J.C. Macek III The World's Greatest Critic!!! An Exploitation Film exists to fuel its advertising as opposed to the other way around. The idea is to capture the attention of enough curious people out there to more than make back the flick's budget. The more eye-catching the poster (or VHS box) the better the chance that someone will say "Oh, now I HAVE to see this one!" often times just before he or she says "It looks terrible!" Said advertising is more often than not completely misleading with innacurate synopses, prurient promotional art (which may or may not have much to do with the film itself) a recognizeable name or two (optional) and a tagline that will draw in the viewer like a fish on a hook. There are a ton of great examples that range from qualified to textbook to absolute dictionary. This brings us to Evils of the Night! Part of the 2009 Summer of Horror! I mention this one because Evils of the Night is most definitely in the "Dictionary" category for Exploitation Flicks! Further, I might add that it's still working! I first heard about this film a week before I wrote the review. I caught one glimpse of the poster art and realized I had to see it... and I was certain it would be terrible! Let's start with that poster, folks, because if there ever was a dictionary definition of "Doozy", this is it! I noticed only two things about it at first glance. First, our centerpiece is a drawing of a beautiful, large breasted, scantilly clad blonde woman with erect nipples in duress. Who can save this lady? That's the next thing I noticed... just above her is, and this isn't even subtle, The Millennium Falcon from Star Wars! Clearly Han and Chewie are fighting, though, as this deceptive representation of the Aliens' Ship has a second cockpit on the other side. Yeah, Ol' George can't sue you now! Good Job! The poster goes on to show that she's being held down by undead hands as some spacy, Skelator-looking monsters in space suits drain her blood. I only noticed that the fourth time I saw the poster, though. Oh that such things were actually in the film. The fifth time and beyond I noticed the cast that got suckered into appearing in this thing. More on this later, but rest assured, there are more than a couple of recognizeable names... and not all from porn either! While we're at it, how's THIS for a tagline? "Alien vampires have just landed from outer space... in search of the one substance they need to survive... TEENAGE BLOOD!" Good heavens! That's both an enticing tagline and a mismatched synopsis at the same time. Seriously, folks, I'm actually kind of impressed here. They covered all the bases as if they had a checklist! Great job doing something so crappy, guys! Right around the midpoint of 1985, Lifeforce, a nudity-packed movie about interstellar vampires arriving on Earth to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting populace was released to mixed reviews, but many fans. Just a few months later, Evils of the Night oozed onto screens. It, too, was about Vampires from Space arriving on Earth, it, too, featured the villains having their way with the unexpecting people of Earth and it, too, featured copious scenes of beautiful, naked women. This one doesn't even try to pretend it's art, however. In spite of its sci-fi/ horror trappings, the film immediately starts to resemble your standard lame-ass back-woods slasher flick complete with unseen killer tromping through the trees to murder naked teenagers at camp. In at least one case this doesn't happen after they have sex... it's during. Ick. Soon after this waste of time (with admittedly enjoyable nudity) we're introduced to our villains in the form of a group of space vampires that look a lot more like washed up actors in a low-tech hospital than blood sucking freaks in a flashy spaceship! Sadly, this brings us to the first recognizeable names in the cast, starting with Tina Louise! Yep, Ginger from Gilligan's Island plays Cora! I wonder what she thought she was getting into. Who else? Well, you Catwoman fans might be a little weirded out to note that Space Vampire Dr. Zarma is played by none other than a very tired and annoyed-looking Julie Newmar! I'm guessing "Wong Foo" didn't know anything about this role, man! While he's no stranger to B Movie appearances, due to his falling star, it's somehow saddest of all that John Carradine plays Alien Vampire Dr. Kozmar! Poor guy! What a resume! Bride of Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables... Evils of the mother-fucking Night! He takes it seriously, though, which is no small task, considering all. You see he, Cora and Zarma are on a mission to harvest blood from horn-dog teenagers so that they can drink it and preserve their space-vampire lifespans. That concept in and of itself might make it hard for an actor like Carradine to deliver his lines without laughing... but you should see what they made him wear, man! The silver-suit with the flared-out shoulder is so typically lame-sci-fi that I might've mistaken him for a tour guide for the Ford Pavillion at the 1984 World's Fair. What? What, too obscure? Well, look for some screen shots of what they put this poor man in and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, to