Night of Evil (1962) User Reviews (4)

The story of a sad, and rather stupid, young lady.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 20 February 2017]

When this movie debuted, it must have caused a few eyebrows to raise. After all, early on in the movie a high school girl is kidnapped and raped by her classmates. While it IS handled very tastefully and discretely, this was hot stuff for the time. Sadly, after she is found on the side of the road by the police, her foster parents refuse to allow her home...as if SHE was somehow at fault. So, she's sent to live at a girls school. The film then cuts to her release. Dixie (Lisa Gaye) is vulnerable and some sleazebags realize it and take advantage of her. Eventually, you see he becoming a stripper and even ends up marrying a guy who's an armed robber and kidnapper!! By the end of the film, she's at the end of her ropes. Such a sad end for a nice girl who just didn't get any breaks.

Probably the most interesting aspect of this film to some will be seeing William Campbell (of "Star Trek" fame) playing a sleazy boyfriend of Dixie in the picture. He's very charming and sweet...and a rat down deep! Other than this, the film isn't bad...but it's not at all good, either. Sort of a super-cheap rags to riches to rags morality tale.

At the end of the day, "Night Of Evil" drops the ball

[melvelvit-1 · 5/10 · 15 July 2007]

Unloved foster child and cheerleader Dixie Ann Dikes (Lisa Gaye) gets abducted, raped and thrown from a moving vehicle after a date -and as a result gets put into a home for girls until she turns eighteen. Upon her release, Dixie moves to the big city and rooms with another alumni, Linda (Lynn Bernet), who's boss is sure Dixie has what it takes to become the next Miss America. Things start to happen fast after she's crowned Miss Colorado and gets swept off her feet by smooth-talking Chuck Logan (William Campbell). Dixie elopes despite pageant rules but is unaware Chuck is an escaped convict who robs a liquor store on their honeymoon. When he's arrested for kidnapping and the marriage comes to light, scandal erupts and Dixie spirals down into a seedy world of strip clubs, attempted suicide, armed robbery, a court trial, and imprisonment -all before she turns twenty-one.

The on screen narrator, syndicated columnist Earl Wilson, promises NIGHT OF EVIL is a true story "culled from newspaper accounts and court transcripts" but by downplaying the lurid, the film actually becomes a sensation-less cautionary tale for teens. Lisa Gaye, more talented than her more beautiful older sister, Debra Paget, actually elicits audience sympathy as a young girl whose trials and tribulations are really no fault of her own. The movie's title is pure exploitation and doesn't actually occur in a movie that's sold as "Truth ...shocking and naked! A beautiful girl ...and the men who twisted her dreams into a ...Night Of Evil!" William Campbell's first wife was actress Susan Morrow's sister, Judith Campbell Exner, President Kennedy's mistress. He was also the first actor to sing with Elvis Presley in the film LOVE ME TENDER (1956) also starring Debra Paget.

At the end of the day, NIGHT OF EVIL is a mildly interesting and, strangely enough, thought-provoking second feature marketed for a different kind of crowd that's sure to be disappointed.

I'm sure it was movies like this that spawned expert exploitation showman John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (1974).

Neither weak, nor great!

[RodrigAndrisan · 5/10 · 13 February 2021]

I will not tell the film, as most do here on IMDb, writing a review does not mean relating the action of the film in your own words, I have written this several times, writing a review means expressing a critical opinion about the film, that's all. So, this "Night of Evil" it's a mediocre production about the drama of a young woman played honorably by Lisa Gaye. The rest of the cast is OK. The story is trivial and very predictable. I also saw Lisa Gaye in "Face of Terror" (1962), a much better film than this one, she was a very good actress, who deserved to act on much better screenplays. And to be directed by first-rate directors.

Campbell's in the soup

[scsu1975 · 3/10 · 27 November 2022]

Someone had the brilliant idea of casting Lisa Gaye as a 26-year-old high school cheerleader named Dixie Ann Dikes. Make up your own jokes.

In the opening, Dixie is assaulted by the high school football star. Since her foster parents want nothing to do with her, she is sent to a "school for girls," but ends up as a roomie to Linda, an "alumna" of the school. Linda takes Dixie to meet her boss, who immediately decides that she should enter the Miss Colorado Beauty Contest. This makes perfect sense, since the movie was shot in Indiana.

Dixie wins the contest, becomes an instant celebrity, and meets Chuck (William Campbell). After a week together, they decide to get married. But this poses a problem for Dixie. Contestants in beauty contests are not allowed to be married, so the marriage is kept a secret. Another issue is that Chuck is a crook, but Dixie is too dumb to realize how her husband makes his money. He is supposed to be an escaped convict, yet he just comes and goes as he pleases, has a boat, swimming pool ... what the hell is this?

Things go downhill quickly, and that's just in the audience. After Chuck's plan at a kidnapping goes awry, Dixie finds out the truth. Somehow she becomes a blonde and ends up working in a seedy joint, where she is promptly slugged by a scumbag. When she recovers, she needs $40 in rent money. Her landlady looks her up and down and suggests she could probably make that amount in two hours. That's the only believable line in the film.

Dixie buys a gun, considers offing herself, then robs a drugstore instead. The courtroom finale is not to be believed.

I've seen Gaye in several movies, and her widow's peak has always bothered me. Here, she still has it, but in several scenes, it's barely noticeable, so that's a break. And she looks good in a bathing suit. Campbell is as repulsive as ever. He barks at one of his gang: "You keep your mouth shut and do what you're told or I'll cut your liver out." Personally, I would have liked to have seen that.

The rest of the cast is played by justifiably unknowns, like Sammy Mannis, who croons the equally unknown "Don't Ever Change."

The film is narrated by columnist Earl Wilson, who is saddled with crappy lines like this while describing Dixie: "The fears were gone now and so was the hurt, and there was a happy sense of belonging in the world. But yet, she still couldn't help but feel that she had been amputated somewhere."

The paying customers probably felt the same way.