User Reviews

I was kinda surprised by the PG rating on the back of the DVD case. I certainly wouldn't want my kids watching this one. I think this would scare the crap out of a 10 year old.

Plot: A girl trying to fit in to the clique is hazed and tormented by the 'in crowd.' They talk her into spending the night in this creepy mausoleum (that reminded me of Phantasm...) and they proceed to torment her in the night. Little do they know, a recently deceased clairvoyant is coming back to life and raising the dead around them! It sounds awfully cheesy, but given the age and the budget, which was no doubt pretty small, this film is fun on many levels.

Watch for an early EG Daily as one of the in crowd brats. I enjoyed it and it scared my girlfriend.

7 out of 10, kids.

I bought this on video under the title "Entity Force" for £2 second hand at a pawnshop, mainly because I liked the cover. What I got was an OK early 80's horror film that could have had more gore and titty but what it lacked in the gore/titty department it made up for in cheese. The climatic zombie fest towards the end of the film left nothing to be desired. The zombie's legs didn't bend when they walked! Also a valuable lesson is learned as a result of this film, whenever you encounter a back-from-the-dead physic with blue lightening coming out of his eyes, use your compact mirror!

Like others who have commented on this movie, I saw One Dark Night at the movie theater when I was a youngster. For a reason I can't seem to put my finger on, this film captured me and has stayed with me through the years. From time to time I love to "go back in time" and view this film over and over again. Right of the bat, I will say that some people may not care for this movie due to it's old school feel and cinematography; but for me it's a movie that I've always cherished and will always hold a special place in my heart.

This movie has a certain bizarre and eerie feel to it that will give you the creeps, and as a matter of fact One Dark Nights oddity and unorthodox flavor is one of the reasons I'm so taken in by it. I'm certainly old school, and I feel like current horror movies have lost the feel and authenticity that some older films seem to have. One Dark Night certainly brings that "certain" flavor.

One Dark Night is the type of movie that would be perfect to watch on a rainy late evening or on Halloween night. I guess you could say it's a cinematic example of what Halloween is all about. It's has lots of spooky elements you look for in horror films: The atmospheric dark Mausoleum, Telekinesis, Gothic funeral procession, sad and thought provoking letters left by children of the dead, spooky graveyard and coroner scenes, a very odd and eerie scene of crime where 6 dead girls are found with a chilling open eyed gaze. It's just good old school horror, they just don't make them like this any more. I also have to give kudos to the background music or the score that's used throughout the film, it's helps the viewers experience. Much more so than I think people realize, the score is a compelling and powerful component that richly adds to the movies effectiveness and brings forth mood which is essential to any good horror film.

The casting in this film also came off(sort of in a unexpected way) very well. Adam West, who played Batman in the original series in the 60's adds to this films folklore. Meg Tilly plays her part very well and has a "look" about herself that seems tailored for a horror movie. The 3 prankish teen girls who were in the High School Sorority clique called "The Sisters "were perfectly casted; including one Sister who always gnawed and chewed on a toothbrush, even up to the point of her demise.....gimmicky indeed. It's finer elements like these that seem to endure me to the film.

Scenes at the end where Raymar tortures members of "The Sisters" in the Mausoleum with corpses could be viewed as silly but still some how manages to come over as okay and tolerable. The movie One Dark Night is currently out of print and could be considered rare. Although some may not agree, I consider the film to be a classic example of the genre. If you are a horror buff like myself, I would recommend this movie, you just may find it to be a keeper, and like it for its odd,creepy terror.

If you are a history nut--or you have some curious obsession with Adam West--then you are invited to this cheesy bit of nostalgia. If, on the other hand, you have any taste at all, then avoid this at all costs. It is paced at an unbelievable rate, the acting is 2nd rate, the production quality looks like a 1980s home movie, and the scares-- tho they do finally arrive--are simply not worth the wait.

First: the pace is unbelievably slow. There are two plot threads that inter-twine, which may be part of the problem. One is about the daughter of a dead "energy vampire," while the other has a three girl "club" wanting to harass a "newbie." Why this takes so long to work out is beyond my understanding. So unless you have a night of insomnia, don't bother with this flick.

Second: the acting is just plain bad. Adam West doesn't even ham it enough for some chuckles. The dead magician's wife has only one look: frightened confusion. Meg Tilly--whom I enjoyed in 1983's "The Big Chill"--is simply flat. And the rest of the cast--from the basketball loving boyfriend to the head of "The Sisters" club are just amateurish (e.g. the leader of the club says at one point, "You named it; you claimed it".)

The cinematography/directing is just poor quality. Lighting is bad. The color seems washed out (which I believe is NOT intentional). A run through a graveyard is worst then Romero's 1968, "Night of the Living Dead" (which we can understand. considering it was 1968). And the interior shots of the mausoleum are tedious. Again, don't waste your time.

