NIGHTBEAST (1982) movie review

Review by Patrick from Repulsive Cinema!

Hurling through outer space, a spacecraft is headed towards the earth. It crash-lands in the backwoods of a small American town in the middle of the night. The alien spacecraft then explodes, trapping its pilot on earth and lights up the entire forest. Some local redneck campers out in the woods wake up by the sound of the impact. They throw away their beer cans and grab their rifles to investigate. Back in town, not far away from the woods, the sheriff is being called upon to check out the mysterious occurrences going on. But the rednecks are already out in the dark to try to find out what has happened. They are suddenly attacked by a horrible alien in a silver jumpsuit armed with a deadly laser gun that disintegrates its victims. The rednecks are easy prey for the intergalactic menace, which immediately kills them and moves on to wreak havoc and reign terror upon the little community. And even before the authorities in town manages to get to the scene of the spacecraft, the alien fiend has already managed to kill several other people by either ripping them to shreds with its claws or by using it’s ray gun. Even the sheriff and his gang of redneck helpers find themselves helpless against the alien and its laser gun, and many of the sheriff’s deputies gets killed in a violent shootout against the monster. The sheriff is not willing to give up, giving his best and all to save his little town. But will the sheriff and his deputies and the rednecks in town mange to stop the alien monster before it is too late?


Nightbeast is one of those 80s fantasies come true, neon lasers, a goofy looking alien and a sheriff with a grey afro. Director Don Dohler is fairly known by cult aficionados and collectors for his no budget efforts like The Alien Factor and The Galaxy Invader, but fans of his movies has hailed Nightbeast as his true masterpiece. The film is filled with cheesy neon effects and cheap gore, and keeps a somewhat fair pace throughout the entire film. The Alien itself is a poorly made brown monster witch holds the same facial expressions through the entire movie. All of the characters in the film are one hundred percent one dimensional and you’ll end up just hoping that most of them will be torn to pieces by the goofy alien. The music has a very sci-fi, horror approach and fits the film pretty well, giving some of the scenes a bit more atmosphere. Filmed on 35 mm, the film looks pretty ok, and if it hadn’t been for all the silly neon effects I would have thought the film was shot sometime in the 70s. All in all Nightbeast is not the most memorable film that was spewed forth during the 80s, in fact it could have been one of the least memorable, if it hadn’t been for the incredibly stupid dialogue, weird looking characters, cheap gore and creature effects and even a scene with some gratuitous nudity! Well Nightbeast is probably not going to change your life, but if you are in a serious need of some real 80s entertainment of the weird kind, you can’t go wrong with Nightbeast, cause they don’t make em’ like this anymore.