Idiot-Deluxe 1983: A Year At The MoviesThe best movie of 1983 (disregarding the Oscar's, entirely) is RETURN OF THE JEDI, the worst movie of 1983 is A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER; an unbelievably pathetic "horror film", directed by veteran Sexploitation film-maker Doris Wishman.A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER is so bad on so many levels, it's really a marvel to behold, though ultimately it is extremely boring and it's only entertainment (for me at least), is it's astronomically high levels of ineptitude. It's a complete comedy of errors, being crudely amateurish and unpolished in every possible aspect, not to mention nonsensical. A total hatchet-job of a movie!First off I'm not going to bother explaining the lame plot, I'm going to stick primarily to it's technical aspects; so here's a run-down of what you can expect to see and hear during the 69 minutes that this MISERABLE film runs. Casting: Consist's of a group of people (who act as if they've never been in a movie before) lifelessly interacting with each other inside the drab and depressing confines of what appears to be a modest apartment somewhere in "Woodmeyer Lake, a small town in the midwest". The movie's prodigious acting talent is "bolstered" by the petite 70'/80's hardcore porn star, Samantha Fox, in the central role of "Vicki". To further add to the movies profoundly disjointed and out-of-synch feel, they actually used two, vaguely similar looking actors, to portray the character of "Billy" who is Vicki's deceitful brother, so, in the blink of an eye, be prepared for those interchangeable Billy's. My favorite scene has to be when we get to see Vicki sitting at the dinner table, scarfing down a couple of paper-thin slices of Carl Budding ham (now that's High Cuisine!), while making faces at the others, in a feeble attempt to look disturbed. Evidently this movie didn't have ANYTHING of a budget - not even in the budget-breaking "cold-cuts department"; they skimped there too.Sound: From an audio perspective, A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER is the worst movie of all time; because it's sound is ALL OVER the place!!! It's effectively a silent movie (as only a few lines of dialog sound as if they were recorded live) that's littered with lot's vocal over-dub's - which are typically shrill and unnatural sounding. Then there's the music..... (which is near-constantly skipping and often crudely segue's) which is a HIDEOUSLY TASTELESS, hodge-podge combination of music taken from vintage skin-flicks (lot's of sleazy saxophone's) and cartoon music; with a consistent over-emphasis on a bass drum that goes..... Doink! Other audible aberration's that are to be found in A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER are the poorly-paced over-dubs by "Detective Tim O'Malley" that try to explain the plot; yet more and even cruder over-dubbing is done by the cast, which often display jarring differences in ambient sound and noise-level's, I noticed the sound "wavering" several times during the film's high-pitch tension que's, which was probably due to a tape-speed issue. Then there's the PATHETICALLY weak and poorly synchronized SFX used for the "killing blows" during the murder scenes, which are followed by some of the most unnatural and most UN-convincing death screams you'll ever hear. I sense that they tried to add an element of "sensuality" to some of the victims death wail's, but, it certainly doesn't work well, just awkwardly. Repeat, this is the worst sounding movie I've ever encountered, why it sounds even worse than Manos The Hands of Fate; hard to believe that's even possible, but this movie get's it done.Video: Then there's the dismal visual presentation to critique, it was filmed with a certain "morgue-like drabness" on an obsolete (if not fossilized!) 16mm film stock, effectively rendering everything in a VERY "80's low-res" kind of way; and saying that time has not been kind is certainly an understatement - but then again it looked bad when it was brand-new - so time is irrelevant. Also, just the like the sound of the movie, the picture often tends to jump. But why? Amateur cut-rate editing. As that's yet another major pitfall with this film, the editing, whoever cut and pasted this piece of sh** together must have been legally blind (or on drugs). To drop another Manos comparison, A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER has even worse editing then Manos does - say it ain't so! Somewhere in the middle of the movie expect to see what has to be the most glaringly obvious of all continuities, the ever funny night-day-night-day effect, meaning: events supposedly happening at the same time and same place - yet the sky turns from day to night and back over and over; as if the sun were being controlled by a light switch, ineptitude at it's finest! In comparison, EVIL DEAD is a shinning example of a low-budget movie which was also filmed on 16mm and even longer ago, yet looks fresh and lively - so no excuses from a technical standpoint.The numerous murder scenes in this film are the most inept and the least intense scenes of there kind ever filmed. There's so many limp-wristed and pitifully weak stabbing's and hacking's, at times the actors are doing literally nothing more than tapping each other with knives and hatchets. Then there's the gore effects and the effects seen here are among the lamest and most phoney looking ever, in fact the ONLY movie that I've seen that has lamer gore effects is SPLATTER FARM, which is an even cheaper movie if you can believe it. Everything's just so unbelievably bad in this movie and I'll be damned if I haven't seen more convincing murder reenactments at Chuck E Cheese! Ultimately what you have here is one of the worst movies ever and one really has to wonder, if it was deliberately made to be this bad.....in any case it IS that bad and the only movie I've ever seen that's worse than this is ROLLERGATOR!!!!!!

acidburn-10 Well it has been a while since I gave a movie a 1 star rating, but "A Night To Dismember" certainly deserves it. With its horrible editing, script, directing, acting, and even dubbing, hell this movie is horrible at everything.The plot= from what I made out is that we get a young woman named Vicki played by Samantha Fox (The porn star, not the 80's page 3 model and singer) released from a institution after murdering a couple people. But then surprise surprise people start turning up dead.I've looked up some info on this movie and found out that some of the footage is actually missing which is an excuse for the choppy editing Not only do we get some of the same scenes used-over and when the people are talking we don't even get see they're faces only close up's of the back of their heads and feet which makes this movie incoherent, and to make things worse we have a detective talking all the way through it, explaining about stuff that's not even happened, I mean that just makes this movie hard to follow. Another thing as well are the effects are just laughable hot dog sausages used as fingers, I mean come on why was this movie even released, it's not even so bad it's good, this movie is just plain awful and unwatchable.All in all "A Night To Dismember" is definitely a movie you should avoid, and probably the worst slasher movie of all time.

HumanoidOfFlesh Doris Wishman's "A Night to Dismember" is an ultra-cheap and sleazy slasher flick that simply has to be seen to believed.Wishman was an innovative low budget filmmaker.Her directing,editing and marketing of her films was all self-taught and almost all of her films were self-produced."A Night to Dismember" is her only full fledged horror film.It is also a big mess.The editing is beyond awful,the use of same location in several scenes is painfully obvious,the acting is amateurish and the story is illogical and confusing.Still the film is never boring and there are some fairly nasty scenes of gory carnage including ripped out hearts and chopped off fingers.Basically "A Night to Dismember" is about psychotic woman who gets out of an insane asylum and promptly starts butchering people around her.Give this low budget trash a look.4 out of 10.

Vornoff-3 For those of you who will not enjoy the surreal experience of a film completely composed of dubbed out-takes and low-budget gore without the companionship of certain silhouettes, there is hope! Simply rent the DVD version of this film and listen to the "commentary" by director Doris Wishman and her cinematographer, Chuck. They had me in stitches all the way through. It is obvious that neither one could follow the plot, or really figure out what to say to an audience about their opus, so they spend most of the time insulting each other and trying to remember who's apartment each scene was shot in. Doris: why won't you answer poor Billy Szarka's letter?