One Dark Night

Multiply named and strangely casted, "One Dark Night" aka "Mausoleum", is one of the better early horror video-rentals. Original and quite raw, we meet Adam West briefly in this film about telekinesis and teen-age headgames. Meg Tilly is dared into spending the night in a crypt by "The Sisters" a high-school gang of hair-hoppers in blue satin jackets. The initiation is interrupted by the recently interred body of a mass-murdering psychic wizard called "Raymar". Surprisingly awesome make-up and scare effects paints this chiller film with style and deliver a heart-pounding climax.

The first sixty-or-so minutes of this undeservedly obscure horror film, when we're introduced to a fairly typical group of prankish teens, is unremarkable. However, the film offers a memorably horrifying climax that's well worth hanging on for: As the kids are setting up an elaborate practical joke in a mausoleum, a supernatural force causes numerous corpses, in varying stages of decay, to leave their coffins and pursue the now-terrified pranksters through the dark corridors. The film contains no gore (which is unusual for a horror movie of this period), but if your tastes run to ambulatory corpses it really delivers the goods. By the way, the film's shooting title was "Rest In Peace".

Unlike the other movie with the occasional alternate title "Mauseoleum"; this one has a few great things going for it IMO. The effects were much better... the amateurish dialog writen to justify teenagers hanging out in the place was kept to a bare minimum (Thankfully) and the atmosphere was dark and very cool. I even like the concept and fee of the film. It is fairly original as far as you can say any horror movie is. Some other readers seemed confused about the "zombies" not moving their feet. They were not zombies at all!!!... The audio tape that 'Ramar's' daughter listens to explains that he used to like to 'move' a dead animal to scare the other still living animals in their cage to freak them out. His draining people of their life force psychically and using the corpses to scare the girls in the mauseoleum was a pretty cool story line and idea. I'm not suggesting this deserves any awards but the major flaws inherent in almost all horror movies did not render their ugly heads enough to detract me from enjoying this when I saw it years ago.. and a few days ago. It holds up pretty well for a 20 year old flick with a tiny budget and 'Batman's' pseudo dramatic line delivery. Don't expect an academy award winner... but watch it if you can locate it and see if you can get past it's flaws... I think you'll find a diamond in the rough.

Meg Tilly plays a girl that has to spend the night in a mausoleum as part of a club initiation. The club is basically just three chicks, one of which is Dottie from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Why Meg wants to be a part of this club is silly. It's pretty much the same motivation used on Leave It to Beaver whenever Beaver let his friends talk him into something stupid. Anyway, turns out a psychic vampire named Karl Raymar has been buried in the crypt Meg's spending the night. Wouldn't you know it, he returns from the dead this night and terrorizes Meg and the other girls.

It's a fun little movie if you don't have high expectations. There's zombies, lots of cool electrical effects, and some nice creepy atmosphere. Don't let the rating dissuade you from trying it out. It may not please the gore & guts crowd but it's a pretty good low-budget horror movie.

Apparently Adam West's presence here has some fans referring to this movie as such. More about Adam in a moment...

Three cool sorority chicks (we know they're 'cool' because they talk 'cool', swagger in a 'cool' way, and have 'cool' jackets with 'The Sisters' printed across the backs which doesn't in any way look dorky) are overseeing the initiation of Julie, a girl desperate to join. However, lead 'cool' girl Carol has got it in for Julie because Julie is in a relationship with Carol's ex; so Carol decides the final part of Julie's initiation will be for her to spend a night in a mausoleum (where an incredibly powerful psychic was recently interred). The plan is that once Julie has been locked inside, Carol and the other girls will sneak back and frighten the life out of her. If Julie quits, she fails.

So, a pretty standard sorority hazing horror. What *isn't* standard is how unbelievably slow it is, how long it takes before anything remotely 'horrific' happens onscreen. We get an hour and a quarter of teen relationship drama, jealousy, and snarkiness - plus every now and then someone reminding us how powerful the aforementioned psychic was - before things finally start to happen. It's a shame, because when things do start happening they're quite good (in an '80s horror' kind of way).

As for Adam West... I love West. I loved his Batman show. But his character here is completely - and very obviously - utterly superfluous. He plays the husband of the daughter of the psychic. The only characters he interacts with are his wife and some weird Andy Warhol lookalike who turns up at their house (and who acts like West isn't there most of the time!). I've read that West was given the part because the director sympathised with his difficulty in finding work after Batman; looking at this I could believe the role was actually *created* solely for this reason, as it serves no other purpose.

Meg Tilly plays Julie and gives the best performance (although that's not saying much). Robin Evans is hot as Carol, and Elizabeth Daily is CUTE as Carol's friend, Leslie. That, plus a fun final 15 minutes, just scrapes this a 6/10. It's not one I'll watch again.