Starring: Gerald McRaney, Gaye Yellen
Director: Joy N. Houck Jr.
Writer: Joy N. Houck Jr., Robert A. Weaver
Genre: Horror
Year: 1969
My rating:
Given the incredibly over the top title, I was half expecting NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR to be an ironic, deliberately silly film in the style of ARMY OF DARKNESS. Then I read the back cover summary which I shall quote in its entirety: "A string of horrible murders haunts the consciousness of a disturbed young man, including his brother shot, his girlfriend gored, and a hospital nurse bludgeoned to death." Well, that's sufficiently cheerful sounding, isn't it? (It's also slightly inaccurate. The hospital nurse is not bludgeoned to death. She simply takes an axe to the chest. Just so you know...)
In case there's any doubt as to what is to follow, the first shot of the film is a closeup of a cross on the top of a church. The first full scene takes place inside that church. I forget if this means that the director is trying to be ironic or trying to make a point, but I do know that the end result will be a very graphic and bloody movie. A good rule of thumb for horror films: the more religious imagery there is, the more buckets of red paint the director is going to fling around.
NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR was produced in 1969 and is a horror movie very much of that time. Gritty realism is the film's modus operandi: the gore factor is turned up to eleven; the actors are mostly un-made-up and relatively unpleasant to look at; the film stock is washed out and the colors are extremely dreary.
The story is vaguely depressing, often boring, and more than a little inspired by Hitchcock's PSCYHO. Our main character, Wes, is a troubled young fellow. As a child, he accidentally shot his brother and subsequently spent 13 years in an asylum. He's now been released, but has an annoying habit of being stricken by blinding headaches while strange spinning rectangles appear in his point of view shot. When he awakens from these attacks, he has the misfortune to discover that his latest girlfriend has been horribly killed, spindled and mutilated. Eventually, the local police get fed up with bodies stacking up all over the town and decide to involve themselves.
The script, like the people it depicts, is more than a little schizophrenic. Incredibly violent and gory sequences are buffered by tediously long and boring talky scenes which make the 74 minute running time fly by like it's only a week and a half. And despite the direction's insistence on overly realistic visuals, the script itself is utterly unbelievable.
Take, for example, the scene where Wes first meets the nurse. He's in a bar, drunkenly threatening his buddy with the sharp end of a broken bottle of vodka. Thrown out into the street, he's beaten, robbed and left for dead. A nurse happens to drive by, stop and assist him, taking the unconscious man back to her home. She tends to his wounds, strips him naked and puts him to bed. In the morning, he's hungover and confused as to how he got there and who this woman is; she's wandering around blithely -- as only a horror film character could -- in a see-through nightie. Who on Earth behaves this way?
The ending is also completely ludicrous once the viewer gives more than a moment's worth of rational thought to it. It's a shock ending, but one which can provoke nothing except stunned laughter once the implications of it are thought through.
The production team clearly had no money and therefore many of the scenes suffer, particularly the scenes which do not involve people being hacked to pieces. The romantic subplot is probably the biggest victim. A quick montage of still photographs of two dates running over sappy music represents the totality of a couple's extensive courtship.
In fact the best thing about this film is something that I didn't even notice while I was watching it; only after messing around on the Internet Movie Database did I realize what I had missed. Wes is played by a very young Gerald McRaney. If that name means nothing to you (as it initially did to me), I have two words for you: Major Dad. That's right, Major freaking Dad is playing a psychotic schizophrenic. When I found this out, I immediately went back to rewatch some of his more over the top scenes (of which there are plenty, have no fear). This knowledge led to a much more enjoyable way of experiencing the film.
Apart from such unintended hilarity, there isn't much else to recommend. There's a cameo appearance by a late-1960s rock band called The Bored who, all things considered, aren't a bad group. I could not find any information about them other than this gig; I'm slightly curious as to what became of them. Unfortunately, putting a band with a name like The Bored into your film invites an obvious joke, which I will only allude to and not actually make. (See what I did there?)
So, with Major Dad plus The Bored plus some bloody horror, what does that all add up to? Not a whole lot. If you like scenes of insane young men falling over and battling mental polygons, or sequences of people being cut violently into smaller pieces of person, then you may have yourself a good time. But even so you'll need to keep the fast forward button warm.
No comments:
Post a Comment