Bad Movie Review: Nightbeast (1982)

Courtesy of Atlanta's Videodrome, I had the...pleasure...of watching another 1980s low-budget horror film, Nightbeast. There also used to be a lot more regional indie films shown in drive-ins and locally-distributed VHS rentals, and I thought this might be one given how the back of the box emphasized its Maryland roots. And some of the back copy hinted it might be so bad it's good, so I figured that might be worth a shot.

Probably not the best idea, although it certainly compared better to the other film I rented that afternoon, The Deadly Spawn. Here's my review...

The Plot

An alien spacecraft collides with a meteor and crash-lands in rural Maryland. Can Sheriff Jack Cinder (Tom Griffith) and his deputies, including Lisa Kent (Karin Kardian), and various armed townsfolk stop its murderous occupant before it before it kills everybody? And will the ambitious Mayor Burt Wicker (Richard Dyszel) glad-handing with the governor get in the way?

The Good

*I liked the concept. How often do aliens invade rural Maryland of all places?

*They do develop the characters a bit, although they definitely could have gone farther.

*The sheriff, his deputies, and the townsfolk they collect to help fight the titular monster do display some degree of competence like ability to maneuver under gunfire. Given the time the movie was made and the local culture, odds are good these are people who are regular users of guns (hunting, for example) and many likely served in the military, possibly in Vietnam.

*In one scene there's a creative anti-monster technique involving the use of laundry equipment that I liked.

*J.J. Abrams played a role in the film's production as a teenager. Given how something like that would have been my high-school dream, good for him. Great things often grow from humble beginnings.

The Bad

*The actors' delivery is generally abysmal. They sound very passionless and monotone, even with discussing things like an alien who is rampaging in the town or a local thug who abuses his girlfriend (more on that later). The students acting in my high school student films put more passion into their roles. Most of the time it's just plain stupid, although there're a couple parts where it's so bad I actually started laughing. 

*What exactly is the monster's goal? Was it hungry and hunting people to survive? Trying to find a way to phone home so to speak? They could have designed its attacks based on that. Instead it just mindlessly rampaged around.

*The filmmakers copy a subplot from Jaws (the sheriff who wants to protect people vs. the self-interested mayor), but they don't follow that film's principle of not showing the monster to make it scarier. The monster isn't as bad as modern hokey CGI, but it's too shiny and stiff to be really scary. The same with the dead bodies resulting in its rampage. Remember, what people imagine is often scarier or more disgusting than what they actually see.

*The cannon fodder's occasional competence makes their inability to hit the titular monster even once during multiple encounters even more blatantly. Later in the film Jack claims bullets can't hurt it, but we don't see any bullets bouncing off or anything that would show that. Heck, in a couple of scenes they have the alien on the run and don't bother pursuing. There are several instances where the cast displays very little sense of urgency, despite having a C-grade Predator rampaging around. They don't even call the state (let alone the feds) until relatively late in the film even though they're dealing with an alien invasion. If this is a creature the department's small arms can't handle, how about bringing in the National Guard? After all, the state governor was in the area during the creature's rampage. Maybe the state people will just laugh them off, but at least it'd show they tried.

*Per my comment about lacking a sense of urgency, the film contains an absolutely pointless sex scene, a scene even the back of the movie box describes as "awkward."

*Also, there are some extraordinarily poorly-done brawls, either human vs. human or man vs. monster. If this is the late 1970s or early 1980s in a small Southern-ish town, I imagine people would have more experience with fighting.

*The soundtrack is absolutely terrible. It doesn't serve to build suspense or atmosphere and doesn't make the mood of the scene at all.

*The alien's gun turning its victims into body-shaped burn marks on the ground is unintentionally hilarious.

*There's this whole subplot involving local bully Drago (Don Leifert) who's abusing his girlfriend that comes out of nowhere. If they even bothered to include it, it should have been before the alien's arrival as part of the problems within the town. The conflict between Jack and Burt was handled much better in Jaws.

*The movie starts to drag toward the end as the confrontation builds between the sheriff's department and the alien.

The Verdict

This movie comes off like a mediocre mix of Predator, Laserblast, and Boggy Creek II: And The Legend Continues and you're better off watching those. This isn't even so bad it's good, despite a couple moments. Maybe one can get some amusement value watching with friends to make fun of it. 4.5 out of 10.