Night Fright

An unidentified object crashes -off camera- to Earth, and a hideous creature is unleashed upon an unsuspecting, rural Texas population! When a young couple is found mutilated, Sheriff Clint Crawford (John Agar) is on the case. With help from his deputy and a local reporter, Crawford searches for clues, for what seems like a month. Luckily, monster tracks are found. Then, the exhausting search continues.

Meanwhile, the town "kids", led by troublemaker, Rex Bowers (Frank Jolly) have decided to have a "dance-in" down at the beach, in spite of Crawford's warning! There they go, dancing like the carefree, 30 year old "kids" they are!

Wasn't there supposed to be a monster of some sort in this movie?

More dancing commences.

Finally, the beast attacks in full, obscured sight! As the hairy horror approaches, the kids dance on.

NIGHT FRIGHT is a tedious affair, saving its big, monster-on-a-rampage "thrills" for the dance-free denouement. As usual, for Agar's later projects, he easily outshines the other "actors" involved.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The very cool cars on display!...

Okay it is terribly, and I mean terribly, easy to pick apart this film. C'mmon what do you expect with the title, synopsis, and actors in leads such as Carol Gilley, Ralph Baker Jr., Dorothy Davis, Bill Thurman, and, my personal favourite, Roger Ready. Yes, B star John Agar is here as a sheriff out to rid the Texan landscape of a robot-like ape from a NASA experiment gone awry. The movie has dreadful performances, dreadful scenery, dreadful special effects, and dreadful lighting. I really cannot find much good to say about it other than as bad films go you could do a lot worse as far as finding something dreadful to sit through. It is bearably short and has many moments of unintended humor. Missed cues, lighting faux pas, off-screen terror, an unbelievably inane score, and of course John Agar trying his level best to be the core of the film with an earnest performance amidst this muck. The beginning is the hardest part to sit through as it seems like it takes forever for these two teens to get their comeuppance for traveling in the woods down the Texas back roads where great ape soon will reek his vengeance in his own terrible way...Yeah right! Night Fright! Bah!

I was immediatly struck by the alarmingly low IMDB rating, at time of writing we're talking 2.4 and that's really impressive!

It tells the long drawn out story of a big beastie that's out in the forest killing folks off, usual standard stuff. Trouble is it never really gets going.

The pace of the film is remarkable, very little actually happens yet the entire film spends its time building up to something. I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite like it, it's the most anti-climatic thing I've ever seen.

Beyond that every other factor from the acting to the sfx are so mediocre that I'm not even remotely surprised that this has remained so obscure.

It's terrible stuff.

The Good:

Nothing springs to mind

The Bad:

Very repetitive audio

Lack of budget showed

Very anticlimatic

Goes nowhere and goes there slow

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I learnt nothing, other than the other half moved the head ache tablets!

I am a fan of bad horror films of the 1950s and 60s--films so ridiculous and silly that they are good for a laugh. So, because of this it's natural that I'd choose this film--especially because with John Agar in it, it was practically guaranteed to be bad. Sadly, while it was a bad film, it was the worst type of bad film--dull beyond belief and unfunny. At least with stupid and over-the-top bad films, you can laugh at the atrocious monsters and terrible direction and acting. Here, you never really see that much of the monster (mostly due to the darkness of the print) and the acting, while bad, is more low energy bad...listless and dull.

The film begins with some young adults going to Satan's Hollow to neck. Well, considering the name of the place, it's not surprising when they are later found chewed to pieces! Duh...don't go necking at Satan's Hollow!! Well, there are reports of some sort of crashing object from the sky, so what do the teens go? Yep, throw a dance party--a very, very, very slow dance party where the kids almost dance in slow motion. So it's up to the Sheriff (Agar) and his men to ensure that the teens can dance in peace without fear of mastication.

As for the monster, it's some guy in a gorilla suit with a silly mask--a bit like the monster in ROBOT MONSTER. Not exactly original and not exactly high tech. To make it worse, it makes snorting noises and moves very, very slowly--so slow that even the most corpulent teen could easily outrun it! How it manages to kill repeatedly is beyond me.

Overall, too dull to like--even if you are a fan of lousy cinema.

Something in the forest is killing and mutilating the denizens of a rural Texas community. Could it have something to do with the nearby crash of a recently launched rocket? Probably. Sheriff John Agar leads an investigation as the obligatory group of wild local teens get their kicks in the danger zone.

Besides being shot far too dark, NIGHT FRIGHT is technically not much worse than many other regional indie horrors of the period. The worst thing about it is that it just isn't very interesting, and when the wheels are finally greased for some good cheap thrills, the delivery is too little too late.

Yep, NIGHT FRIGHT is kind of a snore. However...the clothes, hair, and interior furnishings are hilariously dated, so if you have an aesthetic taste for kitsch Americana, you'll at least find it a wealth of amusing mid-century retrocities. Most of the production crew are noted for their contributions to the notoriously low-grade cinema of director LARRY BUCHANAN, so it's no surprise that it looks a lot like something from his inglorious filmography.

3.5/10. Not recommended.