One Dark Night (1983)

Touches You

Lack of good storyline.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Ok, this is a fun little early 80s horror movie with a great setting and atmosphere. Cool central idea as well. Also, it has Elizabeth Daly....I think she is super hot!

More obscure eighties horror thanks to 23rd Century DVD. The print may be rubbish, the sound terrible, but for a pound what do you expect? A bit of a guilty pleasure this one. It's one of those horror movies that doesn't rely on a killing every ten minutes to sustain your attention, but instead builds up to a big special effects pay off which makes all the screaming at the television all worthwhile, and where else are you going to see someone suffocated by telekinetically propelled corpses? In a nicely atmospheric opening, several coroner's trucks pull up outside of an apartment building and start off loading trolleys. Inside we find some old geezer dead on the floor. No great shakes in itself, but the six dead girls in his cupboard and the various kitchen implements embedded in the walls raise a few questions. Turns out the old fella was Raymar, some crazed telekinetic psychic vampire.Raymar's daughter, kept at arms length by Raymar for most of her life, starts digging into his past to find out more about her father. Her husband, Batman, keeps telling her to shut up and leave it, but after a few screaming matches Batman kind of gives up and goes to bed for most of the film. As events unfold Raymar's daughter begins to realise that her dad may have let himself die for some reason.Elsewhere, Julie (Meg 'not as annoying as I'll turn out' Tilly) wants to join some school clique called the sisters, but the leader of the sisters, Carol, is the ex-girlfriend of Julie's lad Steve, and has plans for a bit of an evil initiation ceremony involving Julie staying in a mausoleum where Raymar is interned. Not only that, Carol's sidekick Kitty has given Julie some tablets, pretending they are sleeping pills, but are really some kick ass downers which'll have Julie freaking out when Carol and Kitty start running around the mausoleum in rubber masks.That's some set up, eh? Takes a long, long time to get going, this one, and for the more modern viewer a lot of patience is needed. You get many scenes of Julie wandering around the mausoleum, Steve wandering around looking for Julie, and Raymar's daughter listening to a tape about her father.But THEN comes the big pay off, and Entity Force pays off in spades. Once Raymar decides to get back up again, we have corpses flying around, sparks shooting out of Raymar's eyes, faces melting and someone's foot getting stuck in a corpse. The corpse effects are pretty good and you've got that neon colouring so common in eighties films (see Vamp for the finest example).The soundtrack is pretty good too, and although the picture is grainy as hell, and jumpy with it, it's doesn't obscure all the creepy at night scenes like some transferred from video releases do - However, I must say that in my wanderings the only copy of Entity Force I've spotted is the one I own, so if you see it, snap it up.Kind of reminded me of the Dark Power, another 'pay-off' eighties horror movie.

A bunch of sorority girls make a new pledge spend the night in a creepy mausoleum. Of course the recently deceased don't stay deceased for long and all hell breaks loose."One Dark Night" is an enjoyable 80's horror with some ghastly dead bodies floating around that are being controlled by the spirit of a dead psychic Raymar.There is no gore and nudity,but the atmosphere of a mausoleum is very eerie.The acting is solid,but the script takes too much time to develop the characters until the final 20 minutes that Raymar finally breaks out of his grave.The cinematography is impressive and the the mausoleum is a great location for the climactic events.The film takes so long to get going and this is its major flaw.7 out of 10.

I saw this film when it was released to theaters. It's definitely one to remember, I had forgotten the title until recently. A friend found it via online search.One Dark Night is rather unusual for the suspense/horror genre of the time in that it contains no blood. It is of the teen fright variety yet the teens are respectable in their own ways. It's a nice, old-school film with props and scenes that reflect the times. Our hero rides a motorcycle with no brain bucket, for example.As has been mentioned by previous reviewers, One Dark Night is currently available on DVD. The original negative was not available for the DVD transition. Some reel changes are a bit rough but this doesn't take away from the story. That being said, the colors are vibrant and the lighting is very good.Adam West plays a rather smallish part in this film as RayMar's son-in-law. His role as an overbearing and indifferent husband is thankfully short.The story builds over the course of the film. Unlike many horror films of the era, One Dark Night is a great suspense story that gives the viewer time to absorb what is happening.The final 20 minutes or so of One Dark Night are what make it so memorable. RayMar's telekinetic abilities are used to open old graves in the mausoleum, pull the coffins out, open them and move the corpses around. Attention was afforded to great detail in the final scenes. The rotting, worm-riddled corpses look quite real.