PLOT SUMMARY: A DJ at a local radio station has a show about horror stories not realizing he's in one of them.
Anthologies can sometimes be a risky pick as a viewer. You just know there’s going to be maybe one good story in the mix that you’re going to like. The rest are just supporting that one good story.
So you sit through the whole movie, expecting that there will be another good story because the one you enjoyed was cleverly placed somewhere in the middle. Things can only get better now, right?
Most times the stories that follow are tedious, uninteresting and simply added to increase the running time.
A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio is not like the others. Yes, the title is a mouthful. I probably won’t remember the title after a few days, but I will remember that there was a movie where all the short stories were remarkable. And some of them were actually scary.
A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO Movie Plot
The movie begins with a voiceover. We are being told a scary story in which a woman has “darkness” inserted in her. Basically, her skin is ripped from the back and has something being inserted in her. She seeks out a man and entices him. Not long after, she gives birth to a baby, but it is invisible and branded the “darkness”.
Her lover embraces her when she goes to him one night, and he accidentally tears off the skin of her back. How he never saw the stitches in her back before...we will never know.
The villagers too find out and they, along with her lover, capture the woman who has also turned invisible. The villagers throw a sheet over her, grab her and hang her on a tree.
This story is being narrated by Rod Wilson, a DJ at a local radio station which is also his home. He has a passion for scary stories and promises his listeners a night of horror stories that will give them nightmares.
The listeners also call in and while some praise him, there are a few who give Rod a hard time.
Rod begins another story that takes place in an era where the dead were photographed with coins over their eyes.
A woman brings her daughter to one such assignment as she is too sick to take the picture herself.
A girl has just passed away and kept standing in a coffin.
The mother is still grieving and has to be taken outside. It is up to the little girl to take the photograph. That’s when strange things begin happening.
Through the camera, the girl appears to be moving. When a blurry picture is taken, the girl’s mother instructs her to take another. This time it becomes apparent the dead girl is malicious. She grins, disappears in the frame and when the girl looks for her, finds the dead girl standing on her head, waiting to take over the alive girl’s place.
The mother opens the door, to see the corpse with her daughter’s toy but imagines her daughter must have lent it to her to make her look more “alive”.
The mother and daughter leave, and the girl smiles wickedly.
The stories continue while Rod repeatedly receives a call that keeps breaking off.
In the next story, there is a prisoner who has been given an unusual punishment after mutilating a schoolgirl. He has his arms and legs cut off surgically. It is up to the victim’s family to decide how much he should be cut off.
The prisoner keeps begging the nurse and doctors to stop, but they haven’t received instructions from the victim’s family yet. The prisoner is also set as an example to delinquents to never commit a crime. While the young are scared, the teenagers show disregard. The prisoner eventually gives up and no longer cries when more of his body parts are surgically cut off. It comes to a point that the victim’s family too can no longer watch.
Eventually, the prisoner is mutilated to the point he disappears.
This was one of the most disturbing stories.
The next story is of a model who had humiliated a makeup artist. His revenge is cutting off her scalp along with her hair. He runs a salon and promises 100% natural hair extensions. So the next time you’re wondering why your hair extensions are looking real...well here’s a story to give you nightmares.
Then there’s a story in Spanish of a dancer who is traumatized by what happened to her family. She enters her house one night and believes she’s being stalked by an alien who forces itself on her. She takes a knife and plunged it into his stomach.
It is revealed that the alien was actually her boyfriend and she was hallucinating. She closes her eyes to sleep only to wake up with a gasp when she realizes what she has done.
In the next story, a child finds colourful balloons around the house with packets of what looks like doll parts.
She goes downstairs to find a man with grizzly hair and dark eyes. His skin is completely painted white. He smiles his pointed teeth at the girl, then begins to pin his eyes nose and lips with blood. The girl’s mother’s blood.
The next story has a woman waking up in the forest on a plastic sheet, naked. She sits up to see a man on the phone, with his back, turned to her. She uses this opportunity to run away. The man follows her with a gun but she manages to evade him. She approaches a stream and takes a sip.
The man finally comes to the same spot but is dragged in. The woman appears and kills him while flapping her tail. She’s a mermaid and as told in legends, she utters a shrill siren screech.
Rod receives a call from a child who begs for help. The call cuts off and Rod tells the child that if he’s listening that it would be better to call the police than him. Outside, he hears a thumping sound and this reminds him of another story.
A girl returns home late at night, only to find she doesn’t need a key to enter. The door is unlocked.
She enters cautiously, arms herself with a knife and investigates the whole house. When she doesn’t find anything amiss, she changes and goes to sleep only to be haunted by a dream where she sees her sister Katie screaming because she sees a shadowy figure by her bed.
The girl awakes and thinks she sees someone in her room. She turns on the light and it is only furniture. She switches off the light and someone begins to move again, crawling on her bed. She turns on the light again and there is no one. At this point, she should just leave the lights on but doesn’t. Soon she finds a shadow standing at the doorway. She freaks and runs out but her keys are no longer where they were supposed to be.
The lights go off. This did remind me of the movie Lights Out.
The girl uses her camera phone and finds the keys upstairs in her sister’s bedroom. She reaches for the key only to see a shadow in the dark.
Her phone rings and it is her sister. Can’t be, because she’s apparently dead.
The girl uses the light, certain that the figure will go away. Except this time it doesn’t. The creature is her sister who is turned into the monster she was afraid of. She is attacked immediately.
A NIGHT OF HORROR: NIGHTMARE RADIO Ending Explained with Spoilers!
Rod receives a call again from the child who is begging for help. He gives Rod the address. It is from the radio station.
Rod freaks out but remembers that he killed his wife and son with a bat. The son was hiding in the chest and making a call to the police before he was found and killed.
Rod goes in a trance and warns his listeners that the nightmares never end.
Was Rod possessed or had simply gone insane? Or perhaps he found the stories of gore and macabre so interesting that he wanted to create his very own as the protagonist.
The movie is definitely a must-watch. For a change, all the stories were well told and at least two of them gave me goosebumps.
Watch it and get ready to be scared.
Scare scale: 4.5/5
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