Disc Count: 1 (BD-R 25)
Picture: 720p (1.33:1 aspect ratio)
Sound: English Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: None
Slipcover: No
Starring: Shannon Tweed, Ted Prior, Sandahl Bergman, Chad McQueen, Frank Sivero
Written by Mark Thomas McGee
Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Rating: Unrated (many strong, prolonged sex scenes, violence, and language)
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Poster
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What's It About?
When a horror novelist named Howard Hansen buys an oversized glass jar containing a bizarrely shaped picked monster from a small shop in Chinatown, he is quickly affected by its supernatural powers. Not only does he write unprecedented number of pages of manuscript, but he also becomes sexually more aroused. This unusual change begins to make his wife, Peggy, uneasy, especially after their new, sexy blonde secretary, Carol McKay, arrives.
Howard and Peggy were unaware that Carol was conspiring with her partner, Molly Dunlap - Howard's greedy agent - to steal the manuscript. Carol was quickly possessed by the bottle's spirit, playing sexually aggressive and violent games with Howard and Peggy, constantly threatening Peggy. Ultimately, she turned on Molly, leading to an extremely violent climax where almost everyone used automatic weapons to indiscriminately fire at their accomplices. (from back of the blu-ray box)*
*The back of the box is in Chinese so I had Google Translate translate it for me and it gave exactly what is written above, warts and all.
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Video/Audio
POSSESSED BY THE NIGHT was released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1994 by Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video where it has stayed, at least in the US. In 2025, German boutique label, WMM, released the film on Blu-ray. I could only find one review for it where the reviewer says:
The picture quality is acceptable DVD standard and offers good sharpness, but don't expect a true HD experience. Furthermore, the picture is in 4:3 format.
It looks like this German release might be an upscale, which is something a few German companies have been known for. I don't have that disc, so I can not confirm nor deny whether it is an upscale or not.
This being said, the version of the film found on this disc IS an upscale. I had watched POSSESSED BY THE NIGHT a ton of times when I was a teenager so I have some very vivid memories of what the film looked like and I have to say that this is what I remember. Not the upscale part but the source part. The source is clearly a video source and not the film negative or a print.
The upscaling isn't too bad. It's not on the level of SCREAM QUEEN HOT TUB PARTY or the BIKINI CARWASH COMPANY upscales, which were beyond terrible, but they aren't nearly as good as the HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. There were times where the upscale did bring out the best of the picture with decent amounts of detail but then there were times where it looked like you were clearly watching an upscale.
Then there's the compression used. I have no idea what they were thinking when they thought the compression they used was good enough. The titles are shown over black screens and
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Extras/Packaging
There are zero extras on this disc.
The disc has a menu but it is one of the worst, most basic menus I have ever seen. You get a play button in the bottom left corner of the screen and what looks like an open book at the bottom right corner of the screen. When the play button is pressed, the film starts. Easy. When the open book button is pressed, it takes you to a screen of ten timecode choices. Not pictures. Just timecodes. These timecodes will dump you into the middle of a scene. There is a prolonged sex scene that is broken up into two chapters. The second chapter takes you to the middle of the scene. It is really weird but I kind of expected this given the weirdness of this release.
The packaging is very cheap looking. The front cover features a faceless model wearing black lace bra and panties along with a robe while holding a gun. The back cover features screenshots from the film along with the plot description I included above. There is also a postcard featuring a shot of Sandahl Bergman from the film. The shot is pretty random too.
The film is broken up into 10 chapters.
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Overall
I love
POSSESSED BY THE NIGHT. It isn't the best film Ted Prior has made. That would be
KILLER WORKOUT. Hell, it's not even the funniest. That would also be
KILLER WORKOUT. It is the sexiest though. I have always loved the different reasons filmmakers in the 90s would come up with to have a sex scene but I have to say this might be my favorite. There is a one eyed monster in a jar that makes people horny. That's it. There's nothing more to it. The sex scenes are pretty good too. Director Fred Olen Ray has always been good at giving us exactly what we have come to expect from a 90s erotic thriller. I always knew what I was going to get when I rented a Fred Olen Ray erotic thriller and this was no different. The film doesn't offer much outside of the erotic thriller stuff but we didn't put this into the player for the story. It's an entertaining piece of 90s erotic trash and I love it.
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Film
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Packaging
 (MPIR Distribution) Blu-ray Review + Screenshots + Packaging Shots){kind=link}
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