I recalled that "Poltergeist" also came to theaters in 1982. Hard to believe these two films shared the same historical space because the scares are so fundamentally different. Perhaps it was the direction. Perhaps the production quality. Perhaps the acting (JoBeth Williams and Craig Nelson head the cast) is just light years better. I can't say for sure, but the scares are simply not worth your time here.

I have to confess, this one was recommended because of other films I had been watching, so I checked it out. Please don't make the same mistake and waste your time. At least I penned this cautionary tale for you while I was watching!

Thorn-BMI is out of business, before they stopped making films they made a chiller of a movie. Using E.S.P. and telekinesis as the basis of the daughter whose father mastered a terrible power. Only in the death of her father did Olivia find that her father dubbed 'Raymar' from Raymarkovitch had really murdered 6 girls and was planning two more by using the technique of Psyhic Vampirism.

Our picture starts with 6 coroner wagons pulling in and music to match the grusome discovery of the 6 girls. Dead all with their eyes wide open in a closet. In the walls were all kinds of objects, the coroners men were pulling up an old man, when blue lightning hit the ceiling which caused a circular hole to form only made the film more bizarre!

If you like extremely chilling scenes this for you. Unless you can see dead bodies from years ago in each level of decay, don't view it without a friendly companion. Like "The Changeling" it has some heart stopping horror in it. I gave this a rating of 7 it's in color, actress Meg Tilly debuted in this film if you can find it see it.

Let me start by saying I was only 2 when this movie came out but I loooove a good low budget 80's horror flick especially early & mid 80's(cheesy or not!)...a few good ones that I can think of off the bat are "Demons"..."Demons 2"..."Happy Birthday To Me"..."April Fools Day"..."Slumber Party Massacre"..."Witchboard"..."Chopping Mall"..."The Evil Dead" etc. BUT this movie is TOTAL garbage the special effects are crap (even for a low budget film),the storyline is whack & does'nt hold your interest...the acting is bad & not in a "so bad it's good" way...the killings are lame & ridiculous...& the finale was really poor! I kept waiting for it to get better but sadly the movie never lifts off,I can't believe people said this scared them when they 1st saw it cause this movie IS NOT scary! I watched this with my girlfriend on Friday (she also loves 80's horror) & when it was over we just watched each other & rolled our eyes then she buried her face in the pillow shaking her head & laughing in disbelief. Anyway enough of me slandering this doo doo pile of a "movie"...I actually feel awkward as I'm blasting this movie so much cause I'm not really a negative guy & I always try to find something good about movies I watch but I had to make an exception here because this film is that terrible! Those people that gave this movie a good rating & said it scared them must've been on acid when they watched it!

Meg Tilly plays a girl that has to spend the night in a mausoleum as part of a club initiation. The club is basically just three chicks, one of which is Dottie from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Why Meg wants to be a part of this club is silly. It's pretty much the same motivation used on Leave It to Beaver whenever Beaver let his friends talk him into something stupid. Anyway, turns out a psychic vampire named Karl Raymar has been buried in the crypt Meg's spending the night. Wouldn't you know it, he returns from the dead this night and terrorizes Meg and the other girls.

It's a fun little movie if you don't have high expectations. There's zombies, lots of cool electrical effects, and some nice creepy atmosphere. Don't let the rating dissuade you from trying it out. It may not please the gore & guts crowd but it's a pretty good low-budget horror movie.

Sorority girls fool around a crypt ONE DARK NIGHT and end up being terrorized by a psychic corpse that raises the dead!

Though dated and a bit too sluggish for its own good One Dark Night manages to be an entertaining enough effort to warrant a view from 80's horror fans. The story has a bit of creativeness on its side, going with a supernatural theme instead of going the slasher route as so many teen horror films of this era did. It's also not nearly as gory as the typical 80's horror. There's some moments of nice dark atmosphere, some OK special effects, and the always enjoyable Meg Tilly as our heroine girl in distress. Adding even more to the camp value here is the presence of Adam West, who has a small role.

Over all, One Dark Night isn't bad. While it's no lost classic, it's an interesting little teen horror flick that devoted retro horror fans may find worth a watch.

** 1/2 out of ****

As part of an initiation prank Julie (Meg Tilly of Psycho 2) has to spend the night in a mausoleum, but Karl Rhamarevich, a master of telekinesis has recently died and been put in there. When Julie's fellow sorority sisters desecrate where he's housed the real terror starts.

This little flick had a good deal of atmosphere and I enjoyed the build up, plus the last twenty minutes are just plain great. Anyone who's looking for a lost gem of an '80's horror movie needn't look any further. Highly under-appreciated. Plus Elizabeth Daily is adorable.

