Night of Something Strange [Requiem FearFest Review]

The Requiem FearFest is a brand new horror movie-related festival in Montreal. It took place on October 29th and 30th on the 7th floor of the Alt Hotel. It featured numerous movies presented among 3 separate rooms; panel talks with actors of the movie world; vendors who exposed movies, posters, and various horror memorabilia for sale, in addition to a meet and greet with The Ladies of the Evil Dead (original “Evil Dead” actresses Theresa Tilly, Ellen Sandweiss, and Betsy Baker) and fellow actor, Hal Delrich. They also presented a panel talk during the festival. I encourage you all to take notice of this festival and perhaps attempt to attend it next year. If you are interested, here is their Facebook page.

One of the movies I discovered at Montreal’s Requiem FearFest was Jonathan Straiton’s “Night of Something Strange”; an audacious horror-comedy.

The movie already starts off in poor taste, but awkwardly funny enough, if you’re into trashy humor. A perverted janitor in a morgue or scientific laboratory (it is unclear what the setting is) discovers the lifeless corpse of a naked woman and proceeds to have sexual intercourse with it, ignoring the tag on her toe, stating that she was infected with a very contagious STD. Once back home, extreme pains erupt in his groin area before transforming him into a sex-crazed living dead. He rapes his own mother, infecting her as well, and goes off on a rampage on anything and anyone he finds. Any individual infected become insanely sexual zombies with an urge to rape. Our janitor hunts down a group of teenagers on a weekend vacation, and that’s when things get really dirty, in every sense of the word.

What I enjoyed about “Night of Something Strange” was that it didn’t dare to try outrageously ridiculous things, and for the most part, it works in a hilariously exaggerated way. The acting is decent, mostly, and the special effects, albeit a small budget, were very nice, doing a lot with little. Some scenes are so exaggerated that you cannot help but shake your head with laughter, because they’re so preposterous. Penal and vaginal creatures/body extensions are on the menu.

Now, of course, it isn’t a mainstream theater motion picture, as I mentioned, having a basic storyline, involving teenage love, the typical jock and the overweight, chubby nerd, despite the stand-out detail that the infected are sex-crazed. Also stated above is the average special effects; not the worst I’ve seen, but far from the best, as well.