 November 2005]

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.

Egargh!

[evilzombie20 · 1/10 · 16 March 2005]

Well it was a cold, bitter cold, night and I was on my way to the local video store. This old Mom n' Pop place that I had only been to a few times, the owners were very nice and had an extremely nice collection of horror films. All kinds of em' lined the shelves, zombies, vampires, werewolves, mummies, you name it and it was probably there. Growing up I had long loved a film called "Curse of the Screaming Dead" and still think it's a pretty decent flick (okay it's crap but it's crap I like). So when I found out there was another movie called "Night of Horror" which was supposedly the original film that "Curse of the Screaming Dead" was based on I was a little giddy. At the time I had just found a copy of the original "Curse of the Screaming Dead" on it's original label Mogul so finding "Night of Horror" was a must for me. God I wished I had slapped myself...

So there I am in the video store searching the shelves for something to catch my eye and there it is, "Night of Horror". The movie I thought I'd probably never find was sitting right in front of me. I was a little surprised but I expected them to have a movie like this because they had been open since the dawn of video and the owner bought every movie he could get his hands on. So I bring "Night of Horror" up to the counter and I look up at the woman who has her usual smile and I asked if I could possibly buy the movie. I figured I should like it somewhat if I liked "Curse of the Screaming Dead". She looked at the box and then at her husband and he just looked at me. He looked up the film and nodded yes, come to find out the last time the tape had been rented Reagan was president so it was okay. I got the video for $2 (that should have been a huge sign if you're paying less than what it costs to rent) and I thought I made out like a bandit. Boy was I wrong.

I bring the movie home and do the usual, popcorn, soda, and other assorted snacks. I sat down and pushed play on my remote and once the film started I wanted nothing more than to go both deaf and blind. First off if you're going to make a movie, learn how to light the damn thing, when there was a light it looked like someone had gotten a giant spotlight and set it down in front of the camera. And the night shots...don't even get me started. Then there's the acting...wait that was there? I don't remember acting, oh those people who were walking around and babbling incoherently those were actors? Were they trying to act bad because they pulled it off brilliantly. As for the effects, what effects!? There was a freaking' fake skull and a fog machine with a raspy, and I mean raspy, voice attached to it. That's an effect!? Bah! After it was over and I slipped out of the coma I attempted to return the movie to the store simply saying it didn't work. I told them they could keep the money but the tape was broken. They wouldn't take it...they looked at me straight in the face and said no. The nice old couple soon became the devil and his bride incarnate. I wanted to scream, they knew what they were doing the whole time. They sold me the movie because they knew it was terrible. Argh! I threw the movie back into my room and it hasn't moved from the spot it's been in for over 2 years.

Until now, I reviewed it before writing this review and I have to say I hate IMDb.com, and I hate you all for making me re-watch this movie again for the purpose of this review. Oh what a tangled web you all weave...please for the love of all that's holy; avoid this movie like it were the plague, like it was a possessed horned up monkey with crabs that could very well be cooked and feed a family of 4.

STAY AWAY!

Dreadfully boring.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 2/10 · 15 June 2010]

"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 graceless freefall from the peak of nothing to the depths of nowhere.

[EyeAskance · 21 August 2003]

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".

I dare you to sit through this

[Sandcooler · 1/10 · 4 August 2015]

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.

Near unbearably wretched dullsville trash

[Bloodwank · 1/10 · 22 July 2011]

