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Curated by: kbbels (772 videos)
We love films about Good Girls going to Hell. We love the cheap-thrill appeal of seeing a Miss Goody-Twoshoes leave Small Town America for the Big Bad City and end up falling face-first in the gutter. So, of course, we love Night of Evil which (then big deal) syndicated columnist EARL WILSON introduces by claiming it’s “based on newspapers and court records. It is a true story. To protect the innocent, some of the names, places, and incidents have been changed.” “Holier-than-thou” high-school cheerleader Dixie Ann Dikes (LISA GAYE) is abducted after a football game, then promptly disowned by her cold-hearted foster parents, and sent to a home for girls until she’s 18. Released from the school, she gets a job as a secretary which leads to her entering a beauty pageant. Crowned “Miss Colorado,” Dixie Ann attracts the eye of smooth hustler Chuck Logan (the great WILLIAM CAMPBELL at his slimiest) and, after a week-long romance, they secretly get married. To celebrate, Chuck stops at a liquor store for a bottle of champagne and... well, robs the place! Yup, turns out he’s an escaped convict, but Dixie doesn’t know that until Chuck and two other thugs “snatch a cop with a rich wife.” Despondent and thrown out of the beauty pageant, Dixie gets a room in a Skid Row flophouse, becomes a stripper at the Sho’ Bar, gets beaten up by a burly customer, then buys a gun at a pawn shop and -- irony of ironies -- robs a liquor store... Oh, the joy of seeing a sweet girl suffer. Though Dixie Ann’s descent into degradation is well within the limits of 1962 screen decency, Night of Evil is still a well-made and, for its time, hard-hitting True To Life bit of exploitation pulp that has the same morbid appeal as Girl in Trouble and dozens of nudies about good girls gone bad. Shot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and originally released in 1962, Something Weird’s 35mm print comes from the collection of midwest roadshow promoter JACK LAKE (The Wrong Rut) who re-released the film as The Naked Truth. The real truth, however, is that Mr. Lake had numerous exploitation films simultaneously in release with the moniker The Naked Truth, meaning that while one drive-in was playing Night of Evil, another was showing The Girl, The Body, and the Pill, both of them claiming to be The Naked Truth, and sold with a sex hygiene ad campaign: “The Road Show Everyone is Talking About! Bold! Fearless! Uncensored!” To justify the hype, Lake also paired the films with the birth-of-a-baby short Life and Its Secrecies (which also toured with The Wrong Rut) and, probably, a square-up reel. The show also came with a book pitch as this print of Night of Evil ends with a card introducing “Larry Hall, Famous Commentator, Traveler, and Lecturer on Sex.”