Karl “Raymar” Raymarseivich was a physicist who was very much into the occult and telekinesis. Many believe he was a fraud. In his seventies he is found dead in his apartment. Also are found the bodies of six young women. Police are not sure exactly what happened in the apartment, but it was violent. Objects are found actually stuck into the walls and ceiling. While putting Raymar’s body on a stretcher his hand hits the floor and an electrical charge is released.
Raymar is laid to rest in a mausoleum. Raymar’s estranged daughter Olivia (Melissa Newman) and her husband Allan (Adam West) attend the service. After the funeral Olivia is approached by Samuel Dockstader (Donald Hotten). Dockstader is a writer for "The World of the Occult". He knew Raymar well and tells Olivia about her father. He says that Raymar was a psychic vampire who could move objects with his mind. He would pick up young girls hitchhiking and would feed off their bioenergy much like a vampire feeds off the blood of the living. He was also interested in experiencing death itself.
Julie (Meg Tilly) is a teenager who is pledging to be a member of a club called The Sisters. Currently the club only has three members, Leslie (Elizabeth Dally), Kitty (Leslie Speights) and Carol (Robin Evans). Carol’s ex-boyfriend Steve (David Mason Daniels) is now dating Julie and Carol, although she denies it, is still interested in Steve and hates Julie. Carol decides to get back at Julie by giving her a test before allowing her into the exclusive club. Carol makes Julie spend the night in the mausoleum. Carol plans on terrorizing Julie throughout the night. Leslie thinks Carol is a jerk and refuses to be part of the plan.
After leaving Julie in the mausoleum Carol and Kitty return later and sneak in an unlocked window. As they begin their game of “scare Julie”, Raymar’s corpse starts to generate electrical charges that bust open the vaults in the mausoleum and reanimates the corpses of the dead.
“One Dark Night” AKA “Entity Force” was released in 1982 and was directed by Tom McLoughlin. It is an American supernatural horror movie.
This is one of those fun horror flicks from the 80’s. The plot is standard but executed rather well. The special effects were eerie and the whole setting of a huge empty and echoing mausoleum is great. The animated corpses were in various states of decomposition. I especially like the shot where Steve hits one in the face and his jaw partially falls off. The corpses are not zombies because they are not the living dead, just dead people being manipulated by another dead person. How do you fight that?
The outside shot of the mausoleum was “The Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum”. Most of the inside shots were done in “The Abby Of The Psalm Mausoleum”.
The face of Karl Raymar in his coffin was sculpted from a mask of Christopher Walken. The character Adam West played, Allan, was named after Edgar Allan Poe. Supposedly real skeletons imported from India were used for some of the animated corpses.
The movie was nominated for Best Low-Budget Film of 1983 by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.