Night Fright

There is one adjective that describes everything about this film - acting, plot, effects, continuity, etc. - and that word is poor. The government wants to asses the effects of space travel on certain organisms but the capsule crashes and a mutant something-or-other (looks like a guy in an ape suit with the top of a football helmet over his face) wreaks havoc around the accident scene, which includes a favorite place for the window-fogging, partying set. Therefore, some young people - as well as a law enforcement officer - are among the creature's victims. You gotta be extremely unparticular about how you spend your time - or rich, if you spend any money - to view this epic.

This cheap and rubbish film is about a NASA test rocket that is sent into space with a cargo of animals. It vanishes for a while then unexpectedly returns, crash landing in a forest, unleashing a vicious mutant creature.

Like many films of this type, Night Fright, features dumb teenagers boogieing on down to 60's surf music before being killed. None of the murders, however, are even remotely memorable, as we don't really see anything. One thing we do see, however, is that one of the teenagers appears to be about 40 years old and sports a quite impressively silly haircut.

For a creature feature to work, it really has to present its monster to the viewer properly. In this film, however, we only get the briefest glimpses of the monster. It seems to sort of resemble the alien from Robot Monster. But I'm not sure; as the photography was so dark I simply couldn't make out what the hell was going on a lot of the time. Although, my gut feeling was that I probably wasn't missing very much.

Why film a movie if you are not going to provide light for the cameras. The film would have been about seven minutes long if it were not for the shots of people walking through the woods. I enjoyed seeing the typical sixties dress and the 60's cars. I couldn't help but ask myself what self respecting kid would drive a Tornado, though they were neat cars. The music was tedious and repetitive. Ten minutes of people dancing in the dark was too much. I've seen worse acting, but the manikin should have had top billing. At least it kept it's mouth closed. I think the motivation for making the movie must have been that someone had a lot of film available that had gone beyond the expiration date and they didn't want to see it go to waste. It went to waste.

NIGHT FRIGHT shares an eerie half-world with a handful of similarly modest but entertaining teen horror/sci-fi entries like GIANT GILA MONSTER, HORROR OF PARTY BEACH and DEATH CURSE OF TARTU. These are an uneasy mix of happily gyrating teens and skulking horror that are a guilty weakness of mine.

The storyline is standard stuff: a spaceship sent into the icy depths of Out There by dedicated scientists runs into unchecked radiation, and the test animals aboard are mutated. The largest and nastiest promptly goes on an eating binge. The film appears for be a rehash of themes already used in the obscure DEMON FROM DEVIL'S LAKE.

Granted, Texas isn't known for astounding advances in cinema. Larry Buchannan, the fevered brow at the helm of THE EYE CREATURES, IT'S ALIVE! and ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS, hailed from Texas. THE GIANT GILA MONSTER was filmed in and around Cielo. Still...

John Agar, in one of his last "earnest man with a job to do" roles is a somewhat peeved lawman charged with finding out what exactly is killing the locals. He does well in the limited role, providing the film's one strong performance. The other characters are broadly written and almost painfully bland. The bizarrely named Roger Ready woodenly plays a scientist who knows more than he admits (and who is largely qualified as being a researcher by way of smoking a pipe). There's also a nerdy newshound, police resenting kids, and an extremely lackluster love interest.

That said, the overall film is actually fairly enjoyable. The monster, a hulking gorilla with facial spines and a Klingon head ridge, is reasonably impressive for a regional production. The isolated locales and dim photography add a certain appeal, though the latter occasionally flashes almost starkly bright (particularly during the climax where half the hunters seem to be waiting in the dead of night and the rest in some distant land where it's high noon). The government cover-up angle is expected, and should neatly justify the suspicions of any borderline paranoids in the audience.

Not a great film but, taken as a simple "googly fiend run amok" picture, it's more than passable.

When the budget doesn't allow for a Cadillac or Packard or Lincoln or Imperial hearse we are talking cheep cheep. That's bird language for cheap cheap.

What is in the hair of the forty year old teen boy? The guy who looks like a cement head who tries a couple of times to run over John Agar and provides the only scare in the movie by how close he comes. His hair looks like a shoe. A patent leather shoe. He is a shoe head.

The nurse woman needs immediate emergency hair washing. She has lacquer in her blond locks that would ignite if the production company had been able to afford lights.

The monster? The music was scarier. I would try to run from the music. The monster probably had better hair than the rest of the cast. Put some lipstick on that monster and you've got Divine's older sister.

The camera work and editing and plot provided a buffer to prepare the audience for the bad music throughout.

Hello Mr. Agar? We're thinking of doing a sequel to Night Fright and... Mr. Agar? Agar? Tom Willett