My Grade: B

Media Blaster DVD Extras: Disc 1) Commentary with director Tom McLoughlin and co-writer Michael Hawes; and trailers for "the Being", "Frankestien's Bloody Terror", "Just Before Dawn", & "Devil Dog" Disc 2) Alternate director's cut (that's almost unwatchable due to a bad print) & Behind-the-scenes featurette

One Dark Night is a prime example of how not to make a fun 80s horror flick. It has everything going for it, but wastes it all. The plot surrounds a recently-deceased psychic named Raymar (played by a puppet, I kid you not) who decides to come back from the dead on the night of his burial. Thrown in the midst are a bunch of high school kids who happen to be in the mausoleum that IL' Raymar just got tossed into. Sounds promising, in that gleeful sort of by-gone 80s way... but its not.

The film spends the first hour and ten minutes building up to an unknown climax. Yeah, a full 70 minutes in and you've still got no clue what kind of film this is gonna be... Ghosts, zombies, psychic fiend? Got me!!! All I saw for the first portion of the flick was badly-done character development, most of which was painfully inserted to beef up the minimal plot. We've got bad childhood memories, teen breakup, the lovable tough guy, and a girl who incessantly chews on a toothbrush... I can only wonder if she felt as embarrassed saying her lines with a mouth full of bristles as I did watching her.

Then, just when I think the movie has to be over - we got zombies. Not your run-of-the-mill Romero zombies... or even your painfully lame Euro zombies of the late 70s. We get a bunch of department store mannequins being dragged along on roller skates. I kid you not. I dare say that there was not a single actor or actress portraying the ghouls in the film. All dummies.

So, they fall all over people (apparently their central mode of attack) and the credits roll. This, gentle reader, is the climax I had apparently been waiting for - three minutes of department store mannequin zombies falling down on bad actresses. Pardon me while I take a moment...

This film SHOULD be good. With a fun cast (including 80s staple E.G. Daly), a decent budget (IMDb reports 1 mil), and good locations - what went wrong? I'll tell ya what. The filmmakers apparently forgot they were making a horror flick, tried to hire extras, found only mannequins, and cobbled together a painfully lame ending.

True horror aficionados will loathe this flick, but they're also the only folks I can recommend it to. View at your own risk.

by the way it looks at the other comments made, it seems that a lot of people did not get the point to the flick. It is not centered around zombies, as a matter of fact they are not zombies at all, they are a device regenerated by the wizard to scare the girls to death, his main focus is on Meg Tilly, who he wants to help him finish the job that he died while doing in the first place, and what you get is a great flick with an awesome ending, it is hard to find on video, but every once in a while it shows up on HBO or Cinamax, check it out, I gave it a 10 and highly recommend it.

Poor Adam West. He went from playing Batman to appearing in this toxic waste.

I was completely losing patience with this "scary" movie. It was over an hour before something remotely interesting happened and that's too long for any movie, let alone a scary movie. And that something "interesting" was nothing more than some furniture being moved around and doors closing. Even the real "action" was terribly lame.

They spent two-thirds of the movie or more building up the awesome telekinetic powers of Raymar, who was dead. In the meantime we had to bear through three vapid high school girls looking to terrorize a pledge to their sorry sisterhood.

The entire build up was for this Raymar character to either rise from the dead or create havoc from the dead. Either way it was a fail. It's clear that the movie was low budget, which I don't hold against it, but low budget or not the whole premise was bad. And don't let me start on the acting. I've seen better acting at amusement parks.

I can't believe I was watching a digitally remastered version. I thought they only did that for good movies--you know, the movies people actually want to see.

The first sixty-or-so minutes of this undeservedly obscure horror film, when we're introduced to a fairly typical group of prankish teens, is unremarkable. However, the film offers a memorably horrifying climax that's well worth hanging on for: As the kids are setting up an elaborate practical joke in a mausoleum, a supernatural force causes numerous corpses, in varying stages of decay, to leave their coffins and pursue the now-terrified pranksters through the dark corridors. The film contains no gore (which is unusual for a horror movie of this period), but if your tastes run to ambulatory corpses it really delivers the goods. By the way, the film's shooting title was "Rest In Peace".

I think One Dark Night, as it's known down here was a strange but mind blowing movie. Not because of it's story line as such, but it's imagining. It's one of the few horror movies that is suitable for the whole family, it's scary, and I think it's worth a watch 4 sure. it's a adventure!!

A bunch of sorority girls make a new pledge spend the night in a creepy mausoleum. Of course the recently deceased don't stay deceased for long and all hell breaks loose."One Dark Night" is an enjoyable 80's horror with some ghastly dead bodies floating around that are being controlled by the spirit of a dead psychic Raymar.There is no gore and nudity,but the atmosphere of a mausoleum is very eerie.The acting is solid,but the script takes too much time to develop the characters until the final 20 minutes that Raymar finally breaks out of his grave.The cinematography is impressive and the the mausoleum is a great location for the climactic events.The film takes so long to get going and this is its major flaw.7 out of 10.

