I Watch Films: One Dark Night

 One Dark Night (1982)

Notorious occultist Karl Raymer is found dead with six dead girls in his apartment; when moved his body gives off electricity. His daughter Olivia and her husband Allan (Adam West) learn about this when Samuel Dockstadter, reporter for magazine World Of The Occult comes to interview them. A former friend of Raymer, he provides some tapes and pictures that show Raymer was a psychic vampire who stole bioenergy from people. Alan is sceptical but Olivia believes it.

Meanwhile at a local high school, mean girls Carol, Leslie and Kitty are a girl-gang called the Sisters. Julie (Meg Tilly) wants to join but Carol nurses a grudge as Julie is going out with Carol’s ex-boyfriend Steve. She comes up with a plan; to join Julie will have to spend the night in the mausoleum and while there they will scare her with pranks and hijinks. Leslie drops out, thinking it too mean, the rest go there.

Obviously this is the mausoleum where Raymer has been buried; already there are cracks around his tomb. As things spiral out of control (doors slam shut, floor shakes, bodies rise from their tombs etc), Steve tracks down Leslie and she tells him about the mausoleum and he heads over there. Odd things happen to Olivia and against Allan’s advice she goes to the mausoleum as well for a finale.

This is a fairly predictable horror film, slightly lifted by the weirdness of Raymer and the tapes he’s been recorded on. The corpse special effects are quite good, and by good, I mean disgusting.

Watch This: Low budget creepy horror fun
Don’t Watch This: The low budget makes for a poor film, whose main saving grace is horrid looking corpses