Customer Reviews

From the Dead of Night

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw this movie a long time ago. I recently watched it twice. When I saw it on T.V. it scared me somewhat but not now. I was glad when it came out on DVD. It's a semi-scary movie, minus the vulgar language like today's slash and gore. Good cast, good plot, and good price! Check it out, you'll be pleasantly surprise.

Unlike many movies designed to put you on the edge of your seat, this one is done in a way that is very believable. You can't miss a moment and it keeps you glued to your seat. It is scary but not the kind of scary that stays in your mind in a bad way. You believe it and forget it.

This movie was a little spooky for me at first. There were a couple of times I covered my eyes with a pillow. Like other Lindsay Wagner movies though, I thought it was really good and it kept my attention the entire time.

How can you not like a Lidsey Wagner movie?
This movie is a TV movie, spooky, but not terrifying. It's a good watch!

The story is similar to Carnival of Souls - Criterion Collection

This was not at all what I expected. It does deal with death and spirits, but it isn't quite as dark as the cover art might lead you to believe. This would be one of those back-from-the-dead movies that I would let my sheltered 10-year old watch. Anyway, it is not one of Lindsay Wagner's best movies, but she still gave a believable performance. I have often considered her to be a better actress than the roles she chose. In other words, I wish she would have done more movies like SCRUPLES and MEG LAUREL and less of this second-rate stuff. So, on a scale of 1-10, I give the movie about a 6, but I give Ms. Wagner a slightly lower than usual 9.

**MANY MANY PLOT SPOILERS, BUT NOT THE ENDING**

The first thing I noticed about the movie is that the opening scene didn't match up with the music or the opening credit graphics. Lindsay Wagner plays a badly dressed fashion designer who has horrible designs everyone, including her boss, Diahann Carroll think are great. She has a boyfriend on the rebound, Robin Thomas and an ex-bf Bruce Boxleitner who is an anthropologist who is now forced to date hot looking better dressed air-headed flight attendants after being dumped.

Lindsay falls into a swimming pool and hits her head. After not breathing for 10 seconds, an also better dressed spirit leaves her body. BUT SHE'S NOT DEAD YET! While enjoying her Near Death Experience, her boyfriend has the gall to pull her out of the pool. We never see any kind of CRP associated with the attempt to revive real dead people. It seems Lindsey just starts to breathe on her own.

After Lindsey's doctor gives her the great advice, "Be Well" strange things happen to her. A brown Eldorado driving in slow motion attempts to run over Lindsey...while she is on the sidewalk! Oh where is the proverbial safe dropping from the top floor on her head! Lindsey is sporting an ugly blue blazer with padded shoulders and never suspects the fashion police are out to get her.

Lindsey visits her anthropologist ex-bf who has completed his study of the mating habits of flight attendants. Like any good scientific mind he comforts Lindsey by reading her Tarot cards and turns over the Death card. Now in Tarot, the Death card, contrary to Hollywood folk lore does not mean death. It is a metamorphosis. The closest thing to a death card is the 10 of swords (I have actually seen one movie get it correct, but I forget which one.)

Feeling uneasy Lindsey and her boyfriend fly to Mexico to celebrate the "Day of the Dead" (without George Romero) because Death hasn't figured out how to kill people flying in an aircraft as yet. In Mexico, Lindsey is almost killed by a man turned into a zombie from eating a burrito with the green sauce. Lindsey joins a support group led by a woman who does Zelda Rubinstein impersonations. Lindsey discovers a whole group of bad dressers and a guy who claims they are after him too.

Not satisfied with the Tarot card reading from an anthropologist, Lindsey consults a professional witch, who basically tells her she is toast. Through a series of events, Lindsey's doctor discovers from the morgue, there are dead people known as "walkers." They have two distinct times of death. After they die, they walk around for a while until they are killed again from a different cause. OOOOHH EEEE AAAAAAH! Oops, no music. Sound track sucked.

Lindsey freaks out again when another zombie tries to kill her. She rides in cars, flies in planes and walks alone at night in LA, but Death has to use zombies to try to get her.

When her doctor has a heart attack they use a defibrillator on him multiple times in a row. The defibrillator actually STOPS a heart from beating because it is fibrillating. Once it is stopped, you do CPR. You don't keep zapping the guy. The doctor has figured out there are multitudes of zombies walking the earth killing people who have "escaped" death.

The actors did a good job with such an unbelievable script. If you made it this far through this review, you can tell I viewed this as an MST type of movie, although to be fair, it wasn't quite that bad. Although I dare say it might be better on prescription meds.

Made for TV. No bad language, nudity, and only lame sex of people wrapped in a sheet rolling around. Multiple naked shower scenes of Lindsey from the shoulders up. Not much horror, very very little in the way of blood/gore. Misuse of a defibrillator, zombies that don't need head shots to die.

I bought this DVD because of two stellar reviews. Big mistake. I really like made for TV movies but this one is bad. The first 50 minutes of this movie could have & should have been cut down to 10 minutes. I watched this with a group of people. I was the only one who didn't leave the room before the halfway mark! This film has an incredibly slow pace and little payoff. It starts to pick up around the 55 minute mark. But by that time everyone is ready for the movie to be over. This is not re-watchable. It is cheesy & slow to the point of being mind numbing.

This is a movie that has nothing to do with the description of the container it comes in. It was nice to see Lindsay Wagner since the days of her "Bionic Woman" tv series, but this movie is an odd one.