Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Trey Harrison | ... | Dirk |
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Rebecca C. Kasek | ... | Christine |
Wayne W. Johnson | ... | Cornelius | |
Michael Merchant | ... | Freddy | |
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Toni Ann Gambale | ... | Carrie |
Nicola Fiore | ... | Pam | |
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John Walsh | ... | Jason |
Janet Mayson | ... | Betty | |
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Tarrence Taylor | ... | Brooklyn |
Kera O'Bryon | ... | Sue | |
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Wes Reid | ... | Eugene |
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Billy Garberina | ... | Woody |
Al Lawler | ... | Sunny | |
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Kirk LaSalle | ... | The Mailman |
David B. Meadows | ... | Officer (as David Meadows) |
Five teenage friends set out for the beach on their Spring Break vacation. Good times are cut short when one of the group, Carrie, contracts a deadly sexual transmitted disease during a bathroom stop. When they stop for the night at an isolated motel, the real terror begins when the STD virus starts running rampant, turning those infected into the living dead. However, there's more going on at the motel than meets the eye.
I've been a horror fan for my entire life and even daresay that I kept up with the trends and hypes fairly well, but during "Night of Something Strange", my mind made an unpleasant reflection for the very first time Suddenly it occurred to me that I might be getting too old for this genre! This particular film is so incredibly infantile and tasteless that it bothered me tremendously, yet the rest of the crowded theater at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF) seemingly couldn't get enough of all the filth and cheered out loud. This can only mean one thing, namely that trash like this is now considered the standard for undemanding horror entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I always appreciated low- brained and trashy horror flicks with sleazy subject matter, gratuitous sex footage and over-the-top gory make-up effects (like for example all 80s slashers), but "Night of Something Strange" truly reaches new heights in terms of vulgarity. We're talking necrophilia, genital mutilation, retarded jokes involving feces, massive fake penises and cum showers, vaginas with teeth (!) and bizarre worm-monsters crawling out of all possible body holes. The film starts with repulsive hospital janitor Cornelius climbing on top of a young woman's corpse in the mortuary, and the camera gradually zooms out towards the medical tag on her toe which states that she died from an unidentified sexually transmitted disease. Later that night, our janitor suffers from agonizing pains and turns into a type of perverted zombie. He rapes – and thus contaminates – his own wife and then they go their separate ways, which naturally sets in motion a humongous epidemic. Meanwhile, seven of the most sex-obsessed high-school teenagers in the world are heading out for a spring break holiday at the coast. They stop for the night at the Redwood Motel, but eerie Cornelius and several more STD-zombies are already prowling the area. It will be a night full of sexual outbursts, but not exactly the kind these horny kids are hoping for It was stated in the BIFFF program booklet that "Night of Something Strange" is inspired by 80s classics like "Night of the Creeps" and "The Blob". There's definitely truth in that, but at least back then the sleaze was mainly suggestive and the humor was slightly more mature. Numerous sequences are simply retarded and downright embarrassing for the young actors involved. I genuinely felt a surrogate sense of shame for the kid who played Freddy and I wonder if he seriously still aspires a proper acting career after this. And yet, I cannot be entirely negative Looking at the film's poster and title, it's fairly clear that you shouldn't expect an intelligent and suspenseful horror masterpiece. Writer/director Jonathan Straiton's main objective is to amuse a specific target audience with gooey splatter and crazy plot twists, and he definitely succeeds in doing that. The make-up effects were quite professional, the tiny sub plot of the deranged motel owner was surprisingly inventive and most of the annoying characters died in ways that were even more painful than I hoped for.