The Night Brings Charlie (1990)

It really boggles my mind when someone comes across a movie like this and claims it to be one of the worst slasher films out there. This is by far not one of the worst out there, still not a good movie, but not the worst nonetheless. Go see something like Death Nurse or Blood Lake and then come back to me and tell me if you think the Night Brings Charlie is the worst. The film has decent camera work and editing, which is way more than I can say for many more extremely obscure slasher films.The film doesn't deliver on the on-screen deaths, there's one death where you see his pruning saw rip into a neck, but all other deaths are hardly interesting. But the lack of on-screen graphic violence doesn't mean this isn't a slasher film, just a bad one.The film was obviously intended not to be taken too seriously. The film came in at the end of the second slasher cycle, so it certainly was a reflection on traditional slasher elements, done in a tongue in cheek way. For example, after a kill, Charlie goes to the town's 'welcome' sign and marks the population down one less. This is something that can only get a laugh.If you're into slasher films, definitely give this film a watch. It is slightly different than your usual slasher film with possibility of two killers, but not by much. The comedy of the movie is pretty much telling the audience to relax and not take the movie so god darn serious. You may forget the movie, you may remember it. I'll remember it because I love the name.

The Night Brings Charlie is a little know, slasher lensed in Florida. It's your typical slasher with teenagers falling prey to a psychotic killer. However, this has to the first slasher to feature a true pruner as a weapon! Now, that's original! Unfortunately, it failed to deliver the goods. On the back of the box, it has a EM (Extremely mature) rating. With something like that, a person would think what they're getting is a relentless bloodbath. Wrong! None of the murders are actually shown. Just afterwards, when they police are at the crime scene. The good thing about this film, is that you don't have to wait 40 minutes or an hour for the first murder to occur. It slows down halfway into the film and pretty much stays that. Give it look if you're a die hard slasher fan. I'm sure you can find a copy of it on eBay for cheap. Happy Hunting!

I'm not a big fan of slasher flicks as a genre, but even by the standards of low-low-budget exploitation, this one is really lame. Even on a nudity-and-gore level, it's incredibly boring (there is some of both, but it's all sort of...meh). Before the home video revolution, it might not even have been released theatrically (though it might have; after all, *Plan 9 From Outer Space* played in theaters). There is precisely one good (and competently-delivered) line in the entire movie; I assume they stole it from somewhere.The acting is among the worst I have ever seen. I mean, even Ed Wood had a couple of competent actors, and the rest tended to be ludicrously hammy, which can be fun to watch. Anyway, most of his actors could pretty much pass as literate. Here, those who don't read their lines like cigar-store Indians sound like they learned them phonetically. And this film does have one distinction: it manages to be badly underplotted for most of the movie, then laughably overplotted for the ending.(Update: I should have singled out the actress playing the receptionist as an exception. She is by no means wooden. Not that she's good, but she certainly isn't wooden.)Even the worst slasher flicks are generally good for a few Puritan meditations on their grotesque offensiveness, but with this one, there doesn't even seem to be anything there to work up a moral outrage about.And you know the funniest thing? They clearly expected to make a sequel!It's so bad and boring that it actually becomes fascinating in a weird way. I sat enrapt through much of the video wondering why anyone would go to the bother of making it.

(Includes Spoilers) Get this: a demented man who wears a mask is murdering people. He wears his mask during the day because he's deformed. Now, someone gets killed so naturally the doctor's daughter has to have a party. But first she has to take a shower and show us some gratuitous nudity. More people are getting killed at Charlie's barn, but that isn't good enough for the sheriff so Charlie is let go. More people die, I fell asleep only to awake and find the ending to be the typical slasher ending. In 1990, if producers hadn't gotten a clue that slasher films were as in as bell bottoms then they obviously needed as much help as Charlie. This is one cliche-ridden movie that's extremely laughable. I even remember *serious* dialogue like "there's a killer loose so I'm gonna walk home from your party Jamie." The killings are laughable, like a man whipped against a car, that I kinda though that Charlie might've been sexually deformed too. Really awful, I'm glad I only paid $2.00 to buy it. It's really boring too. *1/2out of****I'll give it the extra 1/2 just because I still can't look at the box cover without laughing hysterically.