This thing takes forever to get going. Scenes and scenarios repeat over and over and over again. Seriously, they kept showing the same sequences of shots over and over again. It felt like they added unnecessary scenes and dialogue and the director told everyone in every scene to draw things out just to pad it for time. Even the credits at the end are slow.

The acting was tolerable, and the makeup and effects were actually pretty good, but this thing is way too painful to sit through for what to me was a horrible ending and "payoff".

It really is too bad. Seems like they had a good crew. If only they would have had a decent script.

definatley one of the worst horror movies ive ever seen. i use the term horror loosely, becuase there is nothing horrific about this bomb. first of all, it has adam west in it. that should be enough, but ill continue. the extremley boring plot starts off with tilly having some drama thing with her father, then going out with her freinds(including the token black). then she has to spend the night in a supposedly creepy cemetary as an initiation into one of those teenage club/gangs.(after you see the jackets the girls wear, youll wonder if this is such a good idea)no one knows that a powerful magician(i think its a relative of hers.who cares?!) is buried in a crypt there. all of a sudden, the wizard is awakened, and unleashes his fury via lame 70's tv style lightning bolts from his eyes, and rotting zombies obviously being pushed by grips out of camera range. the zombies dont move, and neither does west. and then i wondered, what is a great actress like tilly doing in this dreck? should've been titled"one dark night, i was bored and wrote a script". wish i coulde give it a negative rating, like -74.

I actually first watched One Dark Night in the theater & wrote a review of the film for my high school newspaper. I loved it then & I still love it. The storyline revolves around two people. First of all one woman learns that her father has telekenisis after his death. She then has feelings herself about the strange powers of her father even in his death. The mauseleum he's buried in plays host to the other main person, a high school girl doing anything to get in with a group of girls that just want to torment her & dare her to stay in the mauseleum all night to join their group. They go back in the night to scare her & find scares for themselves. The cast is led by Meg Tilly with supporting roles by Adam West and one of my personal favorites Elizabeth Daily aka E.G. Daily. Check this one out if you love 80's movies & cheesy horror movies, you won't be disatisfied.

It has been forever since I saw this movie, and so my first review of this film was very spotty as I could only remember a few scenes here and there. Well I bought the movie recently and watched it and was pleasantly surprised by it. Its funny, as a child I enjoyed the film The Dark, but when I recently saw it I was bitterly disappointed, but this one which I do not remember being all that good turned out to be all that good. Very nice atmospheric horror movie that has good music, cute girls, and a nice story. It also has a bit of originality to it as the things that is causing all the trouble is very different. Not sure I have seen any film that has had quite the 'villain' as it were, that this film has to offer. The film starts out with a woman having a premonition that has her screaming in the night. The film soon switches to a very disturbing scene as there has been a strange disturbance within a small apartment where an old man has apparently died of a heart attack and six other females have also been found deceased. He is entombed at the local cemetery's mausoleum where the woman who had the premonition is shown to be this man's daughter. Another title of this film is Mausoleum, but the One Dark Night title works too. Well a group of girls known as the Sisters are holding an initiation for a new member, only they really do not want her in the group as the lead girl simply wants to terrorize this wannabe member as she is now dating the guy that broke up with the lead girl. Well the final stage is to spend the night at the mausoleum and suffice to say things do happen. The effects are really good for a film made so long ago and probably on a cheap budget. The cast does a nice job as you see a very young Meg Tilly, who does a very nice job as the nice girl that the Sister group wants to terrorize. Also, in the film is Adam West who plays a bit of an inconsequential character, but actually does a good job with this person. The lead girl in the sister's group is sufficiently mean for the character she plays here. The main complaint I have is that it is a very long time before stuff really starts to happen as this film has a very long lead up. It is tolerable as they do a good job with the material, but when stuff does happen it is done so well you just kind of wish the film got to the good stuff earlier or was even a little longer. Nice corpse effects at the end and the one creepy dude in the coffin causing all the trouble looked very eerie. So kind of a surprise how much I enjoyed this, I would love to see more films of this type as horror films of today just do not seem to put anywhere near the effort the makers of this film must have done to make their film look very good and build up the tension.

This one isn't quite as bad as you might expect. A cheap, schlocky horror movie that offers nothing new to the genre but remains watchable most of the time, thanks to fairly good direction and OK (considering the low budget) special effects. The climactic attack of the zombies is poorly handled, and the script seems to ignore the factor of "motivation", but the movie is still acceptable.