Possessed by the Night (1994 Video) User Reviews

Total crap.

[poolandrews · 1/10 · 6 March 2006]

Possessed by the Night starts with Los Angeles Chinatown shop owner Mr. Wong (Joe Kuroda) returning from buying what looks like a load of junk but which contains a jar with what looks like some sort of deformed one-eyed creature inside. Author Howard Hansen (Ted Prior) is working on his latest book & things aren't going that well, he decides to get out for a while & comes across Mr. Wongs shop, inside Howard buys the mutant one-eyed thing. Back home & Howards missus Peggy (Sandahl Bergman) isn't happy about sharing a house with it but since she's only a woman & since Howard pays the bills she has to shut up & stop moaning, however her misgivings over it may be well founded as the one-eyed thing in the jar seems to be alive & has telepathic powers... Meanwhile Howards publisher Murray Dunlap (Frank Sivero) has run up a gambling debt of $25,000 which he owes to local loan shark Scott Lindsey (Henry Silva), one of Scott's debt collectors Gus (Chad McQueen) tries to 'persudae' Murray to pay his debts. Murray decides he needs to rip off Howard so sends Carol McKay (Shannon Tweed) in a as secretary but to also steal a manuscript for an unpublished book. Howards life quickly starts to fall apart as he falls further under the control of the one-eyed thing in the jar...

Directed by Fred Olen Ray, who also has a small role in the film as a waiter, I thought Possessed by the Night was total & utter crap of the highest order. The script by Mark Thomas McGee is all over the place, I tried my best with the plot synopsis but Possessed by the Night is an absolute mess of a 'film' & I use the term film loosely. The narrative is non-existent, this film has no story quite literally. Well none that makes any sense anyway. There are various loose plot threads like the one-eyed thing in the jar, the debt collector & his problems, the marriage problems between Howard & Peggy & the various impromptu & out-of-place sex scenes & they all sort of come together at the end but it'a all rather tenuous & flimsy. Most of Possessed by the Night is just padding & to make it worse it's padding of the most boring & uninspired kind that you can imagine. As a whole there is no entertainment value in Possessed by the Night whatsoever & who exactly is it meant to appeal to anyway? Is it a horror? I wouldn't have said so. A thriller? Not a chance. Maybe it's an erotic film? Well, in my opinion it's as erotic as a slap around the face with a wet fish. Perhaps it's a mixture of all three? Nope, it has no enjoyable aspect to it's overlong 90 odd minutes.

Director Ray does his usual point & shoot job, the film has no style or visual flair. This is bland, flat & forgettable stuff all the way. There's virtually no gore apart from a few gunshot wounds at the very end, the one-eyed thing looks rubbery (& it just sits in a jar throughout the entire film & does NOTHING else) & the sex scenes are very, very, very, very, very, very unerotic. The only nudity is of the topless variety, there is no genital nudity & the sex scenes are really tame as well. I just don't see who Possessed by the Night is supposed to please.

Technically Possessed by the Night is cheap, nasty & throughly routine. There is not one memorable aspect to it. The acting sucks, there's nothing else I can say & what on Earth is Henry Silva doing in this?

Possessed by the Night is total crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that. Definitely one to avoid.

Avoid This Film, Even If You Like Sandahl

[Ortigirgor · 1/10 · 6 July 2009]

I recently watched "Conan the Barbarian" and was quite sad I didn't know any other films with Sandahl Bergman in it. So I got myself "Hell Comes To Frogtown" and thought that was an extremely goofy and poorly made film, but fun to watch (gotta love the three snakes dance scene).

Then I got myself this one, thinking I could not really be disappointed, what with the Hell film and all, and I have to say: this movie offers *all* (!) the entertainment, plot logics, good dialogue, acting skills and high-end production value of a cheap porno, but without the explicit sex scenes. And Sandahl looks better partially dressed (I'm gonna try and remember her in her skimpy barbarian outfit, where you couldn't see the handiwork done on her chest).

There is absolutely not the slightest point in *ever* watching this. You will not get back the precious time you lose trying to not be put off by this. Just hands off. This film should never have been made.

Poorly made, written, and acted. Don't bother.

