aldo ray

nightfall poster

Nightfall (1956)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Starring Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Frank Albertson, and Frank Keith

Synopsis: An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.

Rating: 8/10

I was looking for a horror movie to watch yesterday afternoon (because it was Friday), but then my wife sat down next to me, and she doesn’t like horror. So I went searching for something else. The Criterion Channel is hosting three noirs from Tourneur, and I landed on this one mostly because it was short. And I’d seen it before and knew it was good.

I love the way it begins. With Aldo Ray sitting by his lonesome in a bar. Ann Bancroft approaches him, says she’s lost her wallet, and can he loan her five bucks to pay for her drinks? He does, and they have a nice time. Even get a little dinner. Then when they leave, two thugs come at them with guns and take him away.

In flashbacks we’ll learn he was out in the mountains with his friend fishing and hunting. The two bad guys have a wreck near them. Our heroes try to help and find themselves face to face with guns. They’ve just robbed a bank, have a satchel full of cash, and need no witnesses. Aldo Ray escapes. The bad guys accidentally mistake his bag for their money bag. By the time they realize their mistake, Aldo has split, hidden the money, and high-tailed it.

He wandered around the country doing odd jobs, biding his time until the coast was clear. He finds himself in Los Angeles when he meets Ann Bancroft. Meanwhile insurance investigator James Gregory has been on Also’s tail since the beginning. But he’s not so sure if he had anything to do with the robbery.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a short review. There is a nice mix of dark city noir and scenes set in the wide open spaces of the mountains. Aldo Ray is a little flat, but everybody else is terrific and the story is great.

I’m fascinated by the careers of classic film stars late in their lives. Every now and again an aging star will land a wonderfully juicy film role, but mostly they found themselves in cheesy television shows as guest stars, or in low-budget horror films, slumming.

Julie Newmar, Neville Brand, Aldo Ray, John Carradine, and Tina Louise weren’t exactly the biggest stars of their day, but they made some good movies and starred in some enjoyable TV shows in their prime. They deserve better than this.

I watched Evils of the Night primarily based on that cast list and the basic plot description that involves vampire aliens kidnapping attractive young people for their blood.

I should have just gone to bed early.

I’m a fan of bad movies. I love the so-bad-its-good genre of cinema. This film doesn’t deserve to be called bad. It’s terrible.

The first twenty minutes find a bunch of sexy teens frolicking at a lake and sexing on the beach. Some dudes in ski masks (Neville Brand and Also Ray) snatch some of them and take them back to a hospital where Tina Louise, John Carradine, and Julie Newmar attempt to extract their blood, but not actually kill them.

It is never quite clear what they need the blood for, only that it has to come from healthy young people (but not too young) and that they can’t have any bruising (which is a problem for them because the guys is ski masks keep beating the kids up before they bring them in.) There is some business about the bosses screwing up by landing them in this small town where there aren’t enough healthy youngsters or intelligent minions to make their plan work. But nothing is really explained.

It is a weird mix of ’80s boner comedy and slasher horror with a bit of sci-fi alien story mixed in. But it feels completely thrown together with very little thought or effort put into it. For example during the numerous sex scenes, everybody keeps their shoes on and the guys never even unbutton their pants (the girls, including porn stars Crystal Breeze and Amber Lynn, naturally, get completely naked). The masked dudes wear masks to conceal their identities, but also overalls with their names on them. The spaceships come from clips stolen from the original Battlestar Galactica series (the poster includes a slightly modified Millenium Falcon).

One imagines they blew their entire budget on the stars and then just slapped something together fast and cheap hoping to recoup their money based on name recognition alone.

Please, do everyone a favor and don’t watch this film. It is bad enough that I had to.