Shot in “Violent Vision,” which represents the psychedelic blue swirls surrounding McRaney during his periodic headaches, the film opens with Wesley and Susan (Lisa Dameron presenting the requisite bare breasts) finishing up a roll in the sack. Several slowly paced minutes later, Susan is stabbed in the face while giving confession!
The bikinied body of Wesley’s next girlfriend, a nurse named Kay (Charlotte White) who dragged his drunk ass home one night after he was mugged outside a bar, takes a fatal axe to the chest. Not that two murdered girlfriends and a trip to the cop shop prevent a pretty reporter (Gaye Yellen) from asking him out to a bar to watch a groovy (real) band called The Bored.
Directed by Joy N. Houck Jr. for his father’s Howco International outfit, NIGHT OF BLOODY TERROR is dreadful but watchable, if only for McRaney and Houck’s earnest attempts to be hip. Besides the psychedelic pinwheels, Houck adds fast zooms and solarized effects to The Board’s number while McRaney punches the hell out of a bully. The fight choreography is as bad as the photography and particularly the sound, which was recorded on Louisiana locations with poor acoustics. If you’ve seen PSYCHO — and if you’re reading this, you have — you’ll suss out what’s happening.
The skinny McRaney (who is shirtless a lot) gives a credible performance — he obviously took the role seriously — though you wouldn’t have predicted he’d have the career he did. To his credit, in his later years, he didn’t put NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR down. McRaney did another movie for Houck, WOMEN AND BLOODY TERROR, before moving to Los Angeles and working regularly in episodic television until landing the co-lead on SIMON & SIMON in 1981.
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