User Reviews

The award-winning Isaac Asimov story is very poorly adapted into this perpetually uninteresting, plodding production. A planet somewhat like our own has been bathed in sunlight (after all, it has three suns), and now it has been foreseen that the sunlight will disappear, and darkness will reign. The residents, some of whom are terrified by this concept, divide into two factions, enacting the ages-old debate of science vs. Superstition.

This viewer is not surprised to hear that this is NOT particularly faithful to the story (as it is, Asimov disowned it). It's such a deadly dull affair with nothing to really hook a viewer. Being that it was produced by B movie outfit Concorde, it's low-budget through and through. It's very inscrutable, and, although it creates some mildly watchable visuals, it features a largely nondescript cast that is hardly convincing. Star attraction David Birney ('Someone's Watching Me!') gives a performance that is as boring and colorless as the film itself. The appealing Sarah Douglas of "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman II" is on hand, but she's not given anything truly interesting to do.

"Nightfall" was badly scripted by director Paul Mayersberg, who'd fared a lot better a dozen years previous writing the screenplay for "The Man Who Fell to Earth"; this at least features a decent music score by Frank Serafine, but that is not nearly enough to redeem this forgettable movie.

Three out of 10.

Somewhere . . . somehow . . . one of the finest short SF stories ever to be penned was brutally transmorgrified into a mishmosh of New Age symbolism heavily overlaid with bad acting. Asimov's original story was a well crafted tale of slowly consuming fear over a natural event. Mayersberg's film version by rights should have been a major genre event. Instead we find veteran character actors such as Sarah Douglas and Alexis Kanner (who should've known better) trying to shore up one of the worst David Birney performances ever filmed. Only two things can be recommended about this film: an interesting poster, and the fact that it was filmed in and around Paolo Soleri's "Arcosanti" architectural project out in Arizona.

Having read the classic sci-fi story by Asimov, I was, of course, expecting something better. In this case, seeing two wheelchair-bound spasmatics fighting each other with brooms and a bucket of manure would qualify as "better". This film was even worse than "A Boy and His Dog", another sci-fi semi-classic rendered horribly on film.

After being told about this film, Asimov reportedly told everyone he could that he had nothing to do with making the film, and to avoid it at all costs. He's probably rolling over in his grave right now just thinking about it.

The filmmakers attempted to portray a primitive society on the brink of technology, but what it looks like instead is that they simply raided the wardrobe closet of a low-budget renaissance festival. All the sets are little more than tents erected in the middle of a desert. Their astronomical "sounding" instruments are seashells and string glued to pieces of wood. (Yes, seashells - I wish I were making this up, but I'm not.)

My only regret is that I actually stayed to see the end of the film, in the hopes that the film might redeem itself with a climactic ending. Nope.

Take my word for it, if you don't like the first five minutes of it (and you won't), stop right there.

Everything about this film is bad: a pathetic adaptation, a boring screenplay, absurd sets, a soundtrack that is worse than my dog's barking and acting that can only be described as perpetrated.

There is not one single redeeming quality in it, and it is completely useless except maybe as a textbook example of how NOT to make a movie.

Bad as it is on its own, it is all the more painful if you are familiar with Isaac Asimov's classic short story, on which this absurdity is allegedly based - even though any similarity... no, there are no similarities.

If IMDb allowed negative scores this film would deserve one. A chimpanzee with a home video camera could (and would) have made a better film than this on the first try. Just skip this junk.

I actually paid money to see this in its mercifully brief theatrical release in 1988. The (tiny) audience had fun ad libbing dialogue that was much better than that provided the hapless actors. The film is bad in so many ways that it is difficult to pick out the worst element. Was it the art direction? The acting? The dialogue? The cinematography? The costumes? The plot? The editing? The music? In the end I think the worst thing is that it will probably insure that no decent film will ever be made of Asimov's "Nightfall".

The good doctor wrote that he had never seen the movie, and that he had nothing to do with it. This probably added a couple of years to Asimov's life.

I can only say that the other reviewers here at IMDb have been far too generous. This film is worse than you can imagine.