Night of Horror is a thing of wonder, a film so self contained, so tightly bound it functions as black hole cinema, the viewer drawn in, shrunk to lightless atoms able only to contemplate their own operation as observer. Which makes it remarkable amongst horror cinema of the early 80's a film that not only encourages but actually aids the viewer in the pursuit of self knowledge. Director Tony Malanowski has here truly crafted a scintillating, awe inspiring... Christ, I can't go on like this, I'm trying, I'm trying real hard but I just gotta level. Night of Horror sucks ass. I have huge respect for anyone who can put a film together and get distribution, it's not an easy thing for anyone, but despite this I have to recommend with some ferocity against watching this one. Among genre films, it must surely be one of the absolute worst and I say this not lightly. I also specify genre films, as I would still rather re-watch Night of Horror than re-watch Forrest Gump, though to be honest I would sooner eat a literal bag of dicks (Armin Meiwes apparently has a recipe book coming out) than re-watch that POS. But as far as genre films go, there really isn't much worse. Monster a Go Go has Henry Hite and some amusing dialogue, Blood Lake has the righteous Li'l Tony (most punchable kid in all of the 980's?), heck even Savage Water has cool scenery. Night of Horror has, lets see, fog, the worst ever excuse for a bar, a driving scene that'll have you longing for the genius of Hal Warren, unnatractive, lifeless actors and tiresome characters, demented continuity, a heroic lens smudge a gratuitously lengthy Civil War re-enactment scene, talkative ghosts and a plastic skull. It doesn't even have the good grace to be innovatively bad, its characters are routinely tiresome, its repetitive score isn't maddening enough to be memorable and its plot is void of suspense or even any real conflict. Flashback to a tedious tale of supernatural redemption recounted in the worst imaginable excuse for a bar set, zero gore, tits or excitement, it's a film of nothing, a 70 odd minute celluloid zero. Watching it will show you things about yourself, but only bad ones like the futility of your existence and endeavour, and these not even in a good way. Basically its 1/10 stuff all the way, don't watch it.

The Smudge

[Tromafreak · 3/10 · 7 April 2012]

Ya know. A lot of people have their own ideas of what a bad movie really is. Most go through life, care free, assuming the worst of the worst would be box-office disappointments like Gigli or Glitter. Stuff that they've actually heard about. Or some just consider what they don't enjoy to be bad. But my fellow veteran bad movie lovers know better. Then again, maybe they don't. Maybe just a select few. The few that dig the B-movie badness enough to search high and low for the stuff that is just too overwhelmingly bad for your normal bad movie lover. Well, I think I've recently found the ultimate in bad cinema. This is what true, untampered with bad looks like. This is beyond anything most bad movie lovers/haters have ever seen. This is Night Of Horror.

There's another film out there which is far superior (yet, still pretty terrible), yet strangely similar called Curse Of The Screaming Dead aka Curse Of The Cannibal Confederates, which was made by the same people just a year or so after this one. From what I've heard, Night Of Horror is sort the rough draft for that. So, basically, four people head out to a cabin in the West Virginia mountains, until their camper breaks down. Now stranded on what used to be a Civil War battlefield, a ghost tells them a really boring war story while we the viewer are treated to footage of a Civil War reenactment. The ghost wants these people to help him out for some reason. he really should have spoke up, because I really have no idea what this guy was after.

I've always maintained the belief that no matter how bad a film is, I can always think of a shot-on-video flick from the mid-80's (Blood Lake) that is far worse. I do believe my theory has once and for all been shattered. However, I must admit Night Of Horror does have that distinct atmosphere I was hoping for. Just a few seconds in and it becomes quite obvious exactly how low budget this little beauty is. I just love that unfitting piano music that lets you know what kinda backwards obscurity you've stumbled upon. And the faded washed out look of the screen only confirms this. Ultimately, I approve of this film because it really seems like something I would have rented as a kid, and developed a nostalgic attachment. Forever biased.

