Truly Dreadful Film

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Night Trap is so old, obscure and out of print that I had to order an Amazon copy just to make sure it was even real, and not some dream I had as a kid. It's real enough, and a glorious helping of low budget supernatural tomfoolery at that, with two charismatic character actors headlining. Robert Davi, in a rare lead role, plays a headstrong New Orleans cop who is hunting down a serial killer (Michael Ironside) that appears to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for invincibility and a host of freaky deaky evil superpowers. Davi's father was also a cop who pursued Ironside, and the monster likes to taunt both of them, leaving a trail of bodies in the hectic celebration of Mardi Gras. There's a million of these type of movies, and they're all across the board in terms of quality. It comes down to script and actors, really, as there's never enough money to make any real visual magic. This one has a mile wide mean streak though, Ironside's villain is a full on moustache twirling, nightmarish fiend and the veteran tough guy plays him as such. Matched against Davi, another notorious badass, it's a B movie royal rumble that hits high notes of intensity, schlock and pulpy, violent delirium in all the right cues. Fun stuff if you're a fan of these actors, and can actually locate a copy.

With interesting ideas that were unfortunately not fully developed, and interesting character actors, Robert Davi, Michael Ironside, and Mike Starr, "Night Trap" could have been so much more than what it is. Not only is the script seriously muddled, there are several nonsensical conversations that go on way too long without moving the story forward. What you have is Ironside representing a resurrected Devil, with Davi and Starr in pursuit. What you don't have is the necessary background information to explain the "why". Things just sort of happen, leaving the audience in the dark regarding character motivation. I did think that the inter cut sex scenes with Ironside doing away with a prostitute, while Davi romances his girlfriend (fully clothed), gave new meaning to the phrase "giving tongue". - MERK

When a slew of bodies starts piling up on Mardi Gras, a detective realizes the killer's an immortal Satan-possessed madman who's targeting him and his loved ones during his spree and must find a way to stop him before it's too late.This turned out to be quite the enjoyable pseudo-slasher with a lot of great points. The main thing here is the fact that this one tends to have more of an Action film feel throughout, which is quite enjoyable since it provides a pace and tone early on that keeps this entertaining and enjoyable enough while featuring enough to keep it interesting. With a large section of time devoted to stopping his different rampages, including a chase through a slew of back-alleys and apartment buildings, a car chase through a deserted train-yard and a multi-car chase through the city streets to save another victim at the end, this has more than enough to stay interesting throughout with plenty of fine action scenes within even before getting into all the shootings and explosions that pop up within this. All-told, it makes for quite an exciting and enjoyable series of scenes before getting into the far-more-suspenseful than expected stalking scenes here as the immortality makes it quite obvious what's going to happen to the potential victims. That makes the sequences stand out a little more than usual because there's far more at stake than just a typical slasher villain and throws the sequences such as the assault on the voodoo queen or the encounter in the strip club into more suspenseful areas due to the rather creepy vibe that goes along with such a character interacting with someone unaware of that condition, and that both are among the film's highlights is a good sign of that. After that, though, this one does tend to fall off slightly with the fact that the film does tend to solve absolutely nothing about the killer. We get so little about his intent as well as his back-story, which makes the rampage far more confusing than anything due to the incessant and rather unnecessary lack of knowledge we get here since there's even a plot-point in the second half about the killer being in the area once before and how it relates to the situation at the time, but yet nothing is done with it and none of what's revealed there gets any closer to solving the mystery of what's going on. The finale comes off as an after-thought as well, being so ho-hum about it's resolution that there's not a lot to like about it, and the fact that there's just such a strong Action-film feel here that it does tend to supersede the Horror enough to make it feel a lot less creepy than it could've been since it does work when it tries at doing so. All told, this is a fine if slightly uneven effort.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and a sex scene.

"Night Trap" is a slow, plodding thriller from AIP regular David A. Prior.New Orleans Detective Mike Turner (Davi) is trying to catch a devious criminal named Bishop (Ironside). Bishop has magical powers that include flying, and having a cool but pasted on beard. No one believes Turner that Bishop is evil, especially his captain who thinks he is "on the sauce" again. Turner is then partnered with Williams (Starr) to find suspects who have seen Bishop....as usual in other cop flicks, Williams and Turner bicker and eventually become buddies during their pursuit. Can they find and destroy Bishop before he strikes again? The main problem with "Night Trap" is that it really wants to be good, but possibly out of guilt, it sabotages itself at every turn.Every time Night Trap gets a good rhythm going, it pulls back for a ridiculous action scene and it loses focus. There is one scene where Bishop jumps over a car and the driver inside covers his eyes and then he slowly crashes into another car. 30 seconds later, the car blows up.Davi puts in a good performance. Ironside has been in better work and he looks like he wants to take a nap. Starr tries his hardest to breathe life into his character, but the script fails him.Every scene feels like it is in slow motion to stretch out the running time. There are a bunch of scenes with Davi just standing around doing absolutely nothing.Overall, if you are a fan of Robert Davi, watch it. Anybody else should stay away.Comeuppance Review by: Ty For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com