One might guess that this movie gets so many bad reviews because Asimov fans felt it wasn't entirely true to the original story. But it's more than that, it's just bad. True, it was a complete sodomization of the wonderful Asimov story. And it seems likely that only Asimov fans ever saw it. However, likely as that may be, allow me to warn you that this is hands-down one of the worst movies ever. The only thing keeping it off the bottom 100 list is that there probably weren't 625 people who are dumb enough to have seen it and masochistic enough to want to relive the experience by looking it up here. The casting was atrocious. The acting was terrible. The story was appallingly bad. The lighting was so dark you couldn't tell who was speaking. If you want to compare my opinions with those of real people, I actually liked 'Howard the Duck' and 'Transylvania 6-5000'. This is lightyears worse than those. This is not even "so-bad-it's-funny"-bad, like 'Plan 9', this is just plain superlatively bad, with no redeeming features.

I doubt anyone will get far enough in the bad reviews to feel the Golden Aura Glow of someone who actually had a part in this dreadful movie. Asimov's story upon which this movie cashes in without involving much of the Brilliant storyline, is one of my favorite fiction pieces. As filming began, it was apparent that this film would have little to do with either Asimov's vision, or much of anything else. What I remember is a bunch of posturing by self-absorbed Californians, and scenes filmed which seemed slathered in pretentious symbolic nonsense. Is making a move exciting? Only if sitting around waiting can be considered "exciting". I'm not sure if I saw my "part" when I viewed this grainy, poorly shot, horribly edited movie in a theater in Phoenix. The fact that it only lasted in the theater for THREE DAYS is a testament to its quality. My Part was brilliant! I am at the back of the crowd as we try to catch a view of what's going on way ahead of us. I thought I was Innovative- moving back and forth (this was shot from behind us) as would a person trying to get a view over the heads of those in front of him. I'm sure if the picture had been better done- like if it was up for an award, I'd have been singled out for portraying someone trying to see over the heads of the crowd in front of him. Given this movie, Best Supporting Actor would not have been hard to achieve! My acceptance speech? Simple! You thank everyone you ever met. Looking back, it seemed like a bunch of Hollywood types who thought a Lot of themselves descended on an unsuspecting Arizona, and wasted someone's Good Money wasting film, acting self-important, and basically putting in a lot of time for Little Result. My favorite all time "Stinker" has been Tommy. I think the best way for a group of friends to watch Tommy is with things to throw at the screen. (except for the scene where Ann Magaret is sloshing around in soap suds). But I'd forgotten about Nightfall. Not only is it the worst Movie in the history of movie going, but I WAS THERE! (Please don't kill me!).

If you go to this film hoping to see a well-crafted cinematic adaptation of Isaac Asimov's short story "Nightfall", you're in for a BIG disappointment. The lowest-common denominator of the short story's plot are present (the suns that give the people's planet perpetual daylight are going out, and everyone's afraid of the impending darkness), but everything else seems to have been concocted in the mind of a New Age True Believer taking hallucinogens.

For instance, the people track the paths of the suns beyond the local horizon with "sonar", using a hand-held device that looks like a deerskin victrola. The doom-and-darkness cult that Asimov made only passing references to in his story is the central player in this movie, going to the point of getting their eyeballs chewed out of their sockets by ravens. In the story, the civilization was almost identical to 1930s Chicago without the light bulbs; in the movie, everybody lives in tents and grass huts. The book's scientific explanation of the impending darkness is notoriously absent in the film, perhaps because they weren't expecting their audience to have more functioning brain cells than the filmmakers did.

Asimov's short story would have made an excellent one-hour episode of _The Outer Limits_ if said episode had been made true to the original. The movie is neither true to the original nor well-done in its own right.

What on earth makes screen writers think they can improve on a classic?

This film has one thing in common with the Good Doctor's story - the title.

