A psychic vampire that throws lightning bolts and revives the dead? Yes, please.
This time I will talk about a movie that I saw when I was a child but, for reasons that I will detail later, I decided to watch again some time later: One Dark Night.
It was the ’80s. I was a child and I was interested in watching it. I took advantage of the fact that I was staying a few days at my cousin’s house (where the rules were fairer) so I could watch it freely.
The film had a bit of slow development, with the typical cheap jump scares (threats that were not real). But towards the end, it got really scary and at this point, I covered my eyes (something I did a lot at the time) and didn’t see anything until the climax.
With time and maturity (and the fact that real-life horror surpassed fictional ones) I managed to get used to the horror scenes of the genre and became the horror fan I always wanted to be. Back to the movie:
Fun facts
The film was filmed in Los Angeles over 28 days between locations and sets. It cost about $800,000. Tom Burman and other artists designed the special effects. Tom McLoughlin was its director. In the cast we find Meg Tilly, E.G. Daily and Adam West.
The locations corresponding to the mausoleum are real, which scared actress Meg Tilly who, however, used it to her advantage to make her interpretation more believable.
It was first released in some cities in the United States on July 9, 1982. A wider release was made later. On August 15, 2017, Code Red published the Blu-Ray version. In general it received good reviews.
The plot
It all starts with a psychic vampire, named Karl Raymarseivich Raymar (Raymar for his friends), who is involved with the occult. The police find him dead in his apartment, along with the bodies of several young women. But… Is he really dead? I mean, when a corpse’s hand falls to the ground it doesn’t usually shoot a lightning bolt…
His daughter, Olivia McKenna, is trying to process his death, with the support of her husband, Allan. But they meet Samuel Dockstader: a writer specialized in occultism. Samuel was a friend of Raymar and explains that Raymar used to kidnap girls to absorb their energy. Allan doesn’t believe him, but Samuel gives Olivia some photos and recordings to try to prove that he is telling the truth. From this moment on, Olivia spends the entire film listening to the tape, where they explain, among other things, that Raymar could kill animals, just by touching them, and then levitate their bodies, with his telekinetic powers, as if they were still alive.
The initiation
While Olivia solves the riddle, a high school drama begins to unfold: Jully Wells wants to join a school club called “The Sisters.” But one of the members, Carol, is the ex-girlfriend of Jully’s current boyfriend and intends to make her pay.
Carol makes it a condition to enter the club that Jully spend a night in the mausoleum. But secretly, she sneaks into the facility with her friend Kitty, to try to scare Jully. The third member of the group, Leslie, refuses to attend. With pranks and monster disguises, they scare Jully all night. But when they pass near Raymar’s grave they make the mistake of insulting him.
Meanwhile, Steve, Jully’s boyfriend, goes to pick her up at her house. Not finding her, he looks for Leslie and convinces her to tell him where Jully is and what her friends plan to do to her. Steve decides to go to the mausoleum to save Jully.
The white knight to the rescue
But it’s not going to be that simple: Raymar begins to use his powers, first to move objects, but then, he opens the tombs of the other dead and makes them levitate. This is the part where I covered my eyes. When I saw it again some time later, I wished I could tell to my past self, “You missed the best part!”.
The dead chase Carol and Kitty, who flee in terror. In the end, the dead pile up on top of them, suffocating them. Steve arrives to rescue Jully, but there is very little he can do against Raymar and his “zombies.” At this point, Olivia has become a believer and heads to the mausoleum, fearing the worst. Will the survivors be able to get out of this? You’ll have to watch it to find out.
Here the trailer:
Bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Dark_Night
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