Night Life (1989)

Review based on the full 88-minutes long, UK version, titled Grave Misdemeanours. Well meaning, but slightly dim, high school kid Archie works at his uncle's funeral home, with a convenient explanatory scene telling us, the audience, why he works there. When four jock idiots play another prank on him at the funeral home, his cruel and mean spirited Uncle, V. J. Flanders (played superbly by John Astin, in what is basically an extended cameo) fires him. When the four jocks are involved in a fatal accident later that night, V.J. recalls Archie to collect the bodies. Slow motion scenes of Archie coming to the crash and finding the bodies lends a surreal, hallucinatory feel, as life often does in, times of crisis like that. But are the four boneheads really dead?His cruel Uncle rotates one of their heads nearly 180 degrees, in a heartless effort to show that they are dead, for Archie. But again, are they really dead, or did the lightning, and truckload of radioactive crap they plowed into do something ... *strange* to them? Lightweight horror/ comedy fare, the real horror doesn't really kick in until the final 30 minutes, when the four do indeed come back from the dead, and seek revenge on Archie, and anyone else they happen across, in particularly gruesome fashion. Astin's Uncle character has an especially awful demise. That final 30 minutes, and John Astin's successful cast-against-type role make this a winner.

Amusing and very light-headed quickie that distinguishes itself from the majority of lame and late 80's horror-comedies thanks to a couple of very ingenious jokes and the presence of cult-TV icon John Astin (The Addams Family). The typical story of nerdish underdog versus the popular high-school jocks is always fun to watch, and it gets even funnier (but more importantly: gorier) when the jocks turn into zombies that still only spend their time by playing pranks on the geek! Redhead Archie Melville and his car-technician girlfriend have no other option but to destroy the zombies in various ways. The intro, when there are still no zombies, is very lengthy but nevertheless entertaining since director David Acomba enlightens us about many specific embalming techniques. The geek hero namely works in the mortuary of his uncle and it's also there were the undead are resurrected after a thunderstorm. The film is fast-paced, the numerous clichés are forgivable and the gore often is surprisingly graphic (zombies in a wood chopper, exploding corpses…). John Astin obviously had a great time playing the ill-tempered undertaker and the young cast members do a fairly good job as well. "Night Life" is surely recommended in case you're looking for a simple, undemanding horror feast.

What a boring movie!!! I have hated every minute of it. First of all, it takes almost an hour before anything will happen, and when it happens, the Zombies aren't scary at all... I think it is more like a slapstick movie than a horror.

Blimey. This one turned out to be a real surprise! Its got a half decent story, characters you care about, nice make up effects. It's scary, isn't overly gory, the funny bits never get in the way of the serious stuff. What a film!