Nightwish (1989)

... aka: Monstruos en la noche (Monsters in the Night)

... aka: Mroczne życzenia (Dark Wishes)

... aka: Nightwish: Out of Control

... aka: Sonhos de Horror (Horror Dreams)

Directed by:

Bruce R. Cook

Sinister Cal U parapsychology professor Dr. Boxer (Jack Starrett) is disappointed that none of his prized graduate students - Kim (Alisha Das), Jack (Clayton Rohner), Donna (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Bill (Artur Cybulski) - have been able to "project" their own deaths during water tank dream analysis sessions. They're then sent to investigate paranormal activity at a remote ranch hidden away in some nearly-abandoned town out in the desert. 

Supposedly, satellite surveys have pinpointed this particular location as having lines of magnetic attraction that dip closer to the Earth's surface than at any other place in North America. That may somehow tie in to the area also having a wave of UFO sightings, which were investigated by the military for two years but to no avail. The area also suffered from a tragedy years earlier that involved chemicals being accidentally dumped into the water supply, which led to deformation, retardation, congenital defects (of both animals and people) and most of the townsfolk being thrown into mental asylums. 

You keeping up with this thus far? 😂

For some reason, Kim is dating a sadistic, obnoxious meathead named Dean (Brian Thompson), whose idea of high comedy is snorting like a pig and intentionally running over a rabbit. All of the students are dropped off at a large home for an experiment with the professor, with plans on Dean picking them all up before sundown. Naturally, things don't go as planned.

It's revealed that the home they're in was once surveyed by a Satanic medium, who came to the conclusion that it has somehow assumed demonic character. During a séance, a green ectoplasm snake (?) comes slithering out of the fireplace, but it proves to only be an elaborate hoax meant to test the students. Well, sort of. There's talk that the home exudes such an evil aura that terrifying hallucinations are possible, which may explain what they saw. However, a Polaroid camera snaps some strange photos that aren't so easily explained away, and Jack and Donna both see the ghost of a young boy accidentally killed in the attic years earlier.

The next experiment involves a pentagram, everyone being handcuffed to poles and the group attempting to pull the entity into our dimension. Though they do manage to make contact with a spirit, several of the students panic and send it back to wherever it came from. The irate professor then figures that since he has the students effectively captured, he may as well now go all torture-porny on them, with assist from his obedient bald manservant Stanley (Robert Tessier). Bill offers up his resignation, the Professor accepts and stabs him to death. Stanley takes the body through some catacombs and dumps it into a vat of ectoplasm, then returns to the students and promptly cuts Jack's finger off as a "souvenir." Now with compliant helpers, the unbalanced doctor forces them to continue with the experiments while the captive students plot their escape.

Just when you think this thing can't get any more disjointed, there are rabid dogs, cockroaches, snakes, leeches, a Corn Flake-obsessed half-wit groundskeeper (Tom Dugan) who can't even answer a phone properly, an erotic dream in a mist-filled cave, gratuitous nightmares and hallucinations, mutants, pulsating boils, cannibalism phobias, bugs that metamorphize into larger parasites, a Fear Factor-style plastic box filled with tarantulas placed over a head, a fridge stocked with bloody body parts, a bunch of web-covered corpses hidden in an abandoned mine that may be used for alien breeding, a head splitting open and bugs crawling out and a giant green cartoon blob. Much of this is bathed in colorful lighting (mostly green) and there are plenty of solid make-up fx from by a then-newly established KNB EFX Group (Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger) in what was only their second film as an established studio, after the overrated slasher INTRUDER (1989).

While this is adequately produced, with very nice art direction from Robert A. Burns and photography from Sean McLin, it's the exact type of movie that annoys the ever-lovin' piss out of me. The filmmakers are simply trotting out a bunch of weird, nonsensical stuff just because they can and then simply write it all off at the very end with a (highly predictable) throwaway resolution. If that approach doesn't bother you personally, you may enjoy this more than I did. It does at least have some technical merit.

This was made for a short-lived production company called Wild Street Pictures, which was run by former professional soccer player Keith Walley (who cut his teeth working in foreign distribution for Charles Band) and financed primarily by Japanese investors. They began with a slate of genre films, most notably Brian Yuzna's Bride of Re-Animator and SOCIETY (both 1989), before unwisely sinking too much money into the big budget, family friendly PG-13 flop Grand Tour: Disaster in Time (1991), which seemed to be the death knell for the company. Walley would return in the early 2000s to produce, and sometimes direct, a number of low budget genre films, including serial killer biopics Speck (2002) and The Boston Strangler (2006).

