Night (1996) – review

Director: Glenn Andreiev

Release date: 1996

Contains spoilers

I have reviewed a couple of Glenn Andreiev’s films in the past but not been impressed. This film was sort of from 1996, screeners were sent out but the film was never officially released back then. It has been released on Blu-Ray by VHShitfest. The film was remade by Andreiev as Silver Night, a film I remember little about. Despite the poor quality of the print this impressed me much more than the little I do remember, and I could see past the virtually zero budget.

Alana in trouble

A voiceover at the head of the film tells the viewer that the night is a different world and there are beings in it with powers – their greatest power is that people don’t believe in them. A bloodied woman, Alana (Annemarie Bain, Vampire Vixens from Venus), makes it to her apartment and calls 911. She is advised to put lights on and turn the TV up loud, to make her attacker believe she isn’t alone, and stay on the line. She doesn’t do the latter but instead calls her boyfriend David (Michael Riccio). The phone goes down, the TV off and she is grabbed by vampire Anthony Garring (Richard Cutler, who was in Silver Night playing another role).

Margot walking the streets

An alarm goes off and David gets up, he sees Alana sat in the room and makes a call saying that he’s seen her again… A woman, Margot (Jillanne Smith), checks her bag, in it she has holy water, a hammer and stake. She walks the streets, going down a dark alleyway and eventually getting to a cemetery, ducking behind a tombstone as a guard goes past. She enters a crypt and tries to open a coffin, which does not open, and finding an un-decomposed corpse in another. Before she can do anything she is caught by a cop and arrested.

Richard Cutler as Garring

Margot was engaged to Mike, a homicide cop who is dead now. As such she is known at the police station, though the cops do not buy her tales of vampires. She is bailed by her sister Veronica (Gwen Thorne), who does not believe her either. Margot is waiting for fingerprints she has requested from the FBI, which she believes will prove that the vampire she seeks (who the police are calling a serial killer) is Garring – a notorious bootlegger. Of course she is right and Garring is continuing his criminal ways – as well as killing for food – along with his wife Monica (Inga Zupancic).

about to bite

David is rescued from the vampiric Alana by Father Donlevy (Richard Breitfeller), a drunken priest who is aligned with Monica, they also have an ally in the form of cemetery guard David (Glenn Andreiev). Margot is convinced that someone warned the cops and, indeed, one of the number is in cahoots with Garring. They have one shot at raiding the crypt again as, for undisclosed reasons, the coffins are due to be disinterred and moved.

a close up of Garring

And this worked, despite fuzzy VHS print, virtually zero budget and inexperienced cast. One thing that struck me was the death of a vampire in the sun. It was a lesson in less is more, blood spurts and a fake hand slewing off were shot with just the right cuts to make us imagine a very bloody dissolution in the light. Ok, the fuzzy print probably helped here, by hiding the worst excesses, but it was primarily the imaginative filming that understood they didn’t have the budget to do this head on. This kept my attention and I think 4 out of 10 is fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US