From the Dead of Night (1989 TV Movie) User Reviews

A Great Stylistic Horror Movie

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 15 January 2005]

Joanna (Lindsay Wagner) is a successful designer, who lost her mother a few months ago. Her former mate Peter Langford (Bruce Boxleitner) has left her, and she is recovering her sentimental life through Glen Eastman (Robin Thomas), a man who loves her. When her friend and owner of the "griffe" where she works decides to maker her partner with her own exclusive "griffe", Glen and Joanna decide to have a celebration party in Joanna's fancy house with their friends. While in the party, Joanna stumbles on a cat, falls in the swimming pool and drowns. She experiences seeing her soul leaving her dead body and traveling through a tunnel, where shadows try to hold her. However, Peter and Glen revive her. From this moment on, her life changes, and she feels threatened all the time, as if she were supposed to die again. Yesterday I saw this movie for the third time on VHS, after many years. It is a great stylistic horror movie, having a good and original story. This theme was later partially explored in "Final Destination (2000)", "Final Destination 2 (2003)" and "Flatliners (1990)". Although watching for the third time, I found it again a great film. Lindsay Wagner in the role of a designer is very elegant, wearing beautiful costumes, and has a great performance. The story holds the attention of the viewer until the last scene. I did not read the novel, but I really like this movie. I disagree with the opinion that it is recommended for fans of Lindsay Wagner only. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Nos Braços da Morte" ("In the Rams of the Death")

One for Lindsay fans only..

[epsilon3 · 5/10 · 7 August 2003]

Seems to me that a lot of the posts for this movie are from Lindsay Wagner fans and TV watchers. I'm neither of those and am putting forward my point of view as a horror/SF fan - perhaps providing a little bit of balance to the comments here that seem to consist of 'this is really scary' and 'Lindsay we love you.'

I watched this movie hoping for some chills and it certainly delivered...eventually. There's lots of good things on offer including some very tense scenes, reasonable acting and good direction (check out the scene where Joanna is in the lift and feeling claustrophobic - excellent stuff.) It's not a classic by any stretch of the imagination but it passed the time and had a few good frights.

On the negative side, at times it's painfully slow. Some scenes are shown more than once - for example we get a long panning shot of a a woman reading tarot cards, then later in the film we get the same shot again. This is probably because the original TV movie was shown in two parts, so the audience wouldn't have noticed and it might help them to recap the plot. I did notice and was tempted to hit fast-forward more than once.

As for the plot, despite what some others have said, it has little originality. If you've seen 'flatliners' (admittedly released one year later) you'll notice similarities immediately.

Much of the spookiness is engineered using cliched stuff such as skulls, candles and the ever reliable tarot cards. I almost jumped out of my seat with shock when the woman did a tarot reading and turned over the......*gulp*....'death' card. Scary stuff.

It's obvious from the start who Joanna is going to fall in love with (If he's good enough for Delenn he's good enough for anyone!) and the ending is unsurprising and actually a bit of an anticlimax. It's on the lines of 'oh look - if we just do this everything will be alright in the morning..'

To sum up, I got this DVD for about four pounds in the UK and don't think it was worth the money. It's exactly what is says on the tin - a TV movie with everything you'd expect from one. Watch it if it comes on cable, borrow it from a friend if you must but don't buy it, unless you're a big fan of Lindsay Wagner.

Johnny Walker Dead

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 20 March 2018]

**MANY MANY PLOT SPOILERS, BUT NOT THE ENDING**

The first thing I noticed about the movie is that the opening scene didn't match up with the music or the opening credit graphics. Lindsay Wagner plays a badly dressed fashion designer who has horrible designs everyone, including her boss, Diahann Carroll think are great. She has a boyfriend on the rebound, Robin Thomas and an ex-bf Bruce Boxleitner who is an anthropologist who is now forced to date hot looking better dressed air-headed flight attendants after being dumped.

