CULT TV FLASHBACK: Dead of Night (1994-1997)

This year, Dead of Night: The Complete Series, was released on Blu-Ray by Vinegar Syndrome, and I just had the pleasure of falling into its unusual, low-budget and highly creative world. 

The title - Dead of Night -- may ring a bell. 

This low-budget, indie series was created by author Wayne Spitzer, with author Andy Kumpon back in the mid-1990s. They also star in the series as security guards Status (Spitzer) and AK (Kumpon), our protagonists.

What struck me immediately watching the first episode "Introductions," is that this show thrives in its analog universe, from the dawn of the CGI and Internet age. This is sturdy, old-school independent filmmaking.  Shot on location, well-lit, and with a flair for doing more with less.

Revisiting Dead of Night today is much like encountering a (wonderful) time-capsule. For instance, watching the splendidly-realized night-time scenes, you'll see visual "bleed" on the footage from bright lights in the frame, an artifact of video-recordings of the nineties. It's also a look I happen to love, and which grants Dead of Night a feel of almost documentary-type realism at times.

Dead of Night was shot in Spokane, Washington, and consisted, ultimately of twelve episodes (with an unfinished thirteenth one, "Tool," which has been completed for this blu-ray release), and here's just one more amazing thing about the Dead of Night story: The series aired on local television, on public access (Cox Cable Spokane), for three years.

What that means is that these young, ambitious, independent filmmakers didn't just make a low-budget, 80-minute movie by maxing out their credits cards, they constructed and developed a whole universe and mythology, week after week, on a wing and a prayer (and duct tape, as reported by Wayne Spitzer in a local news report of the era; below). 

In other words, the creators of Dead of Night made, essentially, 12 independent films, and on top of that, they got their series on TV, seen by millions.  

I love the enterprising, uncompromising, independent spirit of the series, and can see why for many fans, Dead of Night is absolute cult-TV nirvana. People can compare it to The X-Files, or Kolchak, or Twin Peaks, but the great thing about the show is that, ultimately, it is its own animal.

"Introductions," the first episode, commences with Status (Spitzer) meeting his new partner, AK (Kumpon), on his first night on the job as a new security officer for the Viktor Corporation. AK gives Status his badge, a gun, a walkie-talkie and a also friendly warning:

"Things out here happen a little differently." 

Immediately, Kumpon and Spitzer fall into an easy rapport with one another. Kumpon is affable and jocular, but with an edge that suggests he knows more than he is revealing to his new partner. Spitzer -- who is a great smoker on screen, by the way, and yes, that is harder than it looks -- is the newbie trying to figure things out, and the one a bit suspicious of his new environs.  

Did he just see a snake out there, in the dark, climbing a tree?

Status and AK work for the Viktor Corporation in Viktorville, a strange suburb with different sectors, and drive a squad car equipped with a high-tech "monitor," so denizens can contact them instantaneously when trouble arises. 

On his first night, Status receives a message on the monitor about a home intrusion. 

"Please hurry, there's someone in my house." 

This message leads the viewer into a tale about some unusual individuals, including an attractive woman, who appear to materialize and de-materialize out of our reality.  In some way, the laconic performances seem to flow well with the story-telling here. No explanations are given for the odd events in "Introductions," only the suggestion that we will learn more as the series develops. "Auld Lang Syne" plays on the soundtrack, and that's a song.about acquaintances not forgotten (even if they disappear from our sight?)  The choice of song heightens the eerie mood and contributes to the overall montage.

Sound quality is variable in some episodes, and yet it hardly matters, because Dead of Night develops and maintains an immersive spell, courtesy of an exquisite Carpenter-esque soundtrack, the ubiquitous falling snow, and the capable performances of the leads. The second episode, "Basilisk" finds Status and AK hunting a murderous giant serpent in Sector 8 with cattle prods, and there's the aura here of the characters descending into a nighttime, industrial underworld.  I like the lack of fakery in the choice of locations, and in the selection of shots. When it is freezing out, we see the characters cold breath exhaled, and back in the 1990s, you couldn't fake that effect.  You just know the actors are out at night, freezing, grinding through a long and arduous night shoot. 

This approach works well because on a low budget (as I can testify, as creator of The House Between and Abnormal Fixation), a good independent filmmaker must do more with suggestion, with tone, with mood, because the budget doesn't typically permit for more.

Watching Dead of Night, I see that approach playing out in the writing, the tantalizing revealing of one clue at a time, or on the dependence upon eerie location shots to carry whole passages of an episode.  It's the kind of low-budget filmmaking I admire, to be frank. A little goes a long way, and can carry huge weight.  

In "Introductions," an exploration of a creepy apartment gives us extreme-close-up shots of a clock, a wall-outlet, a cat, and then P.O.V. subjective shots of the interior terrain to establish both pace and a sense of space, geography.  Then we get in-camera-type effects to convey the slipping in and out of our reality.  It's rugged, analog filmmaking from a time when the opportunity simply did not exist to "fix things in post," or as is the case these days, with AI. 

But as the series develops, the special effects, the monsters and the story-telling all grow more elaborate and robust, and, finally, you can detect, this is how cult-TV obsessions (and fandoms) are made. With creators experimenting, finding what works, getting stronger, getting better, growing more effective, and leaning into their characters and themes.

If you want to check out a cult-TV series that is unique, experimental, edgy, sharp and fun at the same time, you can find it all here....in The Dead of Night.