It has been forever since I saw this movie, and so my first review of this film was very spotty as I could only remember a few scenes here and there. Well I bought the movie recently and watched it and was pleasantly surprised by it. Its funny, as a child I enjoyed the film The Dark, but when I recently saw it I was bitterly disappointed, but this one which I do not remember being all that good turned out to be all that good. Very nice atmospheric horror movie that has good music, cute girls, and a nice story. It also has a bit of originality to it as the things that is causing all the trouble is very different. Not sure I have seen any film that has had quite the 'villain' as it were, that this film has to offer. The film starts out with a woman having a premonition that has her screaming in the night. The film soon switches to a very disturbing scene as there has been a strange disturbance within a small apartment where an old man has apparently died of a heart attack and six other females have also been found deceased. He is entombed at the local cemetery's mausoleum where the woman who had the premonition is shown to be this man's daughter. Another title of this film is Mausoleum, but the One Dark Night title works too. Well a group of girls known as the Sisters are holding an initiation for a new member, only they really do not want her in the group as the lead girl simply wants to terrorize this wannabe member as she is now dating the guy that broke up with the lead girl. Well the final stage is to spend the night at the mausoleum and suffice to say things do happen. The effects are really good for a film made so long ago and probably on a cheap budget. The cast does a nice job as you see a very young Meg Tilly, who does a very nice job as the nice girl that the Sister group wants to terrorize. Also, in the film is Adam West who plays a bit of an inconsequential character, but actually does a good job with this person. The lead girl in the sister's group is sufficiently mean for the character she plays here. The main complaint I have is that it is a very long time before stuff really starts to happen as this film has a very long lead up. It is tolerable as they do a good job with the material, but when stuff does happen it is done so well you just kind of wish the film got to the good stuff earlier or was even a little longer. Nice corpse effects at the end and the one creepy dude in the coffin causing all the trouble looked very eerie. So kind of a surprise how much I enjoyed this, I would love to see more films of this type as horror films of today just do not seem to put anywhere near the effort the makers of this film must have done to make their film look very good and build up the tension.
Review of One Dark Night
One Dark Night
(1982)
Unfortunately, they picked the wrong night for this initiation.
4 October 2011