Nightbeast

Rating:
Summary: Truly one of the worst horror films ever!!
Review: I had high hopes for this film upon sitting down to watch it, having seen great stills of the titular Nightbeast in an old issue of Fangoria magazine, what I got was one of the most wretched exercises in filmaking ever.
A flying saucer crashes in a small hick town, a fanged beast emerges sporting a silver jumpsuit and a plastic ray gun that emits cheesy fifties style laser beams that vaporize whatever they strike. Soon a typically incompetent sheriff is in hot pursuit of the beast, but not before the alien makes a buffet meal out of most of the town's citizens.
The film features incredibly insipid dialogue delivered by actors who would probably be more at home in a seventies porno flick. Speaking of which, this atrocious film has my vote for the most ill timed and unarousing sex scene ever, two characters actually take time out for a quick bit of nookie while being pursued by old fangface. It is painfully obvious throughout that the Nightbeast is nothing more than some poor idiot in a rubber suit. The bottom of the barrel in special effects. The film does feature quite a bit of gore that may appeal to some fans, but the whole thing is so dull and slow paced that I found myself reaching for the eject button a quarter of the way through.
Finally, the video quality is quite possibly the most horrendous I have seen, perhaps only topped by the abysmal picture and audio quality of Tobe Hooper's backwoods crapfest Eaten Alive. Really there is nothing to recommend this mess, for a much better alien horror film give The Deadly Spawn a spin, now available on DVD from Synapse in a stellar special edition. Nightbeast is filmaking that would make Ed Wood Jr. recoil in disgust and boredom, nothing more than an updated version of sci-fi films of the ilk of Robot Monster and The Creeping Terror, at least those have a certain nostalgia value.

Rating:
Summary: A Tromatic 80's Classic
Review: It's amazing how Troma manages to unearth some of America's most obscure and unrecognizable regional movie titles. This 1982 Sci-Fi potboiler from Maryland directed by Don Dohler is no exception to Troma's rule. NIGHTBEAST is far from an Emmy award-winner, and while it boasts zero plot and character development it does manage to squeeze 7 out of 10 `stars' for sheer balls to the wall drunken late night thrills.

Here it is, folks; a 6 or 7 foot tall alien armed with piranha teeth, a death ray gun and some mighty slick silver lamé threads manically tears its way across a small Northeastern town. Interestingly enough Michael Weldon (Psychotronic Movie Guide) wrote that the creature in question was actually manned by two separate people, which would certainly explain away the towering height of our space traveling antagonist. Moving on; No one is safe from this stylin' E.T. as he zips about zapping and ripping his prey apart with wild abandon, but why is this creature here, and why is it doing these things? We're not privy to that information.

NIGHTBEAST really is a `fly on the wall' kind of movie that delivers enough good stuff (i.e. nudity and gore) to entertain even the most jaded B-movie buff. However, I must warn you that this thing suffers from most all of the standard low-rent cinematic short comings: questionable acting, script, lighting, special effects and pacing but all in all, for the money, it holds up surprisingly well. Oh, it also stars George Stover from John Waters' Female Trouble and Desperate Living.

This Troma DVD also comes with audio commentary, out-takes, bloopers and the original theatrical trailer.