CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, one of three films to emerge from the short-lived Fangoria Films production company, was also the third directorial effort from Tony Randel of HELLBOUND fame. Randel also co-wrote the screenplay though an author named Nicholas Falacci seems to have been responsible for the original story.

NIGHT is distinguished by a number of striking visual scenarios, some of which have strong mythopoeic content, but with too little story to weave them all together. Essentially, the concept is akin to Stephen King's 1975 'SALEM'S LOT, in which a small American town is overtaken by a vampire infestation, though the script for NIGHT is fuzzy about what brought the state of affairs about.

The proximate source of the infestation is Czakyr, a Rumanian vampire who somehow ended up in the Middle American town of Allberg. He had previously killed 400 victims, mostly kids, which makes me wonder if Falacci had read something about the real-life mass murderer Gilles de Rais. Many years previous he was either hiding in or caught in the crypt of a local church, and someone-- possibly a mysterious character played by Garrett Morris?-- somehow caused the church to get flooded, so that Czakyr became immobilized at the bottom of this "watery grave." However, two girls, Cindy and Lucy (Maya McLaughlin, Ami Dolenz) take it into their heads to go swimming in the flooded crypt one night, with references to the practice being a standard "rite of passage" for Allberg teens. Lucy drops her crucifix in the water and it sinks to strike and revive Czakyr. Lucy escapes the revived bloodsucker but he turns Cindy into one of the undead. Lucy goes into hiding while Czakyr implicitly vampirizes many though not everyone in the town, possibly with help from Cindy, who probably infects her mother Karen (Karen Black). 

In a neighboring town earnest young teacher Mark (Peter DeLuise) is seen counseling a young female student with a passion for horror stories. She's never seen again, after which Mark is summoned to Allberg by a Catholic priest named Father Frank (Evan McKenzie). Mark and Frank knew each other in seminary school, which Mark left to pursue teaching, but Frank more or less inducts Mark into becoming a full-time Van Helsing. Frank can't do it because he's got Karen and Cindy confined to a room, the latter submerged in a bath for some reason. So Mark is charged with locating Lucy. The young woman is the story's "virtuous Mina," the one that "Dracula" takes his time pursuing. She's also a virgin, which makes her desirable to Czakyr for some reason.

I'll pass over the other events of the story, because it's mostly lots of running around and vamp-stabbing until the climax, in which Mark manages to slay the king-vampire largely by dumb luck. The script, in addition to failing to explains lots of hows and wherefores, suffers from many jarring tonal changes, mostly from injecting lame moments of humor. I suspect Randel and his collaborators were told to yuk things up to court the perceived Fangoria audience, but there's no way to know. Morris' character, seemingly a delirious drunk, becomes one of the defenders of Allberg, and in the wrapup he suddenly sheds his alkie persona and becomes a well-dressed mover and shaker-- I guess because someone thought that was funny.

The mythicity of NIGHT probably wouldn't have been more than fair even without all the bad jokes, though. There's an interesting parallel between the vampire-lord who wants to turn Lucy (note the name) into his vampire bride, and Mark, who, while becoming her protector, is also incorrectly pegged, twice, as her boyfriend. And in one of those two scenes, Lucy's expression suggests she thinks she could do worse. But the story might have been more solid had the main hero been Father Frank, who's deeply guilty about his own transgressions. It seems Karen was the wife of Frank's now deceased brother, and that the two of them slept together while Frank's sibling was still alive. Thus Frank, a paternal priest, becomes a substitute husband/father to Karen and her daughter, and in a more ambitious scenario he might have been forced to atone for past sins by destroying a truly monstrous sinner. But Frank simply gets fanged by Vampire Karen and that's the end of the most interesting part of CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT.