Audience Member
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.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
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Audience Member
★ (out of four)
Corny erotic thriller with a vampish Shannon Tweed trying to be convincing as a real human being. Her admirable attributes are on full display. Unfortunately...so is her acting talent.
Howard, played by Ted Prior, is a horror writer, but is suffering from writer's block. He buys a strange looking jar at a thrift shop. It has a strange pickle-like creature inside. Almost immediately he starts writing again and flourishing. He has also become more sexually aggressive, worrying his wife. Things get stranger when he hires Carol (Tweed) a sexy, blond secretary, who is secretly scheming to steal Howard's manuscript.
Strange, even for horror exotica. Too bad it doesn't work in the least.
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v48/Zeppo1/PossessedbytheNight_zps90f6ac63.jpg[/IMG]
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/09/23
Full Review
Audience Member
One thing can be said for <i>Possessed by the Night:</i> it's awful. Wait, wait, I mean one GOOD thing, you don't usually find a Skinemax plot device this weird. A writer buys some horrific blob of tissue in a jar which can best be described as "a brain with an eye" from an overacting Chinese guy's curiosity shop for no reason other than "I just felt like buying something." I think we found the world's worst possessor of bad taste if he thought this thing would enliven the ambiance. But hold on, this hideous blob in a jar is no ORDINARY hideous blob in a jar - it can control your <i>mind!</i> Baser urges are intensified, people are driven to commit acts of violence and crave sex - sometimes both - with whoever happens to be nearby.
You probably know this is a Shannon Tweed movie, so you're really wondering, "How much does she get naked?" As an added insult to the dumb story and laughable acting, her required clothes-shedding time is very limited. Her three scenes are good but all regrettably short. There is a quality bonus scene of her working out in a tiny clingy crop-top, which I cannot decide is a result of the blob's influence on her mind or the writer's inability to find a rational way to show a sweaty Shannon and he just said, "Screw it, just get on the Bowflex."
Tweed has appeared in many movies with much better stories, performances, and titillation, so leave this one until you've run through the rest.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
Full Review
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