I don't know what to tell ya other than you'll either despise it, or find it fascinating, possibly hypnotizing, due to its unbelievable level of dream-like badness. I'd put my money on the first scenario. I can think of a lot better films I've seen that I liked a lot less, so, I very well can't call Night Of Horror the worst film ever made. But I'd imagine a lot of my fellow bad movie connoisseurs out there would beg to differ. Mainly, cuz there is nothing good about Night of Terror, and it offers you nothing. Because it is nothing. But I can't very well be hatin' on Night Of Horror. That's right. I'm a fan... Hey! Don't look at me like that. I never said I should be taken seriously. 4/10

Most boring movie ever made

[Cinnamental · 1/10 · 24 August 2012]

This isn't just bad. It's terrible. The acting. The script. The plot. The production value. If you think Manos is the worst movie ever, watch this pile of dung and then tell me what you think. If I ever wanted to fall asleep within 10 minutes (or less), I'll put on this movie. I can't watch it alone because it might put me into a coma. Watch it with a friend. The worst flick ever made shouldn't be "enjoyed" alone. I've watched it 4 times, and that's quite a feat. The plot is razor thin. There's a 7 minute scene of an RV. No spoiler there, because the delicate plot points aren't revealed. There are no delicate plot points. Watch this and "Orgy of the Dead" as an awful movie double feature.

Wicked, Wicked, Wicked!!!

[daniel son · 10/10 · 31 October 2000]

Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked, Wicked!!!! Watch it for a night of sheer ... "HORROR" ... Untouchable in script and screenplay, this film makes a mockery out of so called classics such as star wars. FKMag states, and i quote "Wicked, Wicked, Wicked!!!"

Has good low budget feel

[nightofhorrorlover · 6/10 · 25 February 2012]

This isn't a good movie, but its unique. When I watch low-budget, I want something different from Hollywood movies. And you get it here. Its not even so much like watching a narrative film as it is like spending time with some aimless characters. And somehow this is fairly enjoyable.

It takes a can-do spirit to make any movie, especially to get it distributed, and I have to give these guys credit for somehow making "Night of Horror" and getting it out there.

Enjoy the rural locations and late-70's style, which are as much a document of this region as they are movie locations/wardrobe.

One Of The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen

[blurnieghey · 1/10 · 28 September 2019]

Why isn't this movie better known? It truly has to be one of the worst movies ever made although, in truth, I'd still rather sit through this piece of junk than most of the newer movies these days. This one is a close call, though, because it is really, really, truly, unwatchable bad. Many is the time I've read a review of a "bad" movie where people claim it's "the worst movie I've ever seen" but, in reality, it isn't THAT bad. This one is. Bad acting, bad sound, bad dialogue, bad camera work, bad story, boring as hell and just plain bad EVERYTHING, nothing works, but the kicker is you know the clowns who made it didn't care and this thing was cynically put into distribution, knowing that some unwitting sucker would either rent or buy it because of the cover art and title. If you feel you need to watch the worst of the worst, you need to see this thing, as it is epic awful. It's worse than Manos in my opinion because at least Manos smacked of some sort of effort, while this is just lazy, shoddy, boring trash. Think it can't be as bad as all that? Think again.

"It Stinks!" (SPOILERS!)

[zardoz12 · 9 December 2004]

It's sad when I have to use a quote from "Pod People" to describe a film, but in this case it's horribly true (no pun intended.) Tony Malinowski (the director and "Chris Starke") made this movie to fit some Civil War re-enactment footage he had shot God-knows-when, but only the Almighty can tell us WHY he did it. I'm guessing a quick buck on the Southern drive-in circuit. Certainly you have the glimmerings of a semi-decent '70s horror flick; a group of young people drive into desolate woods to check out a bit of property willed to one of them, their van breaks down, the "psychic" member of the group has "forbodings" but leads a seance, then ghosts emerge from the treeline. At this point (SPOILERS COMING!), you would expect an attack, or a chase, or a possession scene. NONE of that happens; instead the group feels sorry for the ghosts, and helps them complete a task "they swore beyond the grave to do." Nobody gets killed, though the protagonist is freaked out by the "psychic" chick he tried to pick up on the way to the woods. And did I mention that all of this is a flashback told by "Starke" to a member of his unseen rock band while sitting in the fakest basement bar ever? I mean, it doesn't even have a bartender!