Director Cook also edited and produced Deadly Intruder (1985), worked as second unit DOP on Society and directed (the much worse) LINE OF FIRE (1991). Both Starrett and Tessier passed away shortly after appearing in this. Lovely leading lady Das later became an ordained minister and "spiritual counselor" whose treatments include "angelic attunement". She does not mention her film career on her website, which is not surprising seeing how she appears here topless (as does the equally attractive Kaitan) and was dabbling in the erotic thriller genre before throwing in the towel on her acting career.

Though this played theatrically in a few countries (notably Japan), it bypassed a theatrical release here in the U.S. altogether and went direct to VHS and laserdisc instead. The original Vidmark tape was released in both R and unrated versions. In 2019, Unearthed Films released it on Blu-ray and DVD.

★★

To All a Goodnight (1980)

... aka: Feliz Nochebuena (Merry Christmas Eve)

... aka: Goodnight

... aka: Kauhun yö (A Night of Horror)

... aka: Terreur dans la nuit (Terror in the Night)

Directed by:

David Hess

Firstly, Happy Holidays to you all, my friends! I truly hope everyone out there has a wonderful Christmas and I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank everyone for visiting and for your comments, support and feedback over the years. Without that, I don't know if I'd still be here doing what I do, so my sincerest gratitude to you all! I also know I'm seriously backlogged on comments and emails due to my work schedule and some other unforeseeable events, but I plan on remedying that here soon. While I won't be posting tomorrow, I'll be back the following day and this year I'm fortunate enough to have an entire week off. I'll be spending much of that cranking out as many reviews as I can until New Years hits. A few years ago, I set a goal of at least 100 new reviews per year. Right now I'm about ten shy and I'll be damned if this is the year where I don't crack triple digits!

As much as I'd like to keep a seasonal theme going right now, I've gone on so many holiday horror benders in the past that I've pretty much now exhausted all pre-1990 Christmas-themed genre films. That then leaves me the task of going back to some of my earlier, shorter reviews, fleshing them out a bit and making some screen caps for them. Even though I didn't like To All a Goodnight the first time out, it's as good an option for an update as anything else right now. I'd only written a couple of brief paragraphs about it and my initial review was based on the horribly transferred Media VHS release, which was so impenetrably dark and blurry that the night scenes were almost impossible to make out. Since then, this has seen numerous restored DVD and Blu-ray releases from companies like Scorpion and Kino Lorber, plus the Germany outfit Cinestrange Extreme, so it's a title ripe for a reevaluation. At the very least, I should be able to actually see what's going on this time!

Examining the credits, seasoned B movie fans will likely notice this film's sleazy pedigree right away. For starters, it was the directorial debut of Hess, star of such notorious titles as Wes Craven's breakthrough hit The Last House on the Left and HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, a trashy Italian Last House copycat from Ruggero Deodato. The screenplay was written by Alex Rebar, who had also worked a stint in Italian exploitation and then played the title role in The Incredible Melting Man. Producer Jay Rasumny has a filmography boasting such titles as Young Girls for Sale and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman. And the whole shebang was "presented" by Sandy Cobe, president of Intercontinental Releasing Corp., distributor of such titles as Alice Goodbody, The Sexplorer and Terror on Tour. While this film is a little sleazy (half of the main females have nude scenes and Deep Throat star Harry Reems even shows up for a pseudonymous cameo as a pilot who gets chopped up by his airplane propeller!), it's certainly nowhere near as sleazy as one may expect given who made it.

At the ritzy Calvin Finishing School for Girls, a Christmas prank gone wrong ("Sorority! Sorority! Sorority!") sends one young lady over a balcony to her death on the concrete below. Two years later, when both the superintendent of the school and most of the other students are away on Christmas break, the remaining six young ladies (who had - amazing coincidence here! - almost all been involved in the prank death) are still up to no good. Hopefully they won't kill anybody else this time! Left in the care of kindly cook / housemother Ruth Jensen ("Katherine Herrington" / Kiva Lawrence), the co-eds secretly arrange for Leia's (Judith Bridges) rich football jock boyfriend T. J. (William Lauer) to fly there on his father's private plane. He'll be bringing along three of his college buddies for what everyone's hoping will be a sex-filled holiday weekend. To keep Ms. Jensen out of their way, the girls lace her drink with enough sleeping pills to keep her knocked out for 10 to 12 hours.

