B MOVIE BLOCKBUSTERS: ONE DARK NIGHT
BACK OF THE VHS BLURB:
A dead Russian psychic vampire who harnesses the ability of electricity, telekinesis, and violently thrown kitchen objects begins to rise again after being put in a mausoleum. His estranged daughter comes to rescue Jennifer Tilly's sister who is in the mausoleum for an initiation into a three girl club called The Sisters. Adam West doesn't believe a damn thing happening in this movie, but he is also in it. As the psychic awakens and the cadavers start doing their best haunted house attraction impression, the movie reaches its eventual end.
So...WTF did I just watch?
MOVIE: One Dark Night
YEAR: 1983
DIRECTOR: Tom McLoughlin
CAST: Meg Tilly, E.G. Daily, Adam West, Melissa Newman, Robin Evans, Leslie Speights, David Mason Daniels
B-MOVIE HIGHLIGHTS:
Now, this was really a blast. And to be quite honest, it really is a decent film. The fact that everything happening in it is batshit crazy, and at times it feels like its copying Phantasm and other times Grease, leads to awkward sensations all around. Well, let’s not wait and dive right in.
We open with a woman who we will find out to be Olivia (Melissa Newman), the estranged daughter of the now dead Russian occultist (I have to look up how to spell this shit so forgive me) Karl Raymarseivich Raymar (ah, Karl with a K, always gets me). Karl has just been found dead in his apartment with six dead girls as well. We then get a badass shot of synchronized coroner vans pulling up, so I guess it’s a one person per giant van limit.
Karl seemed like a strange guy, with dead girls everywhere and plates and spoons lodged in every wall of his humble abode. He also shoots lighting out of his fingers, even when dead. He's no Palpatine, but he is Karl, and that's gotta count for something. So, an occult writer is there to see the scene, and runs off to meet Olivia and her dashing husband, Allan (Adam West).
Meanwhile, we find our main girl, Julie (Meg Tilly, yeah the icon Jennifer Tilly's sister. I know, right?) hanging with her boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels) who is just really a face in a letterman jacket, but hey, to each their own right.
See, here is the high school drama laid out for you. Steve used to date this snobby bitch Carol, but now he is with basic and boring Julie. Carol runs a three girl gang called The Sisters, who have the sweetest matching satin jackets ever. Look out Steve, you may be the star QB of the baseball team or whatever fucking sport you play, but these bitches go hard. Julie knows this, and to impress Steve, and for herself, she wants to join, but Carol, being your typical jealous type, just sees it as a chance to fuck with Julie and get back on top of that water polo track star Steve. So Carol offers Julie a chance to join, but through an initiation. DUN DUN DUN!
As this Grease-fire ensues, we flip back to Adam West, I mean, Olivia. Olivia gets a visit from the occult writer, who lays out that her estranged father was in fact a psychic vampire, sucking the bio energy from victims to become an all powerful dish tosser. He has a cassette tape and some other ‘80s shit to back him up. Adam West reluctantly calls bullshit, but Olivia knows her dad, and believes this weirdo.
So, after Carol tries to straight up fuck Steve while he his like cleaning his room, she sets off to send Julie to the mausoleum. Julie has to stay the night locked inside. So they sneak her in and of course, the plan is to go back and scare her with like sheets over them and some shitty Spirit Store masks. Now Carol gets Kitty (Leslie Speight), the toothbrush chewing Sister to go along, but Leslie (E.G. Daily) thinks it’s fucked up and is kicked out of The Sisters and the car in a shady area of town. Rude.
Julie is chilling in the mausoleum, doing alright, until Carlo and Kitty show up and scare her into the chapel. No one knows Karl is cracking tombs in the mausoleum, charging up for some super psychic shit later on. He is about to resurrect himself up in this bitch. Olivia is studying the shit that guy left figuring out if she has the family power within her, or if it’s just the presence of Adam West that makes her feel all tingly inside. Steve finds Leslie just a walking after midnight, and she tells him what's up. He gets mad and as captain of the equestrian ice hockey team, he takes action. He rides off on his motorbike to go save Julie and give a stern talking to the rest of The Sisters.
So, Julie is in the chapel now in full panic mode, and Carol and Kitty are laughing about how good they got her. Karl has jokes too, so he starts shaking everything in the mausoleum, and Carol and Kitty nearly shit themselves and try to get out. Karl laughs in psychic vampire. Karl pulls several cadavers from the mausoleum walls, and eventually tosses them all on Carol and Kitty, in an apparent corpse dog pile double kill. Never seen that one before, tip of the hat to you, Karl. Now just note these cadaver effects are both great and awful all at once. Great gore, but they move like they are on roombas just off screen. All in all memorable for sure.
Then Steve gets in to find Julie, just as Olivia, who figured out she too is psychic, and can see what Karl has been doing, rushes to their aid. Karl has now pulled his own casket out, and his mannequin, wait, his corpse, is controlling everything around. Olivia shows up for what I was hoping was going to be a dad versus daughter psychic off, but it turned into a pocket mirror of death. Olivia tells her dad he's a noob and uses her pocket mirror to reflect all of his psychic ability, you know, what he used to reanimate several fucking corpses and shake an entire mausoleum. Yeah, that can be reflected by a basic compact from the dollar store. When it fully reflects back onto Karl, his whole fucking face melts, like, this is an amazing face melt scene. Think of all the face melts you have ever seen, and put this near the top.
Olivia saves everyone, The Sisters are 2/3 dead, Julie is traumatized, and Steve has a kickball game at 8. That's the end. That's it. Adam West still thinks the whole thing is a bunch of nonsense, but he is still pretty much the most pivotal part of the film in my opinion. All that combined makes for an amazing B- MOVIE BLOCKBUSTER.
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