this end, the space vampire doctors hire two douch-bag human minions to collect their teeny blood bags. For some reason the idiots they nab are two dick-brain mechanics played by Aldo Ray and Neville Brand (neither of whom am I even slightly surprised to see in this bad movie). The good news is that the Interplanetarian Transylvanian Physicians also employ some hot space vampire phlebotomists to drain said teenage blood from their sexually virile victims. The only problem is these chicks (Kari Thompson, Diana Payne, and Susan Pastor, credited as "Alien Guards") are actually space LESBIAN VAMPIRES who can't keep their hands off of each other, so the occasional specimine walks right on out. Instead of watching, I mean. Yeah, I don't understand it either! Anyway, lucky for Carradine (if not his career), the Lesbian Space Vampire Phlebotomist Guards are each armed with something most akin to a Green Lantern Power Ring, so they can zap the fleeing camper cattle. Lucky for us... really... is that there is about to be a lot more prey for these Vampstronauts! Yeah, I'm glad to say and happy to report that these woods are soon over run by sexy actresses, just about all of whom are eager for a few close encounters of the PORN kind! Hence our next recognizeable name... Amber Lynn! Yes the star of Les Lesbos of Paris, The Grafenberg Spot and Porn in the USA 2 plays Joyce! It's funny, actually, because she looked sort of familiar, then she took off all (and I do mean all) of her clothes and I immediately said "Oh, it's AMBER!" And she's not alone as a Porn Alum either! Crystal Breeze, Jody Swafford and Jerry Butler (if you care) all make appearances... often together. Interestingly, some of the most beautiful women never delved into "The Business". If the film has any actual "star", it's Karrie Emerson's Nancy, a beautiful, bikini-clad young lady who is hopelessly (and inexplicably) devoted to her dorky boyfriend Billy (Tony O'Dell) while sexy Heather (Bridget Holloman) and the incredibly hot Connie (G.T. Taylor) both attempt to fend off the clumsy advances of the self-obsessed dipshit Brian (David Hawk). The middle section plays like your average mid-80s sex comedy like Hardbodies or The Malibu Bikini Shop, complete with trendy, generic 80s pop musical interludes. Of course, by that respect the film certainly delivers the goods. We get Amber Lynn granting us some full frontal nudity, two young topless sunbathers slathering sun tan lotion all over each other's bare breasts (before making out), idiotic pranks, bad pickup lines and plenty of guys acting like idiots around beautiful women in swimsuits who are often dumbed-down for the sake of "comedy". I'm sure that anyone flipping around Skinemax at 3 AM on a Saturday wouldn't have been too terribly disappointed to come across this one at the half-way mark! Hell, it's no surprise that director Mardi Rustam shared his writing credit with Philip Dennis Connors who wrote 25 films in total, the other 24 of which were hard-core pornography. As the Vampire Horror Sci-Fi vehicle this film purported to be, there just isn't any substance there, folks! The horrors are laughable, the blood minimal and the dialogue terrible! Even the special effects are stolen from the likes of Battlestar Galactica. This is really a selection of truly lame and poorly thought-out sequences of suggested vampires in a lame hospital set, coupled with an idiotic and derivative slasher plot all wrapped around the best excuses Rustam and Connors could come up with for cute girls to get naked. One would think they could have just dispensed with these celluloid stretches and simply made a (hard OR soft core) porn flick! And this is the reason why Evils of the Night is a complete waste of time! If you're watching this to see a scary science-fiction story about Space Vampires, you could always watch Lifeforce or Planet of the Vampires! If you're only watching this to see Amber Lynn and friends naked, there are MUCH more exciting films for you to see that in, I assure you! If you're hankerin' for a slasher thriller, seek solace elsewhere, because this one only borrows lamely here and there. But if you're an Exploitation Flick fan who is all about laughing at a movie and enjoying what's left of it only for its gratuities, sure, by all means, go ahead and get suckered in by that deceptive poster, take your Pepto sit through this flick. You're sure to agree with me that Evils of the Night is a Dog! I have to know what bet Carradine, Newmar and Louise lost to have to appear in this melt mark on the ash tray of cinema! You realize that from here to eternity they will always be known as appearing with the stars of Camp Beaver Lake: The Movie, Hannibal Lickter, Swedish Erotica 48 and Jane Bond Meets Octopussy in a motion picture from the writer who brought us Oral Majority 2: The Big Gulp and Ramb-Ohh: The Sex Platoon! Carradine might as well have been The Invisible Man, Ginger might as well have never made it off that island, and I can't imagine ol' Catwoman would be writing a note that said "To Mardi Rustam, Thanks for Everything! -Julie Newmar!" Damn it! See you in the next interspatial, vampiric reel of naked slashiness.