Read the short story -- or, if you really want to be depressed, Harlan Ellison did a script treatment that was published - the film could have been a contender....with a real script

This is one of the movies that falls into my category of "neat little movie", one of the personal favorites that I just happen to like for my own reasons. Admittedly, I often have a soft spot for films that get roundly panned by others, but have (in my opinion) redeeming values in their style, story, or strangeness. I think this movie stands on it's own as a reasonably well done film, and frankly I don't understand why people dislike like it so much. I can only figure that as a science fiction film with essentially no special effects, and no nonsense like aliens, star ships, exploding planets, etc., modern audiences just don't find it that interesting. The film is well cast with solid actors, it has some really good performances, and I'm just sorry it's disappeared into obscurity the way it has, it should have been a cult classic.

This is a good 1980s sci-fi adventure film based on an Isaac Asimov story. However, you will probably only enjoy it if you like old low budget sci-fi films from the 1980s and have some sympathy for outdated or lost movies like Beyond the Rising Moon. If you are the type of person who seeks out old 1980s sci-fi flicks, then this is for you.

The temptation to quote the comic shop guy on 'The Simpsons' and leave my entire review at "Worst movie ever" is tremendous, but there *have* been worse movies than this inept and insulting version of one of the masterworks of science fiction.

Not very many, though.

I can only assume that Mayersberg came up with this version based on no more than a one-line plot summary of Isaac Asimov's classic short story. It's inconceivable that he actually *read* it, given what he put on film.

The resemblance to Asimov's original 'Nightfall' is limited, and strictly, to the fact that this culture hasn't experienced a sunset. Other than that, he has taken off on a tangent that, had Asimov written it himself, would have immediately been ripped from the typewriter and consigned to the trashbin.

My experience with this film was even worse, being the great Asimov fan that I am. Had the tape I watched not been a rental, I would have taken it out into the street and run over it several times, ground what remained into a powder, and burned it before it could hurt anyone else. Alas, I had to return it to the video store, there to sit quietly and innocently on the shelf, awaiting its chance to cruelly crush the hopes of a subsequent SF fan.

This movie should only be rented if you're holding an MST3K night and want something suitable for riffing. Otherwise, save yourself the money. It ain't worth it.

And my summary line sums up this movie. This is easily one of the worst adaptations I have ever heard of.

What was so hard about trying to actually stick with Asimov's classic story? Did they think it would be boring? What they created is not simply boring, it's virtually incoherent as well.

In the world of science fiction, the long night has, metaphorically, always been with us. This film is a Black Hole that extinguishes the light of the original tale, sucks it in and imprisons it.

This... thing... was the most awful 89 minutes of my life... and I'm spinal injured... and I was married for five years to a woman with four spoiled daughters. I seriously don't know why I didn't walk out after the first ten minutes.

The amount of money they spent on this movie (NOT "film") is roughly the amount I have in the mayonnaise jar by my bed. And it's not full yet. Don't know what I was expecting from a movie whose Big Name Star was David Birney. Bet he wishes he'd gone golfing that weekend.

Thank goodness for IMDb, now I know the name of the people responsible and I can ask for my $6.50 back. I'll never see that 89 minutes again though.

As a poor student I was searching the video store's budget rentals for something to see. I was beside myself with joy when I found a film version of an Asimov classic. The 25p (40 cents) I spent on the rental is the worst investment I've ever made. Nothing happened in the film. Nothing at all. Then it got dark and the titles rolled. I'll never get those 90 minutes back.

Do not watch this film, unless you are some mad masochist.

I must have done something very bad in a previous life to deserve to watch this. Very very bad. If you took plot points between this movie and the book, there would be approximately 0.5% similarity.

make no mistake - this is not one of the fun bad movies, it is just plain bad bad bad bad bad.

Two sex scenes with a fine lookin' woman and they ruined them - b*****ds.

Whatever it was I did, I am sorry. So sorry.

Over 12 years later and I still want my money back! Truly the worst movie I've ever seen and I've seen quite a few bad ones (worse than even Bobby Deerfield - and if you saw that stinker then you should really be afraid). It is not even camp bad. It's just plain bad. Awful. Terrible.

Anyone connected with making this movie (and I don't include Asimov because it has nothing to do with his work) should be forced to undergo Burgessian reconditioning.

