Wizards And Worriers: Night Life/Grave Misdemeanours (1989)

Night Life/Grave Misdemeanours (1989)

Starring: Scott Grimes, John Astin, Cheryl Pollack

Writer: Keith Critchlow

Director: David Acomba

The Story:

Archie (Scott Grimes) is the book nerd type. All through high school, he works at his Uncle's mortuary. The deal is, if he works there, Uncle Verlin will pay his college tuition. On top of being a geek of sorts and working with dead bodies, his best friend is a girl who does oil changes and pumps gas for a living. To the local popular crew, Archie's life is fuel for the hate game. He's constantly ridiculed and looked down upon, chased after school and threatened on the daily. Until the bullies die in a car accident and end up at his Uncle's mortuary. Then, shit gets real!

The Rant:

I timed it. Night Life is an hour in before any zombie-ness ensues. There are hints beforehand; dead people wiggling, eyelids opening, stuff like that. But the actual walking of the dead occurs at around 57 minutes. Fret not, the time leading up to this outcome is well spent, giving you plenty of grounds to love Archie --our protagonist-- and more than enough to hate the shit out of the jock jerks and Archie's asshole Uncle Verlin. Aside from all that, there's lots of comedy littered throughout the story. The scene of Archie and his Uncle trying to dress a corpse for a funeral is fucking hilarious. The booby trap that the jocks concoct inside the mortuary leads to some humorous shenanigans, as well. My biggest complaint is that there wasn't enough life poured into the Charly character, the Archie love interest. I wanted their friendship to feel more solid. That's really a minor squabble that's basically built off of my love for mechanic girls. Anyhoo, 57 minutes in or not, once the zombie horror of Night Life is born, it's full on awesome for the rest of the ride!

Camera direction isn't gonna blow you out of your chair here, but there's a few notable moments at hand. The jocks in their car chasing Archie on his motorbike is loaded with a bunch of cool angling, with the camera swiftly zipping in and out of the action. This particular chase ends in a crash that looks like it had to be some painful as fuck stunt work. Later, there's a bad ass long shot from the back of a Hurst aiming towards the front of the vehicle, making it look endless in length. A lot of the night scenes are enhanced with use of fog machines, making many a moment legit creepy. One that takes the fucking cake is at the scene of an accident that Archie gets called to, being told to put on a gas mask at arrival. A ton of heavy red and blue lighting is used here, to intensify the road flairs clashing with the nighttime sky. This particular moment oozes with eerie atmosphere; probably my favorite sequence in the entire film.

Scott Grimes is fully capable of carrying a horror movie, which had already been proven in Critters 2. I had always hoped the dude would have ended up being a bigger face in the genre. Sadly, that shit didn't pan out. In Night Life, his Archie character is kinda nerdy, his best friend is a tomboy, he thinks he's in love with a popular girl. This part of the narrative kinda mimics Some Kind of Wonderful, only Archie isn't the mechanic, his female friend is. It's a great character, easy to cling to and Grimes is awesome in the role. Now, onto the friend. Charly is played by Cheryl Pollack. Probably not too familiar to some. I noticed her right away. She played in Pump up the Volume as a straight A student who gets sick of it all one night while listening to Hard Harry, and sparks up a shit ton of silverware in a microwave. Much like in that film, I wish she had more to do in Night Life. She's works her chops well, shows a believable level of emotion, she's cute as hell normally, but straight hot when you throw her in a mechanic outfit, a backwards hat and slap some oil on her. Gah. But moreover, I just wanted there to be room in this movie for some deeper chemistry between her and Grimes. There's areas in the story where it seems at one point their affection towards one another was more apparent, but was removed for one reason or the other. Ahh, oh well.

John Astin from The Addams Family (the series) and all kinds of other cool shit plays Archie's Uncle, Verlin, the mortuary owner. Guy is a freakin dick with not a good bone in his body, and Astin absolutely rules the role. For the pop-jocks, we got Hulk Hogan's younger brother in No Holds Barred (Mark Pelligrino, in other words), Kenneth Ian Davis as Rog, Darcy DeMoss (the “one other titty quite this pretty” chick from Can't Buy Me Love. Also in Jason Lives) as Roberta and the uber 80's hot Lisa Fuller (the older sister that lied about being a virgin in The Monster Squad) as Joanie Snowland... epic name. The ladies are nice to look at, the dudes are fun to look at, and the four of them make for some fantasic high school assholes.

Craig Reardon and the rest of the SFX crew so obviously had a fucking blast in this flick! ****spoilers→The ripping out of zombie hair, an impact gun to a zombie's face, a face being pulled off, car dragging, ax to and through the head, air compressor head explosion, wood chipper vs zombie and a shit ton more.←spoilers**** Night Life gets gory as fuck. The zombie makeup looks fantastic, and the blood is flying!

As far as I know, Night Life/Grave Misdemeanours has yet to get a legitimate DVD release anywhere in the world. Your best bet is to look for it on VHS at a horror convention or somewhere on Ioffer or Ebay, or plop down $20 on Amazon. Nevertheless, if you can hunt it down, it is definitely worth your time.

Awesomeness: