The Night Brings Charlie

1990 "A gruesome and horrifying descent into the twisted killing spree of a psychopath!"
4.6| 1h15m| en
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Upon the return of Charlie Puckett to the small town of Pakoe, a series of teenage beheadings begin. Intent on finding the culprit, Sherrif Carl Carson soon begins to suspect that Charlie's return may be more than meets the eye.

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Reviews

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.
Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
BA_Harrison In the tiny town of Pakoe (pronounced Pak-oh-wee), a masked maniac is pruning the pitiful population of 1251 by sawing the heads off teenagers. Could the killer possibly be hulking, disfigured tree-surgeon Charlie (Chuck Whiting), whose arrival in town just happens to have coincided with the spate of grisly murders? Well, duh! This isn't called 'The Night Brings Charlie' just for the fun of it. Of course, this being a dumb early-'90s slasher, the local sheriff and his men are utterly inept, remaining oblivious to any clues until late in the day, meaning that quite a few heads roll before the end credits do.Director Tom Logan opens his film with a buxom, blonde teenager arriving home after a date, but kills her off before she can get inside and take a shower (boo!); her headless body is found the next morning by a paperboy (whose shocked reaction is priceless), but the killer's gruesome handiwork remains off-screen. With a missed opportunity for some gratuitous female nudity and a complete lack of splatter, it proves a rather disappointing way to start a slasher.Thankfully, Logan soon sets about rectifying the matter, and before long he has delivered a spot of graphic violence (a bloody throat slashing and decapitated corpse) and what must be one of the most pointless (but welcome) shower scenes in any horror film, more than making up for his oversight at the beginning: as a busty babe busily soaps herself up, the killer loiters menacingly on the other side of the shower glass, before eventually slinking away leaving the girl totally unharmed (and very clean). The director also successfully ticks off quite a few genre clichés, with dumb teenagers ignoring common sense, an obnoxious jerk who likes to jump out and scare girls for a laugh, a totally unnecessary nightmare sequence, and creepy phone-calls from the killer.From the halfway mark, there is a noticeable loss of momentum—the film becomes mired in dull police procedure and the script tries to be a little too clever for its own good with an extremely convoluted twist—but Logan picks things up again for the fun final act in which a guy has his (rubber) hand skewered by shears, a trio of bikers meet the business end of an axe, and the killer finally sets his sights on Jenny (Aimee Tenaglia), teenage step-daughter of town coroner Walt (Joe Fishback), pursuing her with a chainsaw, the power-tool of choice for any discerning movie maniac (even one whose messed-up face is the result of a chainsaw accident).
Chainsaw Slasher It really boggles my mind when someone comes across a movie like this and claims it to be one of the worst slasher films out there. This is by far not one of the worst out there, still not a good movie, but not the worst nonetheless. Go see something like Death Nurse or Blood Lake and then come back to me and tell me if you think the Night Brings Charlie is the worst. The film has decent camera work and editing, which is way more than I can say for many more extremely obscure slasher films.The film doesn't deliver on the on-screen deaths, there's one death where you see his pruning saw rip into a neck, but all other deaths are hardly interesting. But the lack of on-screen graphic violence doesn't mean this isn't a slasher film, just a bad one.The film was obviously intended not to be taken too seriously. The film came in at the end of the second slasher cycle, so it certainly was a reflection on traditional slasher elements, done in a tongue in cheek way. For example, after a kill, Charlie goes to the town's 'welcome' sign and marks the population down one less. This is something that can only get a laugh.If you're into slasher films, definitely give this film a watch. It is slightly different than your usual slasher film with possibility of two killers, but not by much. The comedy of the movie is pretty much telling the audience to relax and not take the movie so god darn serious. You may forget the movie, you may remember it. I'll remember it because I love the name.
counterrevolutionary I'm not a big fan of slasher flicks as a genre, but even by the standards of low-low-budget exploitation, this one is really lame. Even on a nudity-and-gore level, it's incredibly boring (there is some of both, but it's all sort of...meh). Before the home video revolution, it might not even have been released theatrically (though it might have; after all, *Plan 9 From Outer Space* played in theaters). There is precisely one good (and competently-delivered) line in the entire movie; I assume they stole it from somewhere.The acting is among the worst I have ever seen. I mean, even Ed Wood had a couple of competent actors, and the rest tended to be ludicrously hammy, which can be fun to watch. Anyway, most of his actors could pretty much pass as literate. Here, those who don't read their lines like cigar-store Indians sound like they learned them phonetically. And this film does have one distinction: it manages to be badly underplotted for most of the movie, then laughably overplotted for the ending.(Update: I should have singled out the actress playing the receptionist as an exception. She is by no means wooden. Not that she's good, but she certainly isn't wooden.)Even the worst slasher flicks are generally good for a few Puritan meditations on their grotesque offensiveness, but with this one, there doesn't even seem to be anything there to work up a moral outrage about.And you know the funniest thing? They clearly expected to make a sequel!It's so bad and boring that it actually becomes fascinating in a weird way. I sat enrapt through much of the video wondering why anyone would go to the bother of making it.
horror7777 (Includes Spoilers) Get this: a demented man who wears a mask is murdering people. He wears his mask during the day because he's deformed. Now, someone gets killed so naturally the doctor's daughter has to have a party. But first she has to take a shower and show us some gratuitous nudity. More people are getting killed at Charlie's barn, but that isn't good enough for the sheriff so Charlie is let go. More people die, I fell asleep only to awake and find the ending to be the typical slasher ending. In 1990, if producers hadn't gotten a clue that slasher films were as in as bell bottoms then they obviously needed as much help as Charlie. This is one cliche-ridden movie that's extremely laughable. I even remember *serious* dialogue like "there's a killer loose so I'm gonna walk home from your party Jamie." The killings are laughable, like a man whipped against a car, that I kinda though that Charlie might've been sexually deformed too. Really awful, I'm glad I only paid $2.00 to buy it. It's really boring too. *1/2out of****I'll give it the extra 1/2 just because I still can't look at the box cover without laughing hysterically.