Review: Nightbeast (1982)

Time to talk Troma trash!

Any cult film obsessive knows Troma—the horror exploitation factory that’s been going on straight for forty years, sticking it to the safe and sanitary sensibilities of the major studios. How so? By churning out whatever blood-soaked nonsense they damn well please—most notably ‘The Toxic Avenger’, which spawned a franchise of its own back in the eighties (a most notably toned down one). And then there’s such gloriously stupid classics like ‘Surf Nazis Must Die’, ‘Class of Nuke ‘Em High’, ‘Cannibal The Musical’, and I shit you not, ‘Poultrygeist’.

Troma has largely been moved and shaken by Lloyd Kaufman, a true veteran of the game that started out location hunting for ‘Saturday Night Fever’, of all things, but since has been a hero to independent filmmakers into this kind of thing. I recommend his books on indie filmmaking, which contain everything from cost management to making just the right type of good old fashioned fake gore. I can’t get enough of this sort of thing.

But Kaufman isn’t the only person to get his game in the flick business started by Troma—today, we’re focusing on the movie debut of none other than JJ ‘Lens Flares Are The Light of God’ Abrams. Okay, he didn’t actually have a massive production role in this one—he apparently contributed to the score, at the tender age of fifteen no less, and went credited as ‘Jeffrey Abrams’. And which incredible masterpiece was the starting point for someone that rebooted major scifi franchises and kickstarted a high-profile studio? None other than 1982’s Nightbeast.

And boy is it terrible.

Nightbeast is directed by Don Dohler, who made at least two more films with the same basic plot and the same marginally above home movie production values, namely ‘The Alien Factor’ and ‘The Galaxy Invader’. If you’re into nonsense with people in shoddy alien costumes stumbling around in backyards and being played oh so wonderfully straight, then I can recommend the former. Otherwise…all these films involve some murderous extraterrestrial going on a bender of violence in Redneckville, USA, for very loosely explained reasons. I assume Dohler took the ambiguous motives of Ridley Scott’s xenomorph or John Carpenter’s The Thing and just decided that meant you could just have your interstellar monsters be assholes just because.

Anyway, the film opens with a model space shuttle careening around the solar system before bouncing off an asteroid (I think), and then coming into a fiery landing in some random patch of woods right near where the fine folk of Doyouevencare County, USA, do things like camping and making out in cars. The alien looks like a shaved wookiee that’s been repeatedly smashed in the face with a shovel, and wears a silver disco jumpsuit. Because Dohler was too lazy to come up with any background for the creature, I shall: his real name is John Zasrehehfxcz, and he went on a drunken drive through the galaxy after losing his stock portfolio to a hostile takeover by the Psychlos from Battlefield Earth. There, that might just enhance your viewing of this one. 

This is what happens when your date has one Bacardi too many.

Immediately, the alien starts blasting people with a raygun, causing them to turn into dazzling eighties disco lighting before vanishing. The monster is either immune to bullets or everyone’s a terrible shot, the abrupt and jerky editing makes it hard to tell. Also, the filmmakers hit on the wonderful idea of filming at night without proper lighting or lenses or anything that helps you have an idea of what the hell is going on.

And boy do dozens of people get vaporized by the disco raygun—even kids! Not content with the phaser action, the Nightbeast even goes around ripping people’s guts out, and to be fair, for this kind of crappy movie, the opening fifteen minutes are so are pretty entertaining. Things explode, lasers go zap, and everyone’s scrambling just to fight this thing.

It’s all downhill after that, however. The film soon becomes a series of people in flannel talking in poorly sound mixed conversations about what they’re going to do about it, and then trying to do something about the murderous alien disco freak, and then failing. You’re sure as hell not going to remember anyone’s name, and when the Nightbeast isn’t actually at night, the daylight scenes are no more better shot.

That’s basically the gist of the film—there’s not much more to talk about, since it’s very straightforward. You’re either going to find it unwatchable, or some enjoyably shoddy nonsense to have a beer over—much as Nicholas Cage did when his character watched it in Mandy. Oh, and the score Abrams contributed? It’s mostly just noodling on a synth, although in fairness I probably wouldn’t do much better at age fifteen.

All in all, Nightbeast isn’t close to Troma’s best—best here being very relative. I recommend it only if you enjoy nonsensical cheaply made trash, and there is a certain charm to that sort of thing. It also reminds you that no matter how low your starting point, you can still go on to reach high points to dazzle people—and boy, did JJ literally do that. Later this year, we’ll see how he caps off the Star Wars sequels, knowing that despite everything…it’ll still be better than Nightbeast.