Movie Review: After Midnight

I never have any expectations. Luckily for me most of the time. This 1989 gem benefited a lot from my no-expectation rule. It is an anthology of spooky tales wrapped in a weird "plot" about a professor of the Psychology of Fear and his students.

The first story of the anthology is about a couple who somehow run over some tacks on the road and have to go up to the creepy old house that hasn't been occupied in years and yet has a light on. The wife goes into the house first, but when the husband finally gets inside, she's nowhere to be seen. Some things freak him out and when his wife plays a little prank on him to start off his surprise birthday party, he chops her head off with a sword.

The second story is about four girls who can't get into a club. They end up at this creepy gas station. It seems abandoned and/or closed. Two of the girls go inside only to be stuck in a room with a creepy guy who lights a candle in a wine bottle. He's got three "vicious" dogs, a German Shepard, a Doberman, and a horrific snarling Schnauzer. The guy holds one of the girls at knife-point before the girls make an escape attempt, but of course they have a hard time finding the keys and finagling their way into the two-door four-seater. They somehow crash the car, the dogs come after them, the guy jumps out the window and onto the car. One of the girls gets stabbed after the guy rips open the convertible top. He's killed when the car crashes. One of the girls stupidly gets out of the car when the slowest dogs I've ever seen start running toward them. Now instead of a Schnauzer, a Doberman, and a German Shepard, it's two Shepards and a Doberman (who's heart is definitely not in the chase). I was horrified when they trapped the dogs in a warehouse and blew them up. I just wanted to snuggle with that Doberman. So cute.

The third story has Marg Helgenberger of CSI fame as Alex, a message-taker at an all-night answering service who's just coming back to work after breaking her foot. A man keeps calling and he's clearly mentally troubled. The guy (Richard) is calling from a phone booth outside of a hotel or some large building where he watches this woman walk in. The woman is Vanessa Birch, the one he's been leaving messages for. She's incredibly disturbed to find out that Richard has her home number now. When Alex calls to warn Vanessa that Richard knows she's home, he answers the phone and tells her it's too late. He has killed Vanessa by wrapping the phone chord around her neck. Obviously Alex is freaked out and wants to leave work. Instead of calling the police, she calls her boss Molly. The security guard for the building tells Alex that Molly had shown up five minutes before he found the phone off the hook in the lobby. Alex finds Molly dead in the elevator, She falls down the stairs, but when she sees someone coming up the stairs, she runs back up to the office. For some reason, she decides to break all the overhead lights on her way down the hall. She then breaks her crutch and stabs it through the door at the shadow walking up. It's the security guard. She's killed him. She gets another call and after a second of silence someone says hello. And Richard's sitting at the desk behind her.

We get back to the students and the creepy professor. Their stories are all done and now some kid that the professor made pee himself has begun his revenge. He's knocked out the professor and hung him upside down. He pours a circle of lighter fluid around the professor and lights it. He swings him back and forth until the pipe breaks and the professor gets free. The professor ends up putting an ax in the jock's chest, catches fire, continues to hack away at the jock. In the meantime the busted pipe is apparently spewing pure flammable gas because it becomes a flame thrower. For some reason everyone gets sucked into the flames like it's a tornado or something. Allison, one of the students, is the only one left and runs out of the house. She begins to be chased by a skeleton with an ax, probably the professor. Running into another house, she begins to run through all of the other stories. Severed head of wife, hallway of smashed lights... I don't know if they mentioned the doggy story. The professor catches up to her, fully skinned self again, and shoots her in the head. She wakes up about to start the first day of her new class: the Psychology of Fear.

Moral of this movie: You can in fact have a horror movie that does not objectify women, show boobies and/or nipples, no cursing, and is still somewhat creepy.