Filmic Friday 226: Night Beast

I don't watch much horror, I'll be honest, but when I do... I tend towards rubber monsters more than jump scares or zombies (I really, really hate zombies) or slashers. I'm pretty sensitive to realistic gore, messy dismemberment, and insides becoming outsides.

Yet Night Beast, a Don Dohler movie from the 1980s filmed in (and using a cast of locals from) Maryland, was... pretty fun!

Oh, don't worry. They show the monster in the first ten minutes. I'm spoiling absolutely nothing.

A few points of note: This movie is one of JJ Abrams' first films (yes, that JJ Abrams), almost nobody on the cast was a legit actor (they're pretty much all locals, and it shows), and I'm 99% sure that the guys who did the miniatures for this movie were actually amazing. Seriously, the opening stop-motion was incredible.

And then the weird alien appears and ruins all of their hard work.

So the eponymous Night Beast (despite often appearing during the day...) is hungry after crashlanding in the middle of nowhere, so he decides to go on a killing spree. Our theory is that he uses his instant-disintegration ray by accident more than as a means to evaporate people. The theory is that the blaster is actually what amounts to a space microwave, but he's got it set too high for humans, so he keeps shooting everything in order to recalibrate it. That would explain why, after vaporizing a guy peeing in the woods and his two kids (yeah, it goes there), it ends up tearing people apart with its bare hands for the most part. It got bored fiddling with controls.

Our heroes consist of a kinda skeevy sheriff, his "hot" deputy, a dweeb with a crush on the local gangster's girlfriend, a geriatric doctor, her seemingly doofy assistant (who turns out to be the MVP), and the idiot mayor and his alcoholic assistant/girlfriend, and a man who wants his whiskey dangit. Three of these guys survive. You're probably not going to guess which three. It's stupid.

Yes, they get naked.
No, the image will never, ever leave you.
No matter how nice the boobs are in this movie (and there are nice ones), it doesn't make up for the men.
Yikes.

This movie is in love with its monster. Every chance they have to show the... adequate monster suit, they take, even when it's not a flattering shot or when the story has no reason for the Night Beast to appear.

This is the worst shot.
It's like they had sixty different partial dentures and crammed them in one mouth.
Also, he's suspiciously uniform in coloration...

I was shocked to see this shirt on Google.
I don't know why I was shocked, really.
There are shirts for everything, and this movie did just get a Vinegar Syndrome BluRay release...

I kinda feel like the movie owes us all an apology for the faces we're put through. These are some of the homeliest people I've seen since Howling VII: New Moon Rising - another movie which utilized the locals as inexpensive actors.

That being said, Mary Jane the alcoholic girlfriend was a fairly decent actress, all things considered.
And she was one of the few genuinely attractive human beings in this movie!
And yes, it's implied strongly that she's boinking the moron next to her.
She could do so much better...

One of the calling cards for sci-fi/horror crossovers is that they tend to have fantastic special effects. Night Beast, however, is more in line with Laserblast than with The Fly...

This is the effect.
Aside from some cool stop motion in the beginning, this is it.
When he shoots people, they turn red and vanish, leaving a smear of ash in the shape of a person.
Cool in theory. Dumb in practice.

The last thing I'd like to mention is the shoehorned subplot about Drago, the eeeeeeeevil biker. This Nick Offerman lookalike causes a lot of trouble, but he's mostly just a doofus. I mean, he sucks, don't get me wrong. He's abusive, stupid, drunk, and can't ride a motorcycle to save his life. He even strangles his ex-girlfriend to death just to be a jerk. He's also 100% pointless.

He's got to be a holdover from an even dumber script for a Lifetime-style movie... right?

Seriously, he looks like a slimy Nick Offerman...

But yes, this gradual skid over the center line into the path of an oncoming VW Bug of a movie is a great watch with the right group of friends. If you can get yourself a copy (especially the shockingly well-put-together Vinegar Syndrome copy), then I strongly suggest gathering your comrades, ordering some pizza (though maybe without sausage... you may understand if you watch it), and give it a watch!

If this squeamish dork can watch this movie, you probably can, too. There's a pretty bad special effect near the end involving a guy who was electrocuted with 30000 volts, but I found it more comedic than scary.

I mean, they left the eyeballs in...

Regardless, it's a good time, eminently riffable, and it serves as an excellent tour guide to Maryland...

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FC