One of the approximately 654 movies called Dead of Night but better known under its much more accurate U.S. home video and Canadian theatrical title Mirror of Death, this low-budget indie is no great shakes, but it has a lot of personality and DIY charm. You can tell it was made by people with not much technical experience (the film score drowns out the dialogue in the bar scenes, the volume and audibility of the actors' voices vary wildly, often within the same scene, and the lighting can be dimly or brightly lit within a single scene), but it's never boring, and I even got a few big laughs from it (some of which were probably not intentional).
The film opens with a bruised and battered young woman, Sara (Julie Merrill), running for her life down a Hollywood street at night. She calls her sister, actress April (Janet Graham, under the name Kuri Browne), collect from a phone booth. April and her boyfriend Richard (Richard Fast, under the name J.K. Dumont) are in the middle of a house party, but April tells Sara to come right over since she's only a few blocks away, despite Richard's exasperation at Sara's constant relationship drama. When he sees her battered face, he changes his tune and gets serious. April sends everyone home, but not before receiving a party gift from Mensa (George Carter, under the name Jordan Brown) (why were so many cast members acting under pseudonyms?), the only black man at the party. He hands her a book of voodoo rituals from his ancestral Haitian home and promptly disappears from the movie.
April, about to leave for San Francisco for two weeks for a film shoot, lets Sara stay with her until Sara gets back on her feet. She's a supportive sister, despite her annoying habit of condescendingly referring to Sara as Babygirl. While April's gone, Sara fends off another attack from her abusive ex Bobby (John Reno). Feeling ugly and low, she reads the voodoo book in the bath and decides to perform a ritual to make herself beautiful and powerful. The ritual, involving red candles, a mirror, and a circle of baby powder, works so well that it completely erases her bruises, but it also causes her to be possessed by the spirit of a vengeful empress named Sura, so don't try this at home, readers.
Sura gives Sara the confidence she's lacking, and she hits a local bar and picks up the bartender through some wildly unusual seductive tactics. These tactics include asking for a glass of water, accepting the bartender's offer of a free cognac instead, getting another man to give her a quarter for the pool table through a wily glance, making a great shot with the pool cue, and then busting some completely insane, unprompted, and unexpected dance moves for several minutes while making eye contact with the bartender. I could never do justice to Sura/Sara's dance moves (language is inadequate), but I'll try to ballpark it. Picture Elaine Benes attempting Kylie Minogue's moves in the "I Should Be So Lucky" and "Loco-Motion" videos, with just a sprinkling of Whitesnake-era Tawny Kitaen, but weirder. The bartender is absolutely grooving on it. The possessed Sara takes the bartender back to her sister's pad, but before they can get it on, the unlucky lad touches her red candles, and Sura goes ballistic on his ass.
This does not deter Sura, who hits the bar scene the next night. As soon as she walks in, a Hollywood hunk gets off his barstool and sizes her up and down with a leering smirk. Sura and the himbo immediately bust into some more insane dancing for a few minutes, this time with a Latin American flair. My wife and I were wheezing with laughter during these dance scenes. She takes the pretty boy back to Sis's house, where he gets much further (and farther) than the bartender. They have some hot but nudity-free shower sex where the camera spends an inordinately long time focusing on Sura soaping the man's navel. Guy had the cleanest navel in Hollywood that day. He spends the night and even makes a horrible-looking cup of coffee in the morning, but he touches the mirror and gets the same ballistic-on-ass voodoo chokehold.
Shithead Bobby decides to make another unwelcome return the following night, and the abusive jerk finally gets his comeuppance, mirror-spirit-style. April returns from the film shoot (which was supposedly two weeks, but maybe she's just returning for the weekend?) to find her sister digging graves in the backyard with a shovel. April asks Sara what we're all thinking, "What are you doing, burying cat tails and monkey nuts?" Sara responds to this predictable and conventional question by hitting her sister with the shovel.
Waking from her shovel drubbing, April gets Richard to come over. Sara explains that she has been possessed by an ancient empress, probably killed three dudes and buried them in the backyard, and doesn't even remember going full metal shovel on her sibling. April and Richard have a hard time with this news until they see physical proof. (Richard: "Shit! What the hell was that?") The trio decides to call a spirit whisperer to get rid of Sura by flipping through the yellow pages. They choose to go with John Smith (Bob Kipp, under the name Bob Kip, which I'm guessing was a typo and not a pseudonym) because, as Sara says, "his name sounds normal." John Smith bicycles over with a backpack full of spiritual items, and the showdown begins.
We're far from good movie territory here, but, as I hope my description above makes abundantly clear, this thing is far more entertaining than it should be. The performances are more consistent and natural than is usual for this kind of DIY project even if the behavior of the characters is sometimes inexplicable (the dancing). Technical limitations of sound and lighting aside, Warren's visual style is neither distractingly show-offy nor ineptly amateurish, and the movie hums along without getting bogged down or turning into a snooze. I wouldn't recommend this one to the average moviegoer, but if you have a soft spot in your heart for the low-budget b-movie (and if you read this blog regularly, I hope you do), I think you're going to have at least a little bit of a good time.