Right from the start, this almost comically plays right into the cliché slasher 'sex = death' trope to the point where it almost seems like some kind of parody. All of the female victims (described by one staff member as being "rich little pompous bitches") are loud, promiscuous, obnoxious, rather rude and seem to only have one thing on their mind, and that thing is getting laid. When the fellas show up, most of them are exactly the same. Conversely, our final girl Nancy (Jennifer Runyon) is a sweet, wholesome, shy, pristine blonde virgin who dresses conservatively in her cute little overalls, loves kittens, drinks milk while the others drink beer and smoke weed, uncomfortably squirms in her seat at the mere mention of sex and speaks in hushed baby tones. The plot also makes sure she's a new transfer to the school and wasn't involved in the deadly prank from two years prior.

This also trots out the creepy / half-witted handyman stock character with Ralph Kramer, the school groundskeeper. Ralph constantly lurks around carrying a set of garden shears, rambles on about evil and the devil and does silly things like barging into a girl's room with his shears to tend to her potted plants (?) "It's our duty to take care of the plants. God put 'em here to give us pleasure" he says in his slow, monotone voice. Cast in this role is "Buck West," who is better known as West Buchanan. Just like Hess and Rebar, the very tall, very blonde actor was an American expatriate who spent a good deal of time in the Italian film industry in the 1970s; in his case mostly as a stuntman and bit part player.

Someone gets their hands on a Santa outfit (which all of the guys arrive wearing) then starts knocking everyone off. Cynthia (Lisa Labowskie) is the unlucky first victim in a hilariously unsubtle scene where she steps outside and the killer walks up to her, casually plants a knife in her chest and then just walks away. This scene and many others show just how poorly planned and directed the film actually is. Though they were on a tight ten day filming schedule, it's clear that they didn't shoot enough footage. As a result, the entire film is filled with tons of medium shots and appears to be missing the multiple camera angles and close-ups needed to generate shock moments in the editing room.

Nevertheless, the killer's still got a lot of killing to do, even if it isn't horribly exciting for us to watch. High society ("Bring me some perfume will you... the Chanel") British tart Trisha (Angela Bath) is surprised in the kitchen with a blade across the throat while her date has his head smashed in with a large rock. Now decked out in a suit of armor (!?), the killer shoots a crossbow arrow through one of the guys' heads and then decapitates budget Debra Winger Samantha (Denise Stearns) with a medieval axe while her dead date's still lying on top of her. And that's just the first night of festivities. There's more to come...

Apparently having done a spectacular job of cleaning up all of the blood and burying all of the bodies the night before, the oblivious survivors; Nancy, Leia, T.J., Melody (Linda Gentile) and the nerdy Alex (Forrest Swanson), awaken the next day with no clue there'd even been a blood-soaked murder spree the evening before. However, the killer picks an inopportune time of relieving poor Ralph of red herring duties and, when his corpse is discovered in the woods nearby, the police come calling.

Since Detective Polansky (Sam Shamshak) and his men can't find any bodies aside from Ralph's, who had a long criminal rap sheet prior to working at the school, he posts a couple of guards at the school to keep watch on things. That gives the killer an opportunity for a second round of carnage, something the cast makes exceptionally easy for them by behaving like complete idiots the entire time. With the home secured, one guy opens the door to look outside and doesn't re-lock it. Another couple go outside for a "walk". As for the posted officers, they're just as bad as the students. One of them just walks right up to Santa outside and gets an axe planted in his skull while the other goes upstairs to take a nap and has sex with one of the students!

While not very well made and almost unbelievably stupid at points, I can at least give this a little credit for including most of the bells and whistles slasher fans expect. There's a decent body count, a wide variety of different kills coming at a pretty speedy clip, plenty of blood courtesy of Mark Shostrom, a bit of nudity and a couple of absurd plot twists thrown out toward the end. It pretty much operates as expected so fans of this type of film shouldn't be too horribly disappointed. Others will find less to enjoy here.

Goodnight is mostly noteworthy as one of only three killer Santa Claus movies to predate the controversial SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984). The other two were the "And All Through the House" segment in Tales from the Crypt (1971) and the same year's CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980). None of these received anywhere near the press or notoriety of Silent Night, which had been blasted by film critics, prompted angry parent's groups to picket theaters that played it and was pulled from circulation early as a result. Goodnight received the least amount of publicity of all of these, probably because it was an extremely limited theatrical release that came and went without anyone noticing.

★1/2