Nightbeast

Nightbeast, although never able to rise above it's limited budget, still manages to leave a sweet taste in your mouth.

Reeling from a collision with a meteor, a spaceship crashes in the forest of a small town. The alien (which strangely resembles the 'Predator') comes stumbling out, angry and lost. He goes on a killing spree which includes some campers. The sheriff decides to ask the locals to help him go after the creature. The towns-people, mostly farmers, hunters and loggers, reluctantly agree. A violent, gory battle quickly ensues.

As I was watching Nightbeast I kept thinking to myself 'this is Mayberry vs The Predator'. Even the sheriff, reminded of Andy Griffith. I hated to admit it but I kind of enjoyed this film. There are some great moments, for example, there is a scene where an elderly hunter, who manages to shoot a weapon out of the creatures hand, falls to his knees and begins to weep. Plus, the creature is often shown fleetingly, like an apparition, and it is apparent that Dohler was hinting at something here but I couldn't figure it out.

Sadly, Nightbeast suffers from it's all too small budget. The special effects appear amateurish and the gore scenes look fake. The film also has problems with the plot, there are too many sub-plots. There is like three separate stories going on all at once and you are constantly jumping back and forth amongst them. Also, there is a rather weird sex scene between the sheriff and his deputy, that seems totally out of place here, as if it was inserted afterwards.

Outside of all these minuses, there is something I liked about Nightbeast. Maybe it is because of all the minuses that I keep coming back for more, the same reason I keep coming back for Plan Nine From Outer Space.

If Ed Wood was given color film stock and a budget that was double the nearly four dollars he made his entire library on, I suspect the result would be something that looked vaguely similar to the film "Nightbeast;" wooden actors, terrible effects, confusing dialogue, and plot holes large enough to drive a semi through.

The Nightbeast is an alien with a brown head and fangs, who crash lands his space ship on earth in the opening moments of the film. He then goes on a rampage killing anyone in sight. The remainder of the movie finds our "hero," Sheriff Cinder, hunting the beast, while bedding coworkers and trudging through subplots that mean nothing to anyone in or out of the film.

This so-called Nightbeast is a fascinating creature. He arrives on earth, and begins his rampage, and throughout the film, no motive is given for the carnage, no explanation provided for his origin or his reason for coming to earth. And none of the characters seem to care, or appear at all surprised that a murderous beast with bad dental work is on the loose. They try to kill it sure, but mostly out of simple survival instinct not even fear of the alien hordes as many a paranoid horror film has shown. The Nightbeast appears primarily during the day (Maybe his name is supposed to be a post-ironic commentary on our society?) and never speaks a word of dialogue. A shame too; he seems like he has a lot on his mind.

When Nightbeast hits the town, he first has a small raygun that he uses to dissolve humans away into nothing. He is so trigger happy (And presumably his gun has unlimited ammo) that he just blasts without aiming, and there are scenes filled with literally hundreds of lasers whizzing around our not-so-intrepid heroes who fire at it with their handguns showing on their faces a mixture of extreme heroism and idiocy. Of course, we later learn that the Nightbeast (Whose one weakness is electricity...funny that it doesn't like being electrocuted, SO creative) actually uses the humans for his food, begging the question if he needs to eat us to survive, then why use a raygun that destroys all trace of the humans leaving nothing to eat?

The film includes some wife-beating subplots that go nowhere, and a sex scene painful in both the unattractive nature of the participants and in the silliness of the dialogue (Example line: "You know I could take my shirt off..." Response: "And I could take my towel off.") And what kind of women completely undresses in front of her coworker with whom she's never shared a romantic encounter with in her life? She tells him she's going to take a shower then strips right in front of the guy! Did I mention he's got a salt-and-pepper curly afro and huge seventies glasses? Yeah, he's the action hero.

Lunacy of this caliber is often hard to come by. And Nightbeast truly fits that description. It won't be easy to secure yourself a copy, but it will be well worth the effort if you can. And watch out for those stupid, big-teethed aliens. Cause you never know...

Night Beast is actually quite an entertaining little alien movie. If you can actually find this one on home video rent it. It will entertain you for it's short running time of 80 minutes. If you enjoy low budget and obscure horror. Night Beast is perfect for you. I know I love 80's horror , and this film is just another 80's winner !!

I first looked at this page and saw that it had a four rating before I had watched it, so when I started watching it, I am like this is so cool, why is the score so low? Well, unfortunately, the film slows down immensely and becomes standard low budget monster on the loose with plot points and characters that add absolutely nothing to the movie except padding. Which is a shame, because it is great when it first begins as it is nonstop action and killing which distracts one from the bad acting. When this great opening slows, you notice it way too much as you just wish the monster would hurry up and kill someone else!

So, the story has a ship in space hitting a meteor which causes it to plummet to Earth. An alien gets out and its ship explodes leaving it stranded on Earth. Instead of doing the E.T. thing of trying to phone home, this one decides, hell, I'm going to kill everyone I see! Yes, he uses a blaster to start disintegrating everyone, even children! If you get in close to him, he kills you with his hands! A sheriff tries to stop him and manages to get a person capable of shooting the monster's laser gun out of the monster's hand. It is at this point the movie goes downhill as we have to watch a character named Drago challenge the sheriff's authority and strangle a woman and the mayor of the town worrying about the governor of the state coming for a visit. The monster just appears to infrequently after the super great start so you notice that the film has horrible actors and just is not as fun anymore as that whole Drago thing went nowhere as far as having anything to do with the plot.

The first portion of the film is a highlight, and I understand that you cannot go at that fast pace for a super extended time; especially, when you have such a low budget, but save it till the end! It was so cool watching the monster just blast everyone that it is such a drastic tempo change after the monster looses his gun, I kept hoping he'd fix it and maybe blast up the party the mayor was having, but no, the monster does not show up making for a long line of scenes having nothing to do with the alien. Drago was the worst, here was one guy you want to see get ripped to shreds, and he gets killed in a normal manner.

So, this movie does start out on fire and I do find the makers did a good job with the monster on the very small budget. There are also some nice shots of the monster in the shadows looking ominous. The film slows down to a snail's pace once the monster no longer has his weapon which is a shame. Still a couple of nice kills to be seen, but nothing like the craziness that is the first 15 or so minutes. Also a warning to anyone who watches this film as it contains a sex scene that most of you will not want to see! I saw it coming and was like "NOOOO!"

Night Beast is actually quite an entertaining little alien movie. If you can actually find this one on home video rent it. It will entertain you for it's short running time of 80 minutes. If you enjoy low budget and obscure horror. Night Beast is perfect for you. I know I love 80's horror , and this film is just another 80's winner !!