CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA!
WEEK 2: MUTANT MAYHEM
Night Fright (1968)
Sometimes a great horror movie from the past can be
overlooked and isn’t discovered to be excellent until long after its release. Night Fright is the polar opposite. This
low budget horror flick (not to be confused with Fright Night to which it shares no relation or connection) is one
that hardly anyone knows about, but I am going to dredge it up from the depths
of obscurity and share with you the torture I endured watching it, to save you
from doing the same.
It starts off with a teenage couple parked in the foreboding
locale of “Satan’s Hollow”. The girl remarks it isn’t the most romantic place
for a date. No shit. Something lurking in the forest attacks them. A little
later, another couple goes out for a drive to the same place, and they
playfully chase each other through the woods. Then they discover the couple
from earlier massacred in their car, though we don’t get to see any of the
actual carnage. The girl screams, it cuts away to a siren, and then we get the
opening credits! 11 minutes into the movie, they decide to throw opening
credits in! Why even bother at this point? Most people would have turned it off
by then, but not me. I waited in hopes that it would improve, and believe me,
it most certainly does not. The local sheriff and deputy search for evidence,
finding some fur and a large footprint. Much later, the creature attacks the
sheriff and chases him through the woods. The monster is hard to make out at
first, but once it comes into view, any hopes that the creature effects will
deliver fall to the wayside. It’s explained that the creature is the result of
a top secret space program called “Operation: Noah’s Ark” or something, and that
it’s a mutant. Apparently it’s a mutant with a fetish for killing teens in
cars, because that’s pretty much all it does the whole movie. The sheriff calls
in reinforcements and they kill it. Wow, so unexpected.
Night Fright has a
made for TV feel to it, though as far as I know it was theatrically
released—much to my surprise and dismay. The monster doesn’t show itself until
over half way through the movie, and from what I could see, it looked like an
actor wearing a plastic Halloween mask and the gorilla suit from Bride of the Gorilla. Not only does the
creature fail to deliver, but there is nothing else to offer even the slightest
bit of entertainment. There are multiple party/dance scenes that go on way too
long. I don’t want to see dancing, I want to see a beast ripping teenagers to
shreds! It has bad directing, bad editing, bad dialogue, and bad acting, even
for this old and cheap of a horror flick. Is there anything good? Nothing that
I could see. I guess it’s good that it wasn’t too long.
This movie will give you a fright, all right. You’ll be
frightened that something so bad could ever be made. It’s not overwhelmingly
bad like The Beast of Yucca Flats or laughably
bad like The Killer Shrews, it’s just
blandly bad and has nothing going for it. 
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