Evils of the Night

"Evils of the Night" involves two extraterrestrial women (Tina Louise and Julie Newmar) who hire a couple of idiot rednecks to kidnap and kill 'teens for them, so that they can use the blood to prolong their race (or something like that). I saw this movie in a theater by a fortuitous accident when it was released in 1986: the print of the just-released "Nightmare on Elm Street" had failed to arrive, so the theater owners were showing "Evils..." in its place. My friends and I laughed the whole way through, and were delighted by the many familiar faces in the cast - we never thought we'd see Julie Newmar again! If, like myself, you enjoy following the careers of grade-B stars, you'll get a kick out of this obscure piece of low-budget gore/horror schlock.

An alien craft lands on our beloved planet. Close by, couples engaging in naked frivolity are rudely interrupted. The aliens (John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and Tina Louise!) need human blood to survive, leading to the amorous couples being taken away to the aliens' secret lair for draining.

Soon, a fresh supply of bubble-headed young people arrive, and, since it's the 1980's, they only have one thing in mind. Yep, unconvincing, simulated sex! According to this movie, they couldn't possibly do anything else. Seriously, people this stupid could forget how to breathe!

Enter Fred and Kurt (Aldo Ray and Neville Brand!), who nab more youths for exsanguination.

EVILS OF THE NIGHT is two movies in one. The first half is a cheeezey soft core film, turning into a cheeezey slasher film for the second half, while the aliens do a lot of standing around. All together, this is a deep-dish, sub-sludge pizza!

While Carradine and Newmar weren't given much to do, Ms. Louise is actually pretty good in this. In fact, she's easily the best thing about this entire project!

P.S.- Neville Brand gives us an idea of what a sequel to his EATEN ALIVE might have looked like, since he basically reprises that movie's totally bananas "Judd" role...

I saw this for the first time recently. Even more shocked to know that this film is directed by the same fella who wrote the 1976 film Eaten Alive, which is one of my fav horror film regarding psycho n killer croc in a single film.

The beautiful Karrie Emmerson running around in her red panties is a soothing sight in this abysmal film. Neville Brand's footage n his character's death sequence is watchable.

A small contingent of aliens have landed near a resort area frequented by college students and have hired two auto mechanics to kidnap as many of these students as possible because they need their blood to stay alive. Unfortunately, these aliens have very little time before they must return to their home planet and the two mechanics named "Fred" (Aldo Ray) and "Kurt" (Neville Brand) are more than a little incompetent and seem to kill more college students than they bring in alive. Now rather than reveal any more of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this picture turned out to be pretty much what I expected--a campy, low-budget movie. However, when I saw that it featured Tina Louise (as "Cora") and Julie Newmar ("Dr. Zarma") I knew that I had to give this film a try. Surprisingly, the movie didn't actually depend on them as much as I thought it would. Instead, what kept this movie entertaining was the presence of three lovely young coeds named "Nancy" (Karrie Emerson), "Heather" (Bridget Holloman) and "Connie" (G. T. Taylor) in various stages of undress. Naturally, there were other actors and a very basic plot as well but neither of these issues really amounted to much. In any case, while this movie clearly won't win any Academy Awards and has any number of flaws, I still somewhat enjoyed it and as a result I rate it as only slightly below average.

If this reviews' corresponding rating were based on technical prowess or filmmaking / story quality, it would naturally be low indeed. But it supplies a substantial amount of entertainment value. This is cheeseball crud at its finest. While on one hand this viewer did feel bad for the veteran actors involved (more to the point, it's sad that THIS was Neville Brands' final film), they help to make this fun. "Evils of the Night" is tacky, it's trashy, and it's downright silly.

The plot has a team of aliens - Dr. Kozmar (John Carradine), Dr. Zarma (Julie Newmar), and Cora (Tina Louise) among them - arriving on Earth. They manipulate two ceaselessly stupid and sleazy garage mechanics, Kurt (Mr. Brand), and Fred (Aldo Ray) into abducting as many of the local airhead oversexed college students as possible, to be used in biological experiments.

Since the victims here are so utterly pathetic (they sure don't do a very good job of trying to save their own worthless asses), one may end up rooting for the antagonists by default.

Add to this mix some painfully loud and peppy pop tunes, a respectable amount of female nudity, and the fumbling direction of Mohammed "Mardi" Rustam, and you get fromage writ large, a cheap genre item that's pretty hard to resist. Rustam had worked as a producer of 70s favourites such as "Psychic Killer" and Tobe Hoopers' "Eaten Alive", and this was his only feature length directing credit on a motion picture.

Newmar and Louise look quite good, as do many of their young co-stars. Carradine may have appeared in a lot of junk unworthy of his talents over the years, but the fact remains that even in stuff like this, he never seemed to phone it in; his performance is the most fun.

Buffs will note that two of the younger cast members, Karrie Emerson and Tony O'Dell, also worked together subsequently in "Chopping Mall".

Eight out of 10.