Nightbeast (1982)

 

Whoa, hold up, who the hell does Don Dohler think he is?  I mean I've seen one other film he has directed, that being The Galaxy Invader, but he has other films to his credit including The Alien Factor and The Alien Factor 2.  Now I mention those three films along with this films review because I think he reuses the same monster for all four films.  Who does he think he is, Charlie Band or something???  Dohler has been described as an extremely low budget filmmaker.  An interesting coincidence is Dohler was the publisher of Cinemagic magazine that J.J. Abrams cites as one of his inspirations to becoming a filmmaker.  So maybe, without Dohler there would be no J.J. and without J.J. maybe LOST would never have been made.  What a sad world that would have been.  Aside from directing Nightbeast, Dohler also wrote and edited the film which seems to be the norm for most of his films.  Abrams helped compose the music for Nightbeast.

 

 

Nightbeast is your basic hostile alien crash lands on earth and goes on a killing spree.  Most of the actors in the film are either Dohler regulars or it's their only acting credit.  One of the exception to that is George Stover who plays Steve Price, he also plays the same part in The Alien Factor but he also stars as Dr. Bloodwrench in WNUF Halloween Special.  Anne Frith who plays Ruth Sherman is his film making partner as she has co-directed some of his features.  There's some kind of Baltimore clique at work here because as you peel back more and more of the onion after Firth, there's Richard Dyszel who is also known for playing Count Gore De Vol a Washington D.C. horror host for almost fifteen years.  Dyszel plays the mayor Burt Wicker.  But maybe I should start talking about Nightbeast since this is a post about Nightbeast.

 

 

First I guess let's talk about the monster, the Nightbeast if you will.  The film poster for this on Letterboxd make me think the Nightbeast looks a little comical.  Upon further review (meaning after I watched the film) I can report it indeed looks comical.  If the Creature from the Black Lagoon (the one from the third film I'm talking about here) and Howard the Duck had an offspring (I don't want to say baby because the images that brings to mind is......unsettling to say the least) and that's what Nightbeast reminds me of.  The acting is mostly amateurs just doing what they are told to do, talent be damned.  There's some clunky dialogue and even more questionable is some of the way the dialogue is presented and had me wondering "Is that how they were supposed to say that?" or "That's the take they went with?".  But you know what?  I'm not mad at it, the film nearly falls into that so bad it's good category but then, it's really not that bad.  So, wait a minute, am I saying the film is too good to be considered so bad it's good?  I guess I am, but I'm still going to give this three and a half drunken Mary Jane's (she is a TREAT!) out of five despite the sex scene between the two police officers that felt like watching my parents do it.