One Dark Night (1983)

You won't be disappointed!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The acting in this movie is really good.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

I have only previously seen this on Betamax but now it has thankfully been released on blu ray here in Britain. AKA Mausoleum, which is where much of the film takes place. This is a slow but steady burn until the last half an hour which is when all the horror action takes place inside the mausoleum and it's well worth the wait. No sex, blood or even foul language, staple ingredients for so many horror films, but this film works perfectly without them. Phantasm, Carrie & Lucio Fulci are all names that spring to mind. Great casting including a young Meg Tilly, this is a horror movie that needs to be enjoyed late at night with the lights off!

One Dark Night (1982) ** (out of 4) Julie (Meg Tilly) isn't the most popular girl at her college but she's willing to do everything to join The Sisters and their gang. What Julie doesn't know is that the leader basically wants her to audition so that they can get revenge on the girl for dating her boyfriend. That night Julie finds herself locked in a mausoleum when the girls decide to try and scare her. The only problem is that a recently deceased psychic decides to bring the dead back to life.Tom McLoughlin's ONE DARK NIGHT is a film that I respected a lot more than I actually liked. You have to give the director and co-writer a lot of credit because a non R-rated horror film in 1982 is something very rare. It's obviously that the director was working on a limited budget and I'm going to guess that instead of trying to add a lot of gore effects he instead wanted to create something scary. This is one of those films that nothing happens for the first portion as the atmosphere grows and the director wants to eventually have all the scares at once.This is a rather interesting movie because for the first hour there's really not too much that happens. We basically get to know all of the characters as we learn about them, learn about their relations and we very slowly get to the point where the three females are inside the mausoleum and the fun begins. The final thirty-minutes is when various things start to happen including the dead returning to life. If you're looking for any sort of gore then you can forget it as there's really not a drop until the very end. In fact, the violence is extremely low as is the body count.That explains the PG-rating to the picture and it's interesting that McLoughlin would go this direction. I personally respect him trying to build up scares more than anything else but the problem is that the first hour drags pretty badly. When the film finally starts to pick up it's a tad bit too late but there's no question that there's some fun to be had during the finale. Tilly turns in a good and believable performance and we get some fun supporting performances from Melissa Newman, Elizabeth Daily and Robin Evans. Adam West also appears in a few scenes.ONE DARK NIGHT isn't a masterpiece or even a good movie but it's an interesting horror film for the era.

One Dark Night is a movie which brings back lot of nostalgic memories. It was 1991 and cable TV had just hit this part of the world. Star Plus now became the craze of us kids (I was aged 14 then) and every Friday night there used to be aired an English movie in Star Plus. and the first movie that was thus aired was One Dark Night. My brother (aged 12), me and my parents sat and watched this movie. this was the first horror movie which we watched on TV. It gave us the creeps. and after seeing the movie- we were so scared that my dad decided that we will sleep together in the hall...... but seriously was this movie so scary- 22 years have passed and now my diet includes a steady stream of horror movies (and books). i have seen greater and bigger horror movies and also cheaper and worse ones... but as a movie that brings back nostalgic memories of childhood this is one prized possession,

It has been forever since I saw this movie, and so my first review of this film was very spotty as I could only remember a few scenes here and there. Well I bought the movie recently and watched it and was pleasantly surprised by it. Its funny, as a child I enjoyed the film The Dark, but when I recently saw it I was bitterly disappointed, but this one which I do not remember being all that good turned out to be all that good. Very nice atmospheric horror movie that has good music, cute girls, and a nice story. It also has a bit of originality to it as the things that is causing all the trouble is very different. Not sure I have seen any film that has had quite the 'villain' as it were, that this film has to offer. The film starts out with a woman having a premonition that has her screaming in the night. The film soon switches to a very disturbing scene as there has been a strange disturbance within a small apartment where an old man has apparently died of a heart attack and six other females have also been found deceased. He is entombed at the local cemetery's mausoleum where the woman who had the premonition is shown to be this man's daughter. Another title of this film is Mausoleum, but the One Dark Night title works too. Well a group of girls known as the Sisters are holding an initiation for a new member, only they really do not want her in the group as the lead girl simply wants to terrorize this wannabe member as she is now dating the guy that broke up with the lead girl. Well the final stage is to spend the night at the mausoleum and suffice to say things do happen. The effects are really good for a film made so long ago and probably on a cheap budget. The cast does a nice job as you see a very young Meg Tilly, who does a very nice job as the nice girl that the Sister group wants to terrorize. Also, in the film is Adam West who plays a bit of an inconsequential character, but actually does a good job with this person. The lead girl in the sister's group is sufficiently mean for the character she plays here. The main complaint I have is that it is a very long time before stuff really starts to happen as this film has a very long lead up. It is tolerable as they do a good job with the material, but when stuff does happen it is done so well you just kind of wish the film got to the good stuff earlier or was even a little longer. Nice corpse effects at the end and the one creepy dude in the coffin causing all the trouble looked very eerie. So kind of a surprise how much I enjoyed this, I would love to see more films of this type as horror films of today just do not seem to put anywhere near the effort the makers of this film must have done to make their film look very good and build up the tension.