Lindsay falls into a swimming pool and hits her head. After not breathing for 10 seconds, an also better dressed spirit leaves her body. BUT SHE'S NOT DEAD YET! While enjoying her Near Death Experience, her boyfriend has the gall to pull her out of the pool. We never see any kind of CRP associated with the attempt to revive real dead people. It seems Lindsey just starts to breathe on her own.

After Lindsey's doctor gives her the great advice, "Be Well" strange things happen to her. A brown Eldorado driving in slow motion attempts to run over Lindsey...while she is on the sidewalk! Oh where is the proverbial safe dropping from the top floor on her head! Lindsey is sporting an ugly blue blazer with padded shoulders and never suspects the fashion police are out to get her.

Lindsey visits her anthropologist ex-bf who has completed his study of the mating habits of flight attendants. Like any good scientific mind he comforts Lindsey by reading her Tarot cards and turns over the Death card. Now in Tarot, the Death card, contrary to Hollywood folk lore does not mean death. It is a metamorphosis. The closest thing to a death card is the 10 of swords (I have actually seen one movie get it correct, but I forget which one.)

Feeling uneasy Lindsey and her boyfriend fly to Mexico to celebrate the "Day of the Dead" (without George Romero) because Death hasn't figured out how to kill people flying in an aircraft as yet. In Mexico, Lindsey is almost killed by a man turned into a zombie from eating a burrito with the green sauce. Lindsey joins a support group led by a woman who does Zelda Rubinstein impersonations. Lindsey discovers a whole group of bad dressers and a guy who claims they are after him too.

Not satisfied with the Tarot card reading from an anthropologist, Lindsey consults a professional witch, who basically tells her she is toast. Through a series of events, Lindsey's doctor discovers from the morgue, there are dead people known as "walkers." They have two distinct times of death. After they die, they walk around for a while until they are killed again from a different cause. OOOOHH EEEE AAAAAAH! Oops, no music. Sound track sucked.

Lindsey freaks out again when another zombie tries to kill her. She rides in cars, flies in planes and walks alone at night in LA, but Death has to use zombies to try to get her.

When her doctor has a heart attack they use a defibrillator on him multiple times in a row. The defibrillator actually STOPS a heart from beating because it is fibrillating. Once it is stopped, you do CPR. You don't keep zapping the guy. The doctor has figured out there are multitudes of zombies walking the earth killing people who have "escaped" death.

The actors did a good job with such an unbelievable script. If you made it this far through this review, you can tell I viewed this as an MST type of movie, although to be fair, it wasn't quite that bad. Although I dare say it might be better on prescription meds.

Made for TV. No bad language, nudity, and only lame sex of people wrapped in a sheet rolling around. Multiple naked shower scenes of Lindsey from the shoulders up. Not much horror, very very little in the way of blood/gore. Misuse of a defibrillator, zombies that don't need head shots to die.

Good, but senseless changes from the novel...

[Rekrul · 20 May 2001]

I haven't seen this movie in quite some time, but I seem to recall that when I watched it, I couldn't find any mention of the fact that it was based on the book Walkers by Gary Brandner, author of The Howling novels.

The movie itself wasn't bad, but it bothered me that they felt the need to make the character of Joanna a fashion designer living in (if I remember correctly) a loft, instead of an employee of a magazine living in a small house as she was in the book. I guest the makers of this film felt that an average person wasn't glamorous enough to be the main character. Where-as the Joanna in the book comes across as the kind of person you might actually know, the Joanna of the film seems more like she stepped out of a typical prime time soap opera like the recently cancelled Titans.

Of course the changes don't end there. For some reason the filmmakers also decided to change the names of all the major characters. Peter Landau becomes Peter Langford, Glen Early becomes Glen Eastman, Dr. Warren Hovde becomes Dr. Walter Hovde. I forget what Joanna's last name was in the movie, but they probably changed that too.