Don't waste your money. Don't waste your time. Life is too short to spend one second even considering watching this junk. Be warned - you will regret even taking the time to look up the information about this movie.

Save your money and your time. This was a pathetic, putrid, waste. Asimov's original short story is a classic of the storyteller's art.

What happens when a world bathed in sunshine experiences darkness for the first time in a thousand years?

Leave it to Hollywood to take a good story and turn it to meaningless drivel. To say this was a disappointment is a cosmic understatement.

Nightfall is pretty much accepted by the Science Fiction as the best short work of SF ever. Surely therefore it ought to be possible to make a halfway decent film out of it. This certainly isn't it. Although some plot elements are the same, nothing else is. The original story has almost a stock disaster-movie style build up in a society very similar to 20th century America. You'd never have guessed this from seeing the movie. I don't know why such drastic changes were made, but the original style would have made for a far better movie script. This story is crying out for a decent version by a director who has some feel for SF - preferably of the extended version of Asimov's original story co-written with Robert Silverberg.

"Nightfall" is truly the worst movie I have ever seen. I didn't actually walk out on this one, but only because I had rented this on video and therefore wasn't in a theater from which I could walk out of. "Police Academy 5" wins the honors of the only movie I have ever walked out of - a movie I only bought a ticket for because the other ones I wanted to see were already sold out. "Nightfall" made me truly appreciate the invention of the "fast forward" button on the remote control.

I saw it sitting on the shelf of the video rental shop, and having read the book by Isaac Asimov a few years ago, thought it might be an interesting flick to rent. The book was pretty good .... I figured a movie based on the book oughta' be decent.

DOH!!! Wrong ... think again.

This movie was in every way, shape, and form a complete waste of time and money by me as the viewer, and whoever it was that in any way contributed to the production of this pathetic film. To be more specific:

• The movie had almost nothing to do with the book. The book spent a lot of time having in depth discussions of the cultural impact of the darkness upon a society with ever-present sunlight. The movie focused on cheesy melodramatic lines by actors who wanted to look like Fabio, but looked more like the kind of people who hang around outside of the studio of the "Today" show every morning with a sweet potato pie which they drove in their Ford LTD station wagon from Alabama in hopes of giving it (the sweet potato pie, not the station wagon) to the guy doing the weather.

• The acting was horrible - It is no exaggeration to say I've seen better and more convincing acting in an elementary school play.

• The gratuitous sex scene was completely unnecessary and lousy - and something that wasn't even in the book. If you're going to have a lousy movie, then at least throw in a decent sex scene that everyone will remember and talk about, to help offset the terrible acting and plot - you know, kind of like any movie with Sharon Stone.

• The sets were terrible - "Clerks" was made for a fraction of the cost and made better use of the convenience store "set" on which it was filmed. This movie looked like someone got their artistic set design inspiration from a combination of The Flintstones and that "Star Trek" episode where Kirk is running around the desert hills of southern California trying to kill the guy in the cheap lizard suit.

• Costumes looked like something from Toga Day during high school. I mean, even Julie Andrews was able to make the curtains look somewhat like clothes. I've seen better costume direction in most episodes of "Scooby Doo".

I could go on and on and on about how bad this movie is, but as I sit here typing this review, I realize that just spending time talking about this movie is adding to the total amount of time in my life which I've wasted as a result of renting this movie. Be afraid ... be very afraid. If you see this movie sitting on the shelf at your local video store, rent it only if you're trying to scare off a boyfriend/girlfriend you've been trying to break up with. After forcing your significant other to sit through this movie, you can heap praise upon this pathetic attempt at film making thereby frightening away your potential mate by convincing him/her that you're almost, but not quite entirely, a complete and total waste of time - just like this movie is.

This film has great value as establishing a clear example of what a very bad piece of cinema looks like.

I had the misfortune of seeing this film in its brief theatrical release. I had talked my wife into seeing it by emphasizing the Asimov source material,and that the director, Paul Mayersberg, had done "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," and "The Man Who Fell to Earth." I cannot explain what happened to Mayersberg between the time he made these films and the time he