Review: Nightwish

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019

Images from the Internet

Nightwish

Directed by Bruce R. Cook

Channel Communications / Wild Street Pictures / ZIV International /
Unearthed Films Classics / MVD Visual

95 minutes, 1990 / 2019

www.unearthedfilms.com

www.mvdb2b.com

During the latter hey-day of the VHS glut of rushed cinema, when original ideas were starting to drain off, a theme developed of adding as much as possible into a single film, to appeal to the widest spectrum of the fan-base (the demographic usually being adolescent-to-mid-20s aged males). This film is a fine example of let’s throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.

Jack Starratt

The basic premise is hardly new, even for the late 1980s when this was filmed. Mendele, a professor of the paranormal (Jack Starratt, who to me will forever be Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles) that we eventually get to add the word “mad” before his title, has assembled four graduate students for an experiment to draw out a demon entity [séance genre] at a disreputable and remote abandoned farmhouse [cabin in the woods genre].

Of course, a weird and usually bearded professorial type gathering people together for a séance that brings evil to the forefront is hardly a new idea, going back at least to The Haunting (1963) and The Legend of Hell House (1973), based on books by Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, respectively. In fact, it is a motif that is even used to this day, though in modern cinema a Ouija board is usually used. Just go to IMDB and search the word Ouija.

Alisha Das

For this film, all that’s needed is some concentration by him and the students, because as the professor says, the evil is present in the house itself (again, a theme in The Haunting and Hell House). It isn’t long before spookies come a-callin’. He warns them that, “It has the power to instill paranoia… I want you all to watch each other very closely for irrational behavior.” One of the students shockingly replies, “Are you saying we may not be able to trust each other?” Yeah, this is directly out of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982); there may not be shift-changing per se, but the entity supposedly produces hallucinations, so it amounts to the same “who can you trust” vibe. It apparently feeds off fear (too numerous references to mention, including the recent IT two-parter).

Elizabeth Kaitan

When we first meet the four students in the lab, they are using a sensory deprivation tank (that has a glass window!) to see if they can dream their own deaths. This is a nice way to get some wet and see-through tee-shirts into the picture (again, demographics). Not that I’m complaining, mind you. The scholars are the cool kid – you can tell by the salmon-colored shirt – Jack (Clayton Rohner), the nice girl, Donna (1980’s scream queen Elizabeth Kaitan), the over-confident assistant/suck-up to the professor, Bill (Arthur Cybulski), and the lusty Kim (the lovely and toothsome Alisha Das). Joining the mix to drive them to the farm is the aggressively macho and toxic masculinity-filled Dean (Brian Thompson), who Bugs Bunny might have posited being “obviously a barbell boy.”

Seance

Before long, cheesy (though then quite state-of-the-art) ectoplasm snakes are threading through the air and aliens are using bodies to propagate bugs (American cockroaches, aka waterbugs… the smaller versions are German cockroaches, but I digress…). This truly is a mixed bag of genres.

Speaking of effects, while there are some proto-digital SFX (e.g., physically drawn on the original negatives), there is also quite a decent collection of practical gore set pieces, such as loss of body parts and the pulsating alien insect larvae on the bodies). For its timeframe and budget, there definitely is relatively a number of unexpected “wet” spots as far as slime and blood are concerned.

Brian Thompson

You can always tell when (an?) (the?) entity is around because of the green light that is employed by the filmmakers, be it on a dog, a person, a car, whatever is available to move the story along and produce a body count.

The acting is rather good here, albeit sometimes a bit over the top. And speaking of tops, there is a very nice solo sex scene induced by the demon spirit [The Entity, 1982; Trick or Treat, 1986]; once again as a reminder, demographics.

There are a few digital extras on the disc, such as the 4K digital transfer, Unearthed Films trailers (all of which have been reviewed on this blog!), and a full-length commentary by soft-spoken producer Paul White and Unearthed chairperson Stephen Biro. Biro does well keeping White answering questions, despite some gaps of silence. White is occasionally hard to hear (turn up that volume, kids!), and he even acknowledges that more than once, but most of what he says is relevant to the film, so it’s worth a listen.

...Because this is how all Graduate Students dress

The two non-digital extras are a “Limited Edition alternative slipcover” (for the Blu-ray), and a really nice multi-paged glossy booklet about the film, cast and director, with color pictures.

Despite the reasoning at the end, this film is definitely a lot of fun, even though it suffers a bit from not being able to make up its mind about a direction. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit, as it brought back memories of that time period when VHS was king, there was a video store on what seemed like every corner, and there was so much from which to choose.

Oh, did I mention there are also flesh-eating zombies thrown into the mix …?