As I sat watching the subject of this week’s review, Night Beast, I kept saying to myself “I’m not going to write a Bat Bites on this. It’s just not worth the time.” I mean, it’s NOT a good movie. The acting is stilted and awkward, the story is unoriginal and padded with scenes and characters shoehorned in, and the effects clearly reflect the budget. However, well after the credits rolled, I found myself continually thinking about it. I kept remembering little bits throughout the past week since I’d seen it and began thinking “ok, in the context of the production that part isn’t too bad.” Then finally, after enough of these little moments, I had a realization that sent a chill down my spine: I might actually like this movie.
So, as a sort of therapy, I’m going to write out my thoughts on this curiosity of a film and get it out of my system, and you, lucky reader, get to come along for the ride.
Spoilers ahead.
Night Beast (not to be confused with the vastly superior Nightbreed, which I’ll write about eventually) was released in 1982 under a budget of $14,000. It’s a sum that, by movie standards, is pocket change. (For context, including inflation, Kevin Smith filmed Clerks for $6,000 more than what it cost to film Night Beast.) It was directed by Don Dohler, who made a name for himself as a low budget auteur, directing a number of similar movies with shoestring budgets, and it stars as its leads Tom Griffith and Karin Kardian, who play a pair of small town cops named Cinder and Lisa who get caught up in an alien mess that spans the course of a few days.
Our hero, Cinder, played by Tom Griffith.
To the film’s credit it dives right into things with the Night Beast flying through space in a ship that clearly took up a good portion of the budget. It crash lands on earth and begins mutilating a number of hapless folks who are in the vicinity as it begins exploring the planet. The local police are informed and quickly respond, which turns into in an epic shootout with the Beast that probably looked great on paper, but on screen is little more than powder bombs and quick cuts of the actors awkwardly running and rolling around because they’re clearly dodging imaginary lasers. The cops are all disintegrated except our two plot-armored leads and they return to the station to devise a plan to enact the next morning.
Still moving at a quickened pace, the police, along with a sharpshooting local and his sons, return to the battlefield the next morning with a plan to distract the Beast so the sharpshooter can destroy its disintegrator ray. Here we get something you don’t often see in horror movies: the monster in full light. The characters needed to see the Beast better, and we, the viewer, get to as well. We’re treated to a well-lit view of the monster and a costume that is, dare I say, not terrible. It’s not on par with, say, Nightbreed, but it’s definitely a step up from the budget-stretching costumes on classic Doctor Who (bubble wrap monster, anyone?) It looks like Bossk from Star Wars cosplaying as Michael Jackson, but if it was hit by a truck and hasn’t seen the space dentist, like, ever. The Beast is not going to win an Oscar for best makeup, but it’s noticeable that a good part of the budget went to the costume. This and the movie’s intro show that the folks making this film knew where to focus the budget. You can skimp on the actors and the sets, but if the creature looks like crap, people won’t care.
Surprise! The Night Beast attacks.
After the regrouped heroes successfully destroy the Beast’s disintegrator ray, it retreats and our heroes, once again fewer in number, regroup to figure out their next move. Here’s where the movie slows down a bit as a we get the introduction of the movie’s SECOND villain and a subplot involving Drago, a nogoodnik who hates cops and is in a very abusive relationship with a woman who is seeing Jamie, one of our heroes, on the side. The whole plot with Drago feels like little more than a way to pad the movie, but as I thought about it, Drago could be seen as a weight to balance out the sides of good and evil in order to emphasize that yes, the alien is bad, but humans are too. To view it in biblical terms, Drago embodies wrath, one of the seven deadly sins. We also have the mayor of the town and his wife, who could be seen as the embodiments of greed and sloth, as the mayor only cares about his upward mobility in his career and his wife is a lush who lazes around the pool all day and likes to party. All of them get their comeuppance in the film, with the Beast tearing up the mayor’s wife and decapitating the mayor in an unintentionally hilarious display of gore. (Although to be honest, every display of gore in this movie is unintentionally hilarious.)
Spared no expense... Is not something that can be said about this film.
Drago’s death, however, is protracted as you think he’s killed in a fistfight with Jamie (it sure appears that way since his face was repeatedly smashed into a rock), but he comes back at the climax of the film, when the big plan to finally destroy the Beast is in play. Here, a somehow healed Drago leaps out of the darkness to take revenge on Cinder and Lisa (who are now in a relationship after a VERY awkward on-screen sexual encounter) by assaulting them both and attempting to rape Lisa. Jamie luckily is nearby and comes to the rescue, blasting a hole in Drago’s chest with a shotgun. Thus, Drago is slain, Jamie is avenged, and Lisa is somehow not completely traumatized by the experience (and has an excuse to change into a tight red shirt and jeans, because reasons).
Drago, the second, not-so-nocturnal, beast terrorizing the small town in Night Beast.
I highly doubt the deadly sins allegory is intentional on the writer’s part, as the Mayor and his wife are largely played for comedic effect. But the more I reflected upon this film, it became apparent there was something more there trying to shine through. Perhaps it was a subconscious input from the writers, who were actually trying to make a movie, not necessarily for profit, but for creative expression (in the form of gratuitous gore and nudity).
Finally, when the final “battle” commences, the gang (who now includes a pair of older doctors), lay a trap to electrocute the Beast and are able to do so thanks to a last-minute heroic sacrifice by Jamie. Our heroes have won the day and the viewer is reminded that good always triumphs over evil.
Overall, Night Beast is entertaining in the vaguest of sense. It clearly aims to hit certain notes expected of the horror genre - gore: check, random nudity: check, scares: check – and it doesn’t ascend to much more. HOWEVER, it does have character, which is what I believe is sticking with me. It’s a (very) low budget horror movie, but it’s a (very) low budget horror movie with effort. Everyone did what they could with what was available. There are some post production effects, yes, but not like what would be used today that’s cheap and readily available. They had to make all the explosions, gunfire, and gore themselves and didn’t have the modern luxury of drag-and-drop Adobe Premiere plugins. It’s that physicality and effort that gives Night Beast its character and adds an element of fun to it that would be completely lacking in a modern digitally enhanced environment. The final product isn’t good, but like a car wreck it sure is interesting to see.
So, now that I got it out of my system, is Night Beast, a movie that one cannot consciously call “good” worth your time to watch? No, not if you’re an average movie-goer. But, if you can laugh at the ludicrously hokey acting, giggle at the gore, and appreciate the apathy towards taste, then you just might be the right audience for a movie like Night Beast.