[I_Ailurophile · 2/10 · 17 November 2022]

There are some high profile names and faces in this movie, or at least some very recognizable ones. How did they come to be involved in this? The concept certainly comes across as the sort that has filled many anthologies, and been beloved by many writers over the years in a variety of media. The mystical MacGuffin of chaos is classic, and this specific creation looks really great. There are tinges of both humor and abject creepiness as the course of events progresses: a little horror, a little comedy, a little mystery. I think Mark Thomas McGee's screenplay is surprisingly well balanced between its component parts. Only - where is the plot? The character of Howard Hansen, a struggling writer, seems to have been somewhat autobiographical for McGee, as we're greeted with a surfeit of characters and a deficit of story. We're introduced to him, her, and the other person, but instead of narrative threads weaving together, it seems more like they're mostly just pointlessly laid out scattershot on a table, and going nowhere. To ask my third question in one paragraph, what happened here?

Fred Olen Ray's name is a little infamous when it comes to film-making, love him or hate him. I'm not inclined to have any especial opinion, yet here his direction shares the same qualities as the editing of Steven Nielson and Fima Noveck, and perhaps also Gary Graver's cinematography: overzealous, incohesive, and unconvincing. Perhaps that slant is intentional in light of the marginally tongue-in-cheek tone of the production, so often shared by other tales similarly centering such a singular, story-driving thingamajig, but even at that the result is unimpressive. And it should be said that the what's-it in a jar is so loosely tied into the plot in the first place, only occasionally having relevance to specific scenes until more than halfway through the runtime, that one is truly left to wonder just what McGee was actually doing at the time he wrote this. Scenes, characters, dialogue, and the narrative and its development are all over the place, making sense only in the most vague of terms. And truly, Ray's direction here is no better. As if to emphasize the point, there's a moment when a character is killed, and their blood slowly pools on a glass surface. However, in the shot where we watch that crimson spread, I feel like we're looking at an M. C. Escher painting, because there's no easy discernment of how the body is actually positioned relative to the glass surface and the objects around it.

Sloppy as the writing and film-making are on a fundamental level, the cast are pretty much wasted. The version of 'Possessed by the night' I watched was sadly chopped up to remove a few minutes, tiny segments at a time (specifically, any of the eroticism in this so-called "erotic thriller"), but I really don't feel like I missed anything: as terribly as this is made, I'm glad to have been spared a few minutes of my time, and a little bit of nudity isn't nearly enough to begin to compensate for all the astounding, flailing weakness. Even the effects are plainly overdone to an extent that wrecks suspension of disbelief. I'm sure there's probably someone out there that thinks this feature is a whole lot of fun, but I'm absolutely not one of them. Points awarded for a few good ideas, but a finished film can't be sold merely only on What Could Have Been. Whatever it is you think you're going to get out of 'Possessed by the night,' you'll get much more of it, and better examples thereof, in many, many other movies. There's no reason to waste your time on this one.

Enjoyable B-movie wackiness from Fred Olen Ray

[gridoon · 6/10 · 7 October 2006]

"Possessed by a brain-like one-eyed thing in a jar" would be a more accurate title for this one, but I guess "the night" is shorter. Anyway, besides this "creature", the movie offers: a sweaty Shannon Tweed giving us fitness tips, a (then) 42-year-old Sandahl Bergman still sporting a PHENOMENAL athletic body, irrelevant martial arts fights with Chad McQueen, and timeless movie villain Henry Silva mostly sitting behind a desk and saying things like "I love bimbos!" and "Greed makes the world go round". So fans of B-movies should enjoy it, despite its pointless story and redundant subplots. Fred Olen Ray makes the most out of a probably tiny budget, and smartly keeps the running time short too. (**1/2)

For B-Movie hunger.

[insomniac_rod · 8/10 · 21 August 2005]

Pure gold for hard core fans of B-movies. What else can you ask for? You got Shannon Tweed in all of her sexy glory. Her looks are extremely hot. You got a supernatural plot that involves a cheesy but gross "thing" (a brain with an eye or something) that awakens people's sexual instincts. Weird but effective. And last but not least you got hot sex scenes including of one Shannon's most famous moments where she is forced at first to have sex and then enjoys it in a savage manner.

Well this is not the best erotic B-movie but it's a damn entertaining erotic flick to have. Buy, rent, or watch it on cable, it's worth the watch.

