Night Slaves

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Wayne K A well made TV movie that has languished in obscurity far too long, Ted Post’s “Night Slaves” would, no doubt, inspire Stephen King’s novel and the mini-series “The Tommyknockers” (though Post’s film and the book it was based on are superior to those projects right down to the use of the plot device of a steel plate in the main characters head). Clay Howard (James Franciscius) and his wife Marjorie (Lee Grant) take a vacation after a car accident nearly kills Clay. Stopping in a small town, Clay finds his wife getting up in the middle of the night and traveling to a remote part of the town where they are staying. At first Clay dismisses this as some sort of vivid dream but begins to doubt it when he f8nd evidence to the contrary. What’s puzzling is no one remembers what they’ve done during the night. Be aware that, even though this is a good TV movie, it is a product of its time. Post uses pop zooms (a very common technique at the time). The music is totally inappropriate. Shooting it on the Warner backlot gives the film a bit of a cheap look. Location shooting would have created a better production value for the film but it also adds a surreal quality to the film adding to the eerie nature of the film. This would have played as a great hour long or even half hour episode of “The Twilight Zone”., Post’s direction is solid and for a 70 minute TV movie, this does a much better job of telling a similar story to King’s story and is comparable to Ray Bradbury’s and Jack Arnold’s “It Came From Outer Space” (which no doubt also influence King’s novel). It’s a pity this hasn’t made its way to Blu-ray as it is a well made TV movie that could, with a bigger budget and slightly expanded plot, could have fared well as a theatrical release. Director Post was both a TV and movie director so his direction of the actors would have translated well to the big screen. Given the main actors work in both TV and movies, I’m surprised that the production company didn’t consider it. The supporting cast includes Leslie Nielsen. This is available online in a faded, poor looking transfer but, right now, it’s the best we’ve got. It appears to be from an older broadcast of the movie from videotape and broadcast on TBS. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/21/24 Full Review Read all reviews

Night Slaves

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