One Dark Night
One Dark Night is a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Tom McLoughlin, and starring Meg Tilly, E. G. Daily, and Adam West. It follows three teenagers sent to a mausoleum for the night as part of a high school initiation rite. A telekinetic occultist returns from the dead and haunts them, forcing the three to survive the night inside the crypt.
The film was conceived and filmed under the title Rest in Peace before Poltergeist. It was given a limited platform release in the United States on July 9, 1982, before receiving wide distribution by Comworld Pictures in January 1983.
Plot
The police find six girls murdered in the apartment of famed Russian occultist Karl Raymarseivich Raymar, and they can't explain it. When coroners lift Raymar's body onto a stretcher, bolts of electricity shoot out from his fingers. His estranged daughter, Olivia McKenna, and her husband Allan are unaware of this until they meet Samuel Dockstader, a feature writer for The World of the Occult. As a friend of Raymar, Dockstader explains that Raymar was a psychic vampire who gained great telekinetic powers by kidnapping young girls, terrorizing them, and feeding off the bioenergy they produced. Allan does not believe him, but Dockstader shows Olivia a set of photographs to demonstrate how bioenergy works and gives her an audiotape that outlines his findings, which convinces Olivia to believe him.Meanwhile, high school student Julie Wells wants to be part of a club entitled The Sisters, which consists of three snobby high school girls named Carol, Leslie, and Kitty. Unfortunately, Carol is the ex-girlfriend of Julie's new boyfriend, Steve, and is jealous. She intends to get back at Steve and Julie by making Julie spend a night alone in a mausoleum, unaware that Raymar's body was just entombed there. That evening, Julie is dropped off by only Carol and Kitty, as Leslie had refused to accompany them on the plan. Julie explores the mausoleum and sets up her sleeping bag, unaware of the cracks appearing around Raymar's vault.
Hoping to scare Julie, Carol and Kitty dress up in costumes and sneak back into the mausoleum. While they succeed in frightening Julie, who locks herself in the chapel, they are unaware that Raymar is slowly reawakening by using his powers to make the walls shake, windows explode, and doors slam shut. Before Carol and Kitty decide to leave, Raymar's powers open up the vaults containing coffins inside. Many rotting cadavers telekinetically float and surround the girls before they pile on top of them to suffocate them.
Meanwhile, Steve has gone to Julie's house to find her missing. He catches up with Leslie, who reluctantly tells Steve about Julie's initiation, and Steve angrily heads over to the mausoleum. At the same time, Olivia dashes over after learning about her father's powers and the possibility that she might also possess them. Back at the mausoleum, Raymar finally breaks out of his coffin and controls the rotting corpses and the doors with his psychic powers. Just when Steve breaks in and finds an hysterical Julie, they become surrounded by the corpses that advance toward them. Steve tries to fight the bodies, but they knock him out. Raymar pulls a dazed Julie closer to him before Olivia arrives to save her. Ultimately, Olivia takes her compact and reflects the bolts from Raymar's eyes at him, causing Raymar and the carcasses to disintegrate, rescuing Julie and Steve.
The three, including a now traumatized Julie, begin slowly walking out of the mausoleum. The film ends with Kitty's toothbrush seen near the mound of corpses inside the empty mausoleum before a corpse falls in front and emits a scream.
Cast
Production
Development
Before becoming a director, Tom McLoughlin was a struggling scriptwriter and also starred in several minor roles in film including playing the monster in John Frankenheimer's 1979 horror film Prophecy. He worked with director Woody Allen in his 1973 film Sleeper. Not having much success with selling several comedy screenplays, McLoughlin and his friend Michael Hawes decided to make a gothic horror film similar to the works of Edgar Allan Poe. For inspiration McLoughlin drew upon his experience of exploring the catacombs in Paris, France when he was 19 years old, as McLoughlin recalled years later, "It was the first time that I ever felt psychological or supernatural fear. There was nothing there; there was nobody coming after me; but there was just something about knowing where I was and what I was surrounded by, that gave me a chill that was unforgettable".The script was initially developed under the title Night in the Crypt. McLoughlin and Hawes also came up with the idea of a group of people being trapped inside a mausoleum with a "psychic vampire" that fed on the life energy of the other members of the group. After a period of four years failing to sell the script to various studios McLoughlin and Hawes found a group of Mormon investors who were willing to finance the film for one million dollars on the condition that they started filming in three weeks.