Evils of the Night (1983, released 1985)

 

Everything producer Mardi Rustam touched seemed to turn to soft porn, be it The Female Bunch…Tobe Hooper’s Death Trap… Pets (released in some countries in a version with explicit inserts) or Evil Town. So its no real surprise that when Rustam shuffled into the director’s chair in the 1980s the end result was a trashy, hypersexual affair. Evils of the Night finds Rustam cluelessly attempt to court the ‘golden turkey’ crowd with a preposterous sci-fi plot that harks back to the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space, has alien costumes right out of Rocky Horror, jock and bimbo characters from the era’s slasher films, porn star cast members whose acting and dialogue does little to disguise the nature of their day jobs, and a great roundup of B-Movie veterans…Aldo Ray, Neville Brand, John Carradine, Julie Newmar…seemingly only Cameron Mitchell was busy elsewhere that week. Aldo and Neville play slobbering mechanics who don balaclavas to abduct horny teenagers, then deliver them to space vampires –headed by Carradine and Newmar- who have taken over the local hospital.

Evils of the Night embodies low-end 1980s Hollywood, the down on their luck name stars, the adult industry connections, the constant name dropping of the rich n’ famous (Bo Derek, Shirley Temple, Sophia Loren, Prince Andrew), the two mechanics’ daydreams of hitting the big time. The film convinces you that everything good about The Female Bunch and Death Trap was the result of Al Adamson and Tobe Hooper respectively, and everything leering about those films was the result of Rustam’s interference. Thanks to Mardi’s corny, horndog dialogue even the younger cast members who aren’t moonlighting porn stars come across like moonlighting porn stars. Saying that, one movie wonder G.T. Taylor is quite adorable as Connie, the blonde bubblehead who is besotted by Prince Andrew (why do I get the feeling that particular reference isn’t going to age well).

I’ve often thought of Evils of the Night as being the exploitation film equivalent of one of those gargantuan burgers that American diners challenge their customers to finish off, it piles on layer after layer of beef, cheese, fried chicken, fries, bacon, peanut butter, onions, mayo then squeezes them all together between a bun. In theory it should be the meal to end all meals...the exploitation film to end all exploitation films. In reality its all kinda sloppy, haphazardly thrown together and guaranteed to leave a greasy aftertaste. I suppose the kindest thing you can say about Evils of the Night is that its exactly the movie you’d expect a sleazy, artless, bottom feeder to make- an XXL sized serving of 1980s Hollywood schlock. Care to chow down on it?