One Dark Night (1982)

I picked this up because I thought Jimmy McNichol was in it.  There's a guy on the cover who has a similar haircut and I was always curious about McNichol doing a horror movie since he was a teen idol for awhile.  But then the credits started, and I discovered he's not in the movie.  While I was originally disappointed, it turned out to be decent.

Julie has always wanted to be one of The Sisters, the coolest group in school, what with their three members, their satin jackets with the neon word Sisters emblazoned across the back, and the girl who chews a toothbrush all the time. But Julie is dating the ex-boyfriend of the Sisters leader, who wants him back and hates Julie.

The Sisters haven't exactly been nice to Julie so it's odd she wants to join.  They've been hazing her mercilessly and have one more initiation.  If she passes the test, they'll let her in the club.  Trouble is that their plan is to make sure she fails and ban her from group.  Oh well, that's high school for you.

The last test is spending a night inside the cemetery's massive mausoleum.  The Sisters drop her off and tell her they'll be back in the morning to pick her up.  However they plan to come back in the middle of the night to scare the hell out of her. Then when she runs away in fright, her chances of joining their group will be ruined.  And to make things even freakier, they've given her a pill to take if she gets scared. It turns out to be acid but I'm sure that won't cause her to have any sort of nightmare visions.

Coincidentally earlier that day, famous psychic Raymar was interred in the mausoleum.  Raymar was found dead in his apartment, along with a bunch of women who died during a psychic experiment.  Good old Raymar doesn't intend to let something like being dead hold back his telekinetic powers. So pretty soon we've got lightening blots and dead bodies flying all over the place.

The mausoleum reminds me of Phantasm.  Although the corpses movements, or lack thereof, are kind of silly, there's still something creepy about them gliding along the floor towards the girls. It's even creepier with the shots of the feet about an inch above the ground. There aren't really any big scares, and it looked silly but somehow it still creeped me out.  Most of the action is in the last half hour.

So although I bought this by mistake, in the end it was a good decision because I liked it.   Shriek Show has a double CD with the directors cut of the movie on the second disk.  I haven't watched the directors vision yet. It's a rough cut of the film, and I believe it's supposed to be a bit darker without the teen angst and perhaps less satin.  I'll have to check that out too.