If I hadn't read the book first, none of these things would matter to me, but since I did, I couldn't help wondering why they felt they needed to make so many changes to what was already a fine story.

near-death experience brings more of same; boring and cheap

[FieCrier · 3/10 · 24 February 2005]

A fashion designer trips over a cat and falls into a pool, hitting her head on something floating on the surface. With rather cheesy effects (this was a TV movie) she floats up out of her body. She floats through a tunnel of rings of swirling orange smoke, and black rigid figures tip into her view (they look like the mannequins in her apartment). I almost thought I was watching a Jess Franco movie.... As her friends revive her, a black arm grabs her by the wrist, and she has to struggle to get loose. When she is revived, she remembers everything, and has a nasty bruise on her forearm.

Shortly thereafter, she nearly gets hit by an out-of-control car that comes up on the sidewalk behind her. On Halloween, she decides with her boyfriend to go to Mexico for a vacation. When she gets there, she's surprised to find it's the Day of the Dead. They're annoyed by another American tourist who keeps following them, and he almost drowns them.

The designer is encouraged to join a group of people who've had near death experiences. They've all experienced the tunnel, but not the black figures or the repeated near escapes from death. One of them has, and he's very anxious. She's also encouraged to meet with a psychic.

A Doctor tells her about people he calls "Walkers" (the name of the novel this was based on). They're people who supposedly died of one cause that, when examined, prove to have died of another cause. Thus it's like they continued walking around after dying until they died again, but he blames it on poor record-keeping.

I watched this on the 102 minute video, and it felt awfully long. I can't imagine that there's actually a 192 minute version! Perhaps if it was meant to be watched over two or more nights on TV it would better be watched that way than in one sitting.

I've only read one Gary Brandner novel, Floater, and if it is representative of his work, he's not the most original of writers. Floater had the common plot of: picked on kid kills people in revenge. Even the variation was pretty common: picked on kid dies and kills people years later in revenge from beyond the grave. And in fact it has a point in common with this movie, in that the kid practices astral projection, and when he is drowned he floats up out of his body as here. I don't know how closely From the Dead of Night follows his novel Walkers. I understand the Howling movies don't bear much resemblance to his novels.

It's quite a slow movie, and the special effects and cinematography are really held down by the (presumably) low budget and made-for-TV shortcomings. There are a lot of easily recognizable character actors in it. It also feels very dated, more early to mid 1980s than 1989. I found it to be boring. A much better low-budget movie covering similar subject matter that I don't think has dated as badly is Sole Survivor (1983) (arguably the inspiration for the 2000s Final Destination movies). It blows From the Dead of Night away.

Cool '80's Fashion, that's about it...

[vnssyndrome89 · 3/10 · 15 April 2022]

This movie kept going nowhere, and then went nowhere some more, & then some more. The only good thing in this movie was the AWESOME '80's fashion. If you're looking for a cool 1980's look, these are some to die for. Also, cool hair styles, make-up, accessories, and an totally cool apartment. But other than that, this movie is a slow moving borefest that showcases Lindsey Wagner's acting shortcomings. Pass.

Personal views for the movie

[earthtracy · 8/10 · 21 November 2004]

The movie was in several parts on TV. It left off each night with enough scare to want you coming back each consecutive night. The movie was eerie, scary, and made me wonder about some things regarding death and things we might see. Lindsey Wagner gave a great performance. It is now 15 years later and I remember details from the movie and how the movie left me feeling. That speaks for itself in my voting. The plot was well designed in action, and yes, there were some funny lines too, but overall the movie gave me the jitters. The makeup for the dead and the ways of death were done well, meaning, not so far fetched as to be unbelievable. With all the blood and gore films that are on the market, it is nice to see one that will scare you because it makes you think about life, death, and the possibilities surrounding each in things we face on a day to day basis.

TV movie ridiculousness

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 2 January 2021]

Gary Brandner didn't just write The Howling, he also wrote a book called Walkers, in which a woman named Joanna Raitt nearly drowns at a party and soon finds the undead coming after her, trying to bring her back to the world of the dead. If you're thinking that a lot of that sounds very Carnival of Souls, well, the movie will confirm that suspicion.

