Night of Fear

And, that makes up about half of Night of Fear. I will say, this movie has "distractions," as in, it's stylishly filmed, creates its own atmosphere, and my Umbrella Blu-ray has some nice color and clarity. That's all I can say for it. First of all, it was meant to be an Australian TV pilot, clocking in at 53 minutes. You'd think brevity would be on the side of something so incredibly primitive, straightforward, and flat-out uneventful. Nope, it is a slog through 7 minutes shy of an hour! Writer and director Terry Bourke tries in vain to artificially manufacture tension (as the killer hobbles around on his leg brace), when, pardon the pun, there's no meat on the bone.

So, here's where all the annoyances come into play. Score, sound design (there is no dialogue), and editing especially grated my nerves. What a jarring score. I mentioned artificially trying to create tension. Suspect number one. Not to mention, the score keeps you awake when there's no tension to be found for miles! They didn't even know where to put this stuff!

The editing cuts both ways. Sequences go on for an eternity. Also, fast-paced MTV-style cuts! (in 1973). Bear in mind, Night of Fear is as basic, and basically told, killer-hillbilly-in-the-woods "tale" as you're likely going to find. To sum up, none of it works.

Oh, I didn't do a synopsis. Let's see, I think I covered it! Killer hillbilly chases women through the woods. Oh, he likes rats. Yeah, that's it.

Whether or not it's a landmark Australian horror/exploitation film, I don't care. It looks good, but frankly, offers absolutely nothing to sink your teeth into.

Pursued by madman (Yemm) after making a wrong turn, young secretary Hoogeveen finds herself at the mercy of the elements (and animals) in this taut Ozploitation thriller that's light on detail but entertaining nonetheless.

Virtually no dialogue is spoken, instead set design, makeup and location cinematography are the stars whilst the usually conservative Yemm (formerly one of the lead detectives from TV's 'Homicide') is cast as a backwoods tramp with just one thing on his mind (besides eating rats). TV soap star Behets also appears in the beginning as an ill-fated saddler.

Terry Bourke's first Australian theatrical film doesn't even make feature length at just under an hour head to tail, yet displays enough mindless mayhem to kickstart a career that would soon see the under appreciated horror-western 'Inn of the Damned', and then the more commercially successful 'Lady Stay Dead' for the 80s video market. Quick and dirty, but definitely worth a look.

My knowledge of Australian horror cinema isn't exactly encyclopaedic, but apparently, this is the first Oz horror film. Night of Fear was originally intended to be the first episode in a twelve part Australian TV horror series, but because Australian censors deemed it 'too gory', it never saw the light of day; until its DVD release some years later. The film definitely is nastier than your average TV show, and it's not really surprising that it never got shown on television. There is no dialogue at all in the film, although this is masked by a barrage of tense and macabre scenes that our young heroine terrorised by a madman. While the film does well in the violence and gore stakes, I personally don't rate it as a masterpiece simply because there isn't all that much to it. The film only lasts for fifty minutes, so you can't expect too much - but the unrelenting pace can become monotonous. You've got to respect writer-director Terry Bourke for attempting to bring horror to Australian TV screens and having his attempt dismissed for featuring too much horror, but personally I'd rather have seen him put his efforts into a more ambitious feature length film instead, and I'll endeavour to see his later efforts such as 'Inn of the Damned'.

According to the writings of several of my respectable fellow reviewers around here, "Night of Fear" was the very first Australian horror/exploitation movie ever made. This bit of trivia also got confirmed in the brilliant documentary "Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation", so I just had to see it sooner or later… Well, the first Aussie horror flick definitely is a peculiar one. "Night of Fear" is very rudimentary, both in terms of plotting and execution, as if writer/director Terry Bourke was reading in his Horror for Dummies manual whilst operating the camera. There are no dialogs, only female screams and a lot of panting, no attempts to provide depth or background to the characters and the plot is simplistic as can be. Following a banal car accident, a sole young girl ends up on a rural backwoods road and quickly finds herself confronted with a hillbilly waving around an ax. She flees and seeks shelter in a nearby cabin, but obviously her troubles only get worse in there. It may all come across as formulaic and amateurish, but "Night of Fear" actually works quite effectively! The pacing is moderately fast and the suspense is non-stop throughout the short running time. Yup, a modest and straightforward little genre outing with some nasty images and authentic shocks. Sometimes that's all it takes to satisfy a horror fanatic. The ending is very shocking and immediately explains why Terry Bourke struggled against so much controversy when it came out. "Night of Fear" was supposed to be the kick-off installment of an Aussie horror TV-series, but the idiot censors didn't agree.

It's not a work of great entertainment, but it's artistically competent and well worth it for anyone who likes to dip and wallow in Horror.

The editing merges a bit of the raison d'être of a movie trailer, that is, clippings of what will come next, without clarifying what will actually come - which didn't particularly work for me. But, knowing now that this is a movie crafted into a TV series, this almost stylized edit makes sense.

The characters present themselves in the standards of horror films, already very well established in the 1970s, and do not develop a complete arc, they are just there to do what is expected of the genre: kill and die. What you have then is the art around it. Photography, performances and soundtrack.