By Geno McGahee
In the early 2000s, the video stores were still doing good business and I would frequent them weekly. Every Friday night, I would be there and would try to discover the next horror gem. OK, your Fridays may have been cooler than mine…whatever. The films that were released at this time that I enjoyed the most were the lower-budgeted, straight to video releases. They had heart and had a story to tell but with obvious limitations. Companies like Brain Damage and Maverick were known for stocking the shelves with titles that most people would walk by, but they counted on the die-hard horror fan like me. I rented all of those bastards and when I watched the 2004 monster movie “THE DEAD OF NIGHT,” I was brought back to a great time and had a great time with this film.
Written and directed by Tom Duncan, THE DEAD OF NIGHT has some obvious influences. It borrows from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, but keeps the horror genre real by using the teenage bully, nerd, and monsters that we enjoy so much. This was made in 2004, but it may as well have been made in 1984.
Darryl (Jon Thomas Olson) is a jerk and is part of this clique…much like the Pink Ladies in GREASE. There is a code, more or less, and he is dating one of the girls in the group named Suzanne (Karrie MacLaine). Unfortunately, his infidelity, aggression and overall prick attitude has given her second thoughts. She also begins to have eyes for the new guy, Mel (Cameron Zeidler). Mel stops Darryl from beating up one of the less popular kids, Carl (Tom Brennan), and immediately impresses Suzanne. She’s going to drop her zero and get a hero.
I thought Carl looked like Steve Perry of Journey fame. If I was a bully, I would not have beaten him up. I would have taken him to Journey concerts and tried to get Journey groupies. You know, pretend he’s Perry and I’d be like the drummer or manager or something. I know it’s off topic a little, but if you got a celebrity lookalike friend, you got to take advantage of it. Unless they look like Jared Fogle or Bill Cosby.
“I’ll be alright without you!”
After the Darryl-Mel tussle, the situation appears to be squashed. Darryl shows he’s a good sport and invites everyone to the cemetery to party…even Carl and his friend, Howard (Patrick Pinson). Poor Carl thinks that Nancy (Tara Taylor) has a thing for him and that’s all Darryl needs to get him there and bully him once again. I was going to call it hazing, but typically hazing has some reward at the end, right? You know, these frat guys beat each other’s asses with wooden paddles and then they are one of the boys. Something like that. Well, here, they are just being dicks again. They tie up Carl and Howard and bury them alive and that’s when it gets really weird.
As they lie in the hole together, ghouls begin to surround and the two get out of the hole and make a run for it, but they are caught and are now ghoul-zombie-body snatcher things. Both Carl and Howard are transformed and so is Bev (Katie Swain), one of the girls in the group. The three team up to the confusion of Darryl and the rest. Why is Bev hanging out with Carl and Howard? Is she a Journey fan? Any way she wants it, that’s the way she needs it, apparently.
When Darryl tries to bully Carl again, he gets a rude awakening. Carl is super strong and so are Howard and Bev. They collectively kick the shit out of the bullies and Carl rejoices, noting that he felt invincible. Mel knows something is wrong and begins investigating, leading to a homeless man, Gerald (Mark Strohman). Gerald, an escapee from a psych ward and murderer of all the staff, informs Mel that there are ghouls stirring up shit and that they do take over human bodies.
After hours at the school, all hell breaks loose and we get to see the monsters in all their glory. They do a really good job (until the end) of making these monsters look tremendous, using lighting and editing to hide the cheap costumes. The ghouls dress like mummies and have weird fangs, but there is power in numbers and seeing the group of them running after people is quite cool.
There was one thing that really, really irritated me though. Nancy is facing off against the monsters and they are surrounding her. She recognizes that one of them as Bev and begins telling her that she will not fit in anymore and that she isn’t beautiful anymore. It was a very unrealistic response. I know that the writer was trying to show that fitting in is the most important thing to some, but I felt that the momentum that was so greatly built up to that point had lost a little.
THE DEAD OF NIGHT gets a lot of bad press and wrongfully so. It’s lower budget, but the film has a great deal of heart and it’s rather inventive. I was impressed with how they used the monsters and quick cuts in the editing to bring the point home. This film would have been a good Friday night movie, back when I went to Hollywood Video, but for now, it will just have to be called a good horror movie, period.
Rating: 7/10
