Children of the Night (1991)

A lot of fun.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

This is essentially a campy horror flick with some one-liners, some blood and Ami Dolenz. The film concerns a small country town overrun by vampires and only an out-of-town teacher (Peter DeLuise) and the town drunk (Garrett Morris) are able to fight the legion of the undead. Our unlikely heroes have to protect virginal Ami Dolenz whose blood is intoxicating to head vampire David Sawyer.STORY: $$ (The story is bare bones. Too many campy horror flicks poke fun at small country communities. A little originality wouldn't hurt. The camp works at times but more often it is absurd. The vampires aren't menacing but more along the lines of comedy. This is clearly one of those turn-your-brain-off-and-enjoy flicks).ACTING: $$ (Nothing special here either. Cult actress Karen Black has a cameo as the town maneater and young Lloyd Kalicki is quite good as the perverted pre-teen peeping tom. Shirley Jacobs as Ami Dolenz's grandmother may give the best performance. Ami Dolenz, as always, is fine as the object of intrigue but some of the other main actors were poorly cast. Josette DiCarlo is beyond annoying as the town sheriff and Garrett Morris hiccups his way through his role as a drunkard. Peter DeLuise was a horrible selection as the leading man. He lacks a strong screen presence and in a film like this, you really need a Bruce Campbell, Bruce Abbott type as the leading man and not some no-name like Peter DeLuise).NUDITY: None. But a soaking wet Ami Dolenz is alright.

Children of the night is the second in a string of 3 movies released by Fangoria films in the early 90's. I remember these movies were pretty heavily promoted to horror fans at the time. The best of these was mindwarp, and the worst one was severed ties. Children of the night falls squarely in the middle and it's kind of a middling movie in general (maybe a bit worse than middling depending on how you look at it).Early in the film there are a few scary scenes and that's why i don't give it a lower rating. It's sort of cheesy all the way through, but in the early going, there is some genuine darkness here and there... Unfortunately it deteriorates into a silly mess halfway through. It tries to be sort of a horror comedy, but it doesn't deliver any laughs. It feels like the director wants this to have a comic book quality and at times it does, but the material would have been better served with a darker treatment. The biggest problem with the film is it's lack of any sort of internal logic. It could have been a pretty entertaining movie, (even with it's undesirable cornball quality) if the plot didn't continually break down on a fundamental level. There are illogical horror films that work (like Lucio Fulci's "Seven Doors of Death") And they work because the whole film has a nightmarish, dreamlike quality... This film never pretends to have that kind of aesthetic. It's a more down to earth movie, and it needed to make sense.A good example of the flawed internal logic.... There is one vampire that seems immune to all the effects of vampirism. She retains her personality and is able to control her evil urges. Her remarkable ability is never explained and it seems that the only reason she was made that way was to allow for the films contrived and illogical ending sequence. All through the film you'll be asking yourself "why are they doing that?" the characters responses to the situations they face make no sense at all and it's so extreme that it's even over the line for a horror movie.so my recommendation would be... Watch this if your a vampire aficionado or a big horror fan, but if you start losing interest in the second half, just go ahead and turn it off... It doesn't get any better and you'll be pleased to see the credits roll

The horror/comedy is such a hard thing to pull off. Few films get that delicate balance just right. These films include Re-animator, Bubba Ho-tep, and Return of the Living Dead. They do not include Children of the Night. I had high hopes for Children of the Night. It was a Fango production that had a few familiar faces and was directed by Tony Randel (Hellraiser II). However, looking back on Randel's filmography I believe he may not be the reason I love Hellraiser II. He's done some clunkers and this is one of them. The story is nothing new: a small town becomes besieged by the undead and it's up to an unlikely band of heroes to stop them. Normally, I like films with that plot but I think that's because I usually care about the heroes. Our heroes here include a virginal teenager (Ami Dolenz), a school teacher (Peter DeLuise), and a wino (Garrett Morris). I'm not really particularly impressed by those characters or the actors who portray them. Karen Black also shows up for no reason. I've never seen a role in which Karen Black wasn't hammy and over the top. That's all fine and dandy, but sometimes that's not what I want to see. Well, with the negatives pointed out, there were some excellent gross-out effects courtesy of KNB effects and, like most vampire flicks, they put their own little spin on vamp lore: underwater graves. I did think that was a nice touch, however, I think I will be sticking with Salem's Lot in the future.

This movie is a typical B movie..but what they do with the "normal" legend of vampires. For one the vampire use water as their coffin instead of an actual one, once under water they spit out their lungs and breaths the water. In one scene this women vamp made her own cocoon to sleep in the special effects are really good in this scene. Its a cheap movie but its fun....its a saturday night kind of flick!!