Intensifying all the way

[GOWBTW · 6/10 · 24 August 2013]

Erotica can reach to a level that is intensifying and scary at the same time. In "Possessed by the Night", it says it all. Here you have a horror script writer(Ted Prior) who goes to Chinatown and buys a strange pickled one-eyed creature. The thing in the jar does something to him both good and bad. He works on his scripts better, and he's an animal in bed. However, his wife began to get scared by his actions. It gets worse when the live-in secretary, Carol (Shannon Tweed-Simmons) enters the picture. When the supernatural aura gets to Carol, the sex games become very intense. Brought in by his boss Murray (Frank Sivero), Carol was not only sent to live with the couple, but to steal the scripts as well. Murray may be a sleaze, but he was about to get something in return he'll never forget: Double-crossed! Along with Tweed, and Sandhal Bergman, Chad McQueen plays a collector who want to go out on his own, and not take any guff from his boss. Other than sex, firepower has its part of the movie. Everyone decided to take out one another. This movie is indefinitely a class of its own. No one will ever see an erotic thriller like this one! 3 out of 5 stars.

My favorite Fred!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 26 May 2022]

Howard Hansen (Ted Prior, the brother of director David) has just had a Gremlins moment where he purchased a pickled punk in a Chinatown curiosity shop. Now, he can write faster than ever before and has more sexual energy than he's had in years, which shocks his wife Peggy (Sandahl Bergman and if he has an issue finding her attractive, this movie may be science fiction) and worries her, as he's just hired a new secretary named Carol McKay (Shannon Tweed).

I don't have to give this advice but I will. Ladies, if your husband has Shannon Tweed as his secretary and you have any trust issues, you or your husband and maybe everyone you know is going to die.

Whatever is inside that glass jar now has possessed Carol, who is turning husband and wife against one another and she's also conspiring to steal Howard's new script with his agent Murray Dunlap (Frank Sivero, Frankie from Goodfellas), because that guy owes money to Henry Silva and his henchman Chad McQueen.

Of all the Ray movies I've watched this week, this one might be my favorite just because it's so deranged - Tweed forces Prior and Bergman to have sex while holding a gun on them; everyone is possessed by a cyclopedian fetus; just how good is Hansen's script if people are ruining lives over it - and ends with nearly the entire cast ends up in a gun battle that nihilistically wipes out most of them. Way to go on the script, Mark Thomas McGee.

This movie got released on video by Columbia Tri-Star. Let that make your brain explode.

Dated but a sexy, curiosity.

[RatedVforVinny · 6/10 · 8 April 2019]

It's hard to sum up this movie and I don't like to call low budget exploitation films B-movies; still if anything does fit that bill it's this one. Contains some pretty 'hokey' acting (just horrid 80's fashions) and the most fantastic of plots, though some shots and direction are pretty good; plus there is plenty of nudity and sex scenes (of the Soft-core variety) just to keep it, keeping on. Worth seeking out a rare copy. Played for laughs. stars ex 'playboy' glamour model (and cult actress) Shannon Tweed, who's certainly enjoyable in parts, if not all over.

An odd couple

[sorendanni · 6/10 · 17 August 2023]

Last week I found in Possessed by the night in the thrift store. A long time ago I had once seen the film on a Friday night on TV. In the 90s and 00s, many commercial channels broadcast 16+ films late on Friday evenings: B-Horror and Erothrillers. Possesed by the night is a marriage between these two genres, an odd couple of 16+ genres aimed at diffrent audiences.

The plot very briefly summarized: A writer with a writer's block visits an antique shop in search of inspiration and becomes fascinated by a glass jar containing a spirit in spirit. Meanwhile, his publisher has gambling debts, so he sends a secretary, played by Shannon Tweed, to help speed up the writing. But the secretary becomes possessed by the glass jar and forces the author to have misogynistic sex with his wife. And then an unhinged Mafia hitman walks in.

I'll start with the good news: the movie is pretty fun to watch, even in 2023. As far-fetched as the plot is, compared to a mass of other B-roll erotic thrillers from the '90s, Possessed by the night has a pretty suspenseful, constructive story instead of the usual wafer-thin story mixed inbetween a succession of sex scenes.

Also more original given the horror impact, although the horror remains below average and will not attract demanding horrorfans: Special effects are largely absent and the film never gets scary nor gorry.

Acting performances remain below average and frankly I don't think Shannon Tweed had much more talent than these kinds of roles. The other actors do it even weaker if possible, though the Asian shop owner came over as genuin to me...

Anyway, set all cons apart, I was able to watch this odd cross between Horror and Erothriller without frustrations and had quite a bit of fun with it, so a well-considered 6/10. For those with nostalgia to 90s tv-thrillers.