The trailer for this kept talking about how it was directed by the master of suspense, but never said who it was. The answer is Paul Wendkos, who I guess gets that title from making The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Haunts of the Very Rich and The Mephisto Waltz.

Joanna is played by Lindsay Wagner and she's torn between two loves - her current man Glen Eastman (Robin Thomas) and her old dude Peter Langford (Bruce Boxleitner) - when she isn't being chased by zombies or shadow people or whatever this is, across two nights and nearly four hours of your life (with commercials).

Diahann Carroll shows up as Joanna's boss and wow, her shoulder pads are out of control and probably worth watching this movie to see.

From the Dead of Night's screenplay was written by Bill Bleich, who wrote some pretty decent other movies, like The Hearse, The Midnight Hour and The Gladiator. He was also a producer, writer and creative consultant for Poltergeist: The Legacy, which was the TV series inspired by the film.

Thrills Chills and Lindsay - a winning combination!

[john191158 · 9/10 · 27 February 2001]

I'm a fan of lindsay's i like a good thriller and have an interest in the occult,so this movie has it all for me.Shown as a mini series in two parts over 2 nights in Australia over a decade ago. The suspense keeps you on the edge of the seat and is genuinely scary without the use of too many special effects - a too common occurence in more reacent horror/thrillers. The movie deals with so many aspects of the occult and interweaves them all without them becoming too confusing to the viewer,direction is first rate and the supporting cast is more than adequate also. As always(well almost always)Lindsay is first rate,definately one for your Lindsay collection - my rating 9 out of 10.

Good plot spoilt by bad picture

[nicholas.rhodes · 25 January 2003]

Recently bought this one on DVD in the UK. Found the plot extremely interesting, even chilling but was very DISAPPOINTED by the PICTURE QUALITY which was absolutely ABYSMAL - washed out and faded colours, misty image lacking in sharpness - muffled and unclear voices - also the theme and background music was HOPELESS ! For such a spooky and terrifying plot the could have used more powerful and anguishing music. What a shame to see such good and beautiful actors so badly portrayed aesthetically. The film is long but the suspense is maintained until the very end. Unfortunately the fact of buying it on DVD does not garantee a good picture, contrary to what I expected. But for the plot alone I would give 9/10 - most original !

OBE, Near Death Experience, Love triangle

[mollidew · 9/10 · 16 July 2011]

I saw this when it was originally on television and I found it to be a well acted, suspenseful movie. I finally got the DVD and I don't know if this is the whole TV release or if it has been cut to fit one DVD.

I had remembered it being a mini series but it may have just been a two- part TV movie. It definitely wasn't the length of a normal TV movie as it had more than one part on different days when viewing.

I think it is a good film and well worth viewing if you are interested in the subject matter. I think they left in parts that would seem stretched at the time length of an ordinary TV movie.

It basically deals with Johanna's attempt to save her own life because of the length of time lapsed in her death experience and how she solves the issue of not being killed to bring her back to the light. Remember this was done in 1989 prior to a lot of movies that have since been released in theaters on this topic and it was for TV viewing audiences. They did an excellent job considering the time frame it was shown and the topic. I have never found it boring at any time and this is the reason I purchased it when I discovered it was on DVD. It was adapted from a 1980 novel called "Walkers" by Gary Brandner who also wrote "The Howling." Someone mentioned Flatliners which came out the next year but it doesn't remotely have anything in common with this movie other than the life after death theme which is explored differently and came from a screenplay. "Watchers" is much older than this. So there is no comparison whatsoever between these two movies. I liked them both but "From the Dead of Night" was a unique idea and I have never seen any movies quite like this one other than the subject of Near Death Experience. It is more suspenseful than scary in my opinion but individual viewers will vary on how it impacts them.