Night Fright
(1967) 75 min.
Country: USA
Director: James A. Sullivan
Starring: John Agar
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
A couple of teens are on the run from a murderous alien hiding in the woods.
Synopsis:
A couple sitting in a parked car are making out. They hear an announcement on the radio that a meteor has landed in their area.They laugh it off and resume making out when suddenly something approaches them and makes the girl scream.
A college-aged boy named Chris shows up at his girlfriend Judy’s sorority house. He decides to take her out to the middle of nowhere to make out. They drive out in the country on a dirt road and stop near a forest where they bicker a little and then get out of their car to make out among the trees. Judy asks Chris if this spot is where “the flying saucer landed” and he dismisses the idea.
Inexplicably their friends drive up to ask if they want to go to a beach party. Chris, after a stern look from his girlfriend, declines. And the friends drive off again.
Chris and Judy decided to walk into the forest. As they wander about for a while Chris stops her to tell a joke about his professor and they begin to kiss and then chase each other in the woods. Deeper and deeper they run until Judy stumbles onto something and screams.
The police arrive at the scene of the accident. The government officials were already on the scene. Sheriff Clint (Agar) investigates the scene with Deputy Ben. They meet Professor Alan Clayton on the scene who was called in by the government men to help with their investigation. Clint and Alan talk about possibly meeting up for a date of beer drinking.
Clint and Ben arrive as the ambulance is carrying away the body of a girl. They recoil in shock at what is under the blanket, hidden from the viewer. Then Ben discusses with Clint on “how chewed up that little girl was”. Clearly it was the most horrific thing the men encountered in their entire career. They decide to investigate for clues to the girl’s murder in the nearby woods. Wes Blau a local news reporter shows up and helps search.
Insert about five minutes of the men wandering through the woods with nothing happening. Finally, Wes has found something off camera and they decide to investigate. There are large three-toed tracks left in some soft soil near the road. Clint decides to follow the tracks alone to see where they lead. He finds a tuft of grey fur in a tree and takes it as evidence then wanders further.
The group of teens from earlier drive up and almost run over Clint. They tease him and tell him their own desires to look around for the spacecraft/meteor. The sheriff warns them off and they leave.
Clint and Ben discuss how the tracks might be connected to the downed spacecraft. NAH!
Clint drives to the hospital to check on the kids, but immediately forgets to do that and tells his nurse girlfriend that he can’t go out on their dinner date that night on account of the murder.
The teen group decides to go down to the lake. Chris and Judy find out and decide to stop them because they know about the danger there is down there.
Nurse goes home to find a note by her little sister that says they all went down to the lake so she calls Clint.
The Deputy Ben drives down to Satan’s Hollow and sees the monster, but it’s too dark to actually see the monster. Meanwhile, Ben sits in his car and panics. He tries in vain to call the sheriff. The monster looms closer and we hear the sound of broken glass as the deputy screams.
Chris and Judy try to persuade the teens to move their party elsewhere but are met with hostility. A fight breaks out between Chris and Rex (Judy’s ex) and the rest of the teens decide to leave. Rex decides to be stubborn and stay a while.
Rex and his girlfriend make out in the car alone. The monster attacks and the girl runs out into the woods where the monster starts to chase her. then the sheriff starts to chase after the monster, or is chased by it. Really, the movie is too dark to really tell at this point.
Chris and Judy spot a sheriff’s car near the woods and get out to investigate. They discover the body of Deputy Ben dead. Sheriff Clint stumbles upon them and the group heads back into town.
Clint calls the state troopers and requests more men to help him control the situation. Clint calls Wes and asks him to do a favor.
Prof. Alan shows up and explains that the US ha a space program called Operation Noah’s Ark which would monitor the effects of cosmic radiation on live animals. They had sent a rocket that contained over 40 different kinds of animals into space. It was lost for six months and then reappeared as the meteor that crash landed in Satan’s Hollow. Alan explains how all of the animals were mutated and that the rest were eaten by “something huge”.
Clint and the troopers wait in the woods for what feels like hours. Meanwhile, the monster sneaks up on Chris and Judy while they sit in a parked car. The couple run all the way back to where Clint and his men are. There is a decoy mannequin set up by Clint and once the monster arrives and tries to attack it, Clint sets off a dynamite charge, blowing up the monster and the mannequin.
Clint and his nurse girlfriend joke about needing another uniform and they kiss.
Review:
PADDING and BLUE-FOR-NIGHT. Those are the two words I’d use to describe this movie. Lots and lots of running around in the woods. In badly lit woods where you can’t see a thing. A lot of blue filter night. The sun is shining off cars, but if the scene looks blue then it MUST be midnight and not noon.
There’s this additional love-triangle thing with Chris and Judy and their exes. Their current lovers being jealous of their exes, but it’s all really too dull to note.
I tried as hard as I could to get a decent shot of the monster, but I literally couldn’t because every scene was so dark. It’s just as well though. I imagine it was a masked man in a gorilla suit.
This movie would be more watchable if the padding were edited out and possibly better lighting was done. It’s light on dialog and character development, but there’s at least a hollow shell of a movie in there. It just might not be worth salvaging.
Notes:
John Agar has starred in many fun b-rated films.