Possessed by the Night is another masterpiece from the prolific Fred Olin Ray, and is
chiefly notable for T&A, although it has one foot in horror and one in
erotic thriller.
An elderly Chinese couple arrive at the back of their Chinatown
curio shop with a pick-up full of treasures. A loan shark enforcer arrives, but
when he sees one of the items in the truck, a preserved embryo of a mutated
animal in a jar, he suddenly backs off. It seems the creature in the jar is not
quite dead, and has an evil influence over anyone around it. Those who come in
contact with the embryo seem to crave sex, and have urges to choke the living
snot out of everyone they are not having sex with.
Cut to a writer and his wife
(Sandahl Bergman) having normal, embryo-free sex. He is experiencing writers' block, but his manager is in debt to the same loan shark
introduced earlier, and is pressuring him to
finish his latest novel. The writer takes a walk to clear his head and look for
inspiration, wanders into the Chinese curio shop and buys the embryo. He arrives home, and
his manager is there with a secretary (Shannon Tweed) to help him finish the
novel.
That set-up got me thinking there would be a real plot.
Wrong.
Based on the first ten minutes, I would have the low IMDb score terribly
unfair, because the story really seemed to have possibilities. Adding breast and
bums and simulated sex to a good plot is normally a good thing, but it doesn't
work when
the T&A becomes the entire
movie, and that's what happened here - except for some nonsense with a bargain monster shown in hilarious close-up too many times.
There was simply no more plot to pad out the nudity and sex. All of the
performers were capable of acting and the characters were set up properly, but the screenplay just did not fully use
them.
If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to
read the
explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by
our definition, a
C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs
and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:
C-/D
The score depends on how you define the genre. If you watch softcore films for the nudity alone, this meets
the bill with good nudity from some of the top shelf women of
the genre (C-). If you expect a real movie to go with your nudity,
you will be sorely disappointed (D). The nudity is all she
wrote.