Besides the rock bottom script and stolid non-acting, what really hurts "Night of Horror" are the endless technical glitches. In short, they would have been better off shooting it without sound and in monochrome. The vocal track sometimes buzzes, while the film itself looks like it was shot without the right filters, and every shot is either blindingly overlit or excruciatingly underlit, though at some points you can tell that parts were lit using auto headlights. And then there's that semi-triangular patch of gunk in the bottom center of the screen. Not even Ed Wood's people would shoot 7 minutes of footage with a lens that filthy! In short just avoid this, because it just isn't worth riffing.

TRULY Worst Of Worst

[mmthos · 1/10 · 22 November 2020]

First of all, don't be fooled by the scary poster (the best thing bout this "project", and must have been the biggest expenditure out of a $4,000 (!) budget) there is No Horror! Only the tedious tease of a seemingly threatening presence, who turns out to be a friendly ghost, like Casper, who drones on and on and on in that annoying phony threatening evil spirit voice (unlike Casper), taking almost a full second's pause between Every-Single-Syllable spoken, to string you along with the hope that something Bad might actually happen, but also to even barely stretch out the run time to a full hour + feature film length. More padding is provided by the lovely, lengthy drive from Baltimore to the deepest of the deep backwoods of Virginia, which seems like it slows to real time, as in any normal picture, they would have driven coast to coast by then. Then there's the most egregious padding of all, a 10 minute segment of stock footage of a civil war reenactment, overlain with that obnoxious spirit droning on and on about every military maneuver in tedious detail, so that at this point I had to fast forward to the end, where the all the restless spirits are finally, uneventfully, without any hocus pocus or mumbo jumbo, properly put to rest, and they all rested in peace happily ever after.

The actors are better than most cheapies, in that they can at least get their lines out of this plodding script, which even starts out seemingly more intelligent than most until it devolves into repetitious recounting of the pop psychology of our hero's sister's spiritualism in the face of the foreboding. Sister actually does a competent reading of a decent (if long, of course), eerie poem, so, though another long delay in whatever little action there is, I'm gonna throw out a compliment to her, which is the Only good thing I'll say about this, and a left-handed one at that, as ultimately it's just more padding. Our story begins with yet another long tedious scene of two guys at a bar, backs to the camera, arguing about "getting the band back together". As long as our hero resists, if I was the other guy I would've said a lot sooner "aright aready, we'll just get someone else!", but no, we have to hear out our hero's long-winded account of how his life's been paralyzed by this sense of foreboding that he just can't seem to shake. Besides being padding, my point here is that the entire interaction is shot at our hero's back, so that you barely see even the most fleeting split-second glimpse of half his profile thru his rock star hair the whole time he's speaking. Is he a Man of Mystery? Well, that's blown the next shot where he's shot face full on. Cheap, bad camera work? absolutely.

There's a consummately boring score of a solo piano repeating the Very Same Few Notes over and over, nothing else, ad nauseum. That, paired with that insufferable droning, is, of itself, enough to drive you mad (irritated, angry)

To top it off, the final shot is of our hero staring contemplatively into an ersatz zen meditation pool, at the overhead film lights reflected there!

After seeing this, I rescind my votes for "Plan 9" and "Blood Freak" as Worst Movies of All Time. This is it. Deserves a rating of black holes, rather than stars, if ever there was one.

The IMDb Rating is Well Deserved. More of a BORE-OR Movie Than Horror.

[H_Munster_13 · 1/10 · 23 March 2024]

This has to be one of the most boring movies I have ever sat through. It could have been half an hour shorter if the ghost soldier talked faster. Not sure why ghosts always have to whisper slowly in movies. That got annoying fast and just droned on and on. Plus the ghost soldier's story was boring. Where is the "horror"? Not sure this is even close to being a horror movie. It was more just a movie about one guy telling a boring ghost story about the Civil War. If the ghost wanted me to hear his story, I would have said... "Come on. Speed it up. I have things to do. And why are you whispering? Get on with it already."

If you have insomnia and need help sleeping, this is the movie that will surely knock you out in 10 minutes.

-Cue repetitive piano music-

If you thought 'Cannibal Confederates' was bad...

[capkronos · 1/10 · 2 November 2014]

"The film you are about to see is a depiction of an actual event, well documented in the annals of the paranormal..."

Rock musician Steve (Steve Sandkuhler) has hit the bottle hard after experiencing a traumatic recent event that "blew my mind away so bad." Desperate to get to work on their new album and sick of "playing warm ups for over-the-hill rock groups," his band mate Chris (played by the director) tries to get to the bottom of things. We're soon in narrated flashback mode as Steve tells his pathetic and terribly uninteresting little tale of the supernatural, which details what happened when his father passed away and he and his half-brother Jeff (Jeff Canfield) inherited 25 acres of land and a cabin out in the boonies of Virginia. After the dad's funeral, Steve, Jeff, Jeff's whiny wife Colleen (Gae Schmitt) and Colleen's monotone sister Susan (Rebecca Bach) all load up in an RV and hit the road to go check out the property. While traveling through the country, they spot a figure dressed in gray and "wearing a country kind of a hat" and then their van breaks down so they're forced to spend the night camping.

Around a campfire, Colleen, who's been picking up bad "vibrations" ever since the funeral, decides to hold a séance and manages to call forth the ghosts of a half dozen Confederate soldiers. So what do the soldiers do? Attack them? Possess them? Kill them? Nope! They stand around in the fog where they're barely even visible while one tells a long and boring story in his distorted echo voice about how they died in the war, which is then shown for us in the form of generic stock footage (again narrated) from some Civil War reenactment. That goes on for what feels like an eternity and the campers are finally informed the ghost army's captain had been decapitated. In a trance, Colleen (who is revealed to be the reincarnation of the captain's dead wife for what it's worth - not much!) leads the others to a plot of land and dig up the captain's skull. The end. And THAT'S what has ruined poor Steve's life?! What the hell?

I'd previously seen the director's other movie CURSE OF THE CANNIBAL CONFEDERATES (1982), which was a remake of "Night" with zombies instead of ghosts and received a hard-earned 1 rating from yours truly, but this one somehow manages to be infinitely worse. There's nothing at all good about this film. It's not scary. It's not entertaining. It's not even unintentionally funny. It's just boring and torturous to sit through. If there's a filmmaking sin not present and accounted for her, it's because it hadn't been invented yet. One thing that's not smart to do when you have an inexperienced cast is to make your entire film talk, but that's what happens here. It's ALL talk and the "actors" flub their way through and constantly pause in between words as they scurry to improvise their way through the plot (apparently there was never a complete script). The only way I could get through this was to envision a hamster on a wheel turning inside each of their heads.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this one - which has stiff competition from the cast, the plot, the continuity and the editing - is the photography. Every daytime shot is overexposed, every nighttime shot is too dark, every shot whether light or dark is blurry and sometimes it goes from day to night back to day again for no apparent reason. I've never seen anything quite like it before. There's not a single frame that looks passable. It's also one of the most hideously ugly films ever, with a saturated yellow and brown color scheme that makes it look like someone tossed the print negative into an outhouse toilet before transferring it to tape. There's also a large, MST3K-style smudge on the bottom of the frame present for over 5 consecutive minutes.

The director (who shot this on 16mm for 4000 bucks) was a University of Maryland film school dropout who was mentored by Baltimore-based schlock director Don Dohler before the two had a falling out. If you wonder why the lead female suddenly starts sketching pictures of ape men during one of the film's biggest WTF moments, it's because before this was made the director and part of the cast had been working on a PLANET OF THE APES sequel!

About As Awful As You Can Get

[Michael_Elliott · 18 May 2017]

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.