Night of the Beast (1993) User Reviews

Satan meets Frederick's of Hollywood

[capkronos · 3/10 · 1 February 2006]

What happens when you combine multi-colored lingerie so hideous it couldn't get a rise out of Wilt Chamberlain, ladies whose hair is big enough to get caught in your ceiling fan and a director so incompetent he blows half of his budget purchasing about 50,000 candles? That's right... LUKAS' CHILD! A rightfully forgotten "gem" of the hair band era which tries to make for an overall lack of plot, budget, intelligence and originality by parading around a bunch of half-naked "actresses" who look like they'd be more at home passed out in a pool of their own vomit at a Motley Crue concert.

Set in the alleys and gutters of scenic Hollywood, see what happens when fame-hungry starlets looking for their big break in Tinseltown clash with the neighborhood Satanic cult! See what happens when lovelies are locked away in prison cells in a wardrobe that I believe was hand-selected right out of Cher's closet! But first you must make it through an endless opening credit sequence featuring skull-masked cultists, an out-of-control smoke machine, a stripper bumping and grinding to satanic chant and someone lounging on a sacrificial table that looks suspiciously like a tanning bed...

Lukas Armand (Robert May) is a bleeding-eyed cult leader posing as a wheelchair-bound movie producer. He stages bogus auditions and then kidnaps the starlets to sacrifice to his "child," who's actually a beet-red, pudgy demon with wings and horns kept locked behind prison bars. The women are also kept in a makeshift prison, dressed only in their underwear (one however is able to keep her frilly, sombrero-sized 'Blossom' hat on). Also out to help abduct future sacrifices are Lukas' "normal" long-haired, bearded son Jason, and his frantic, mohawked sidekick "Mad Dog," who find additional victims at the ironically named "Club Lace." One big-breasted bimbo tries to prove she is worth sparing ("I went to Northwest University!"), but to no avail. These men are ruthless and out to feed the hungry demon at any cost, which we are informed about every two minutes or so... "Take her to the tower!"..."The child is waiting!"..."The child is hungry!"..."It's feeding time!"...

Will detective Steve Anderson (Gene Le Brock) and his female partner (porno star Marcia Gray/Shanna McCullough) be able to free the lace-clad ladies before the demon can have his way with them? Unfortunately, the action stops cold when we have to sit through yet another grueling ten-minute topless Satanic boogie down from the same stripper we saw for ten minutes during the credits sequence. Other than that padding, this hellacious horror hoe-down registers extremely high on the cheap-laugh-o-meter.

Trash

[rodzombi · 2/10 · 2 May 2022]

Watched under the title "Night of the Beast". Really strange that they scanned and panned and cropped out all the boob shots! I don't really care but it was a definite distraction, maybe this was a tv edit? Either way seeing some boobs wouldn't save this thing.

Fun, thin, exploitive, but not too bad.

[nutsy · 6/10 · 8 December 2003]

I found LUKAS' CHILD on a two disk set with the truly terrible THE SCREAMING and one of the worst movies ever made, HELLSPAWN. This was the best of them. The best scenes in this movie have a cult wearing skull masks feeding girls to "the child". The guy who plays the cult leader does a great job. However, the subplot about the detective investigating the cult and the snooping kids are both garbage. Watch this for the cult scenes, girls undressing, and some (unintentionaly) funny bits. It's at least as good as some of the things Roger Corman produced. The folks who made this clearly have a future in the exploitation/horror movie business.

Too Slow, Too Thin

[ReggieSantori · 6/10 · 25 April 2004]

I love the occasional low-budget exploitation horror movie. They're usually good for a laugh. LUKAS' CHILD, like most of the movies in its genre, has its share of funny bits and t&a. It is, however, too slow and repetitive to be really entertaining. The plot has a smalltime Hollywood production company sacrificing girls to a creature referred to only as "the child." From that creepy, promising start, we descend into boredom with the introduction of a detective investigating the disappearances of beautiful babes. He's semi-good-looking, and the women he questions are all hot and interested in him, but, honestly, who needs him? The real star of this show is Lukas, an old man in a bathrobe who is priest to a strange cult. The guy can act and his dialogue isn't bad either. He and the victims have some good scene together that have a dramatic quality that makes you forget for a minute that this is an exploitation movie you're watching. The funny bits of this movie are good stuff, too. One of Lukas's thugs (who a witness described as looking "like Charles Manson") abducts women by night and takes them back to the cult's lair in coffins. It's a pretty funny sight to see a pick-up truck driving through LA at night with a coffin not quit fitting in its bed. There are some pieces that don't fit, though. Two children witness the strange goings on and dutifully inform the police. The kids really bring this movie down by a lot (they're right out of the 50s). If this thing had been made a mere two years later, the influence of SE7EN would have improved the whole detective angle by a lot, and this movie would have been much better. As it is, this film suffers from the stagnant state of the horror film at the time. It's a pity, too, because Lukas and his child were a pretty interesting idea (at east until the child is shown). LUKAS' CHILD is a fun movie watch with friends while having a few beers. At the very least, its better than the other three movies on the DVD horror-anthology I found it on. If you do happen to find this movie and for some reason want to watch it, keep your expectations low and you might enjoy it.

Devil's Food...

[azathothpwiggins · 23 May 2022]

In LUKAS' CHILD (aka: NIGHT OF THE BEAST), a strange man kidnaps young, beautiful women, whom he locks in an underground dungeon, forcing them to wear lingerie. This is all so that these captives can be introduced to "The Child", a hideous demon-monster in a cage down the hall.

This is another extremely low-budget production with that shot-on-video cheapness going on. The special effects are above average for such a film. That doesn't mean it's a masterwork, but it is watchable...