Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1990s

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Connelly is a lifelong genre film fan living in New Jersey. His Letterboxd profile is https://letterboxd.com/johnconn/

In 1990, Fangoria Entertainment launched Fangoria Films, a short-lived production company. Founded in 1979 as a spinoff of science fiction film magazine Starlog, Fangoria is a brand deeply associated with a certain kind of Gen-X horror fandom. What Famous Monsters of Filmland was a generation earlier, Fangoria became for a generation raised on slasher films and Tom Savini effects.

Fangoria Films would produce three features between 1990 and 1992. The first of these efforts, Mindwarp, is a post-apocalyptic mutant thriller starring genre heavyweights Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm. The third would be Severed Ties, a creature feature starring a later-career Oliver Reed. The second is the focus of this piece, 1991’s Children of Night.

Children of the Night feels in certain ways like an adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Or, perhaps, of John Farris or Charles L Grant, the kind of writers you might find in Paperbacks from Hell. The story begins with two teenage girls, eager to escape their small town. Together, they engage in a local tradition: symbolically washing the “dirt of this town” off of them by swimming together in a flooded church crypt. When one of the girls, Lucy, drops her crucifix, the pair accidentally awaken Czakyr, an ancient vampire with a penchant for virgin blood. Teacher Mark Gardner (played by Stargate SG-1’s Peter Deluise) and his friend, the local priest, must lead an effort to save the town from being overrun by the restless dead.

Children of the Night is directed by Tony Randel. Randel’s other credits include the only good Hellraiser sequel, Hellraiser 2 and Amityville: It’s About Time, the second-best Amityville sequel. The cast includes Karen Black — star of such horror classics as Burnt Offerings and Tobe Hooper’s remake of Invaders from Mars, but perhaps best known to this readership for Trilogy of Terror. The film also features a memorable turn by Juilliard-educated SNL alumnus Garrett Morris. Industry legends KNB Effects provided makeup effects for the movie’s bloodsuckers. There are many reasons why it is surprising this film is not a cult classic. If it were more widely available, I believe it would be. The first time I saw this film was on a bad VHS rip with Russian subtitles. The second time was on Tubi, where it is not currently available.