Night of Fear

A young woman is riding her horse in the forest but is left to walk when her horse bolts. She is then stalked and taken prisoner by a maniac. Some time later another young woman is forced off the road while driving. Her car is damaged and immobile and the maniac is now after her... Reasonably interesting and intriguing, though a bit lacking. This is really a short film with pretensions of being a feature film. Only 50 or so minutes long and some scenes feel padded. A tighter script with more plot development and this would have been great.

Could of been a work of art if it was longer and had dialogue

Night of Fear is an interesting little horror flick that plays out like a short film due to its run time of 54 minutes. Director Terry Bourke is able to compress enough chills in the movie's short run time to make it quite an entertaining thrill ride. Along with its follow-up Inn of the Damned, this film would be an early exercise in Australian horror filmmaking. Also the film exercise the ozploitation genre, which is in fact Aussie Exploitation, and the result is an interesting short that relies on atmosphere and a fairly basic plot of a woman being terrorized by a maniac in the Australian outback or backwoods. What is impressive is that the movie has little to no dialogue, and acts more on its visuals to tell its story. Bourke is able to pull it off due to good directing, and a fairly good cast to boot. This film has its flaws, but for the most part works well enough for its run time. The idea could have been built upon more, but this was Aussie horror in its early years, and they were still trying to experiment with what would work in the genre. This is a tense movie that steadily builds up the fear in the viewer and though it is not a classic, as this film would be surpassed by far better pictures in the Aussie horror genre, it is still worth checking out due to its impact on future films in Australian cinema. A dark, macabre and psychotic ride wait you in this weary ride into madness.

(***): Thumbs Up An Aussie horor flick that I found to be quite good.