DEAD OF NIGHT (1977)
Dan Curtis is synonymous with TV horror. As such, I don't think I need to run through his credentials. Seeing his name on the Blu-ray release of this puppy pretty much guaranteed that I was going to add it to my shopping cart, and that's with knowing very little about the film itself. So what is Dead of Night? It's a glorified pilot for a TV series that never came to fruition. Boy, there were a lot of these situations, weren't there? It shouldn't surprise you to learn that this is an anthology. No wrap-around. We dive right in to "Second Chance," which stars Ed Begley Jr. (at his most Ed Begliest, if I may coin an adjective) as a man who restores an antique car. The bygone bucket of bolts serves as a time travel device, which means that this segment isn't terribly spooky. I didn't have any problems with it, but it reads as tremendously dry, especially compared to the other two-thirds of Dead of Night. "No Such Thing as a Vampire" may or may not concern a vampire. I'm sure I'll tell you more about it in the next paragraph.
Apart from the goth-leaning atmosphere, this is where I was beginning to droop a bit. That said, there are excellent performances to be found. This is not the main event, however. "Bobby" is up next. If you see any portion of this picture, make sure it's "Bobby." Technically, this is a spoiler (it's not a big deal; cool your jets), but "Bobby" is a reworking of "The Monkey's Paw." If you've seen Bob Clark's Deathdream, you basically know what to expect. Here, the action centers around a grieving mother who turns to the black arts to bring her son back from beyond the grave. Utterly fantastic, despite the fact that you know exactly what's going to happen. If I had seen Dead of Night on television in 1977, the final frames would have given me nightmares. No question about it. 3.5 feels like a fair rating, considering that we don't gain any real acceleration until the halfway point, roughly speaking. So watch along this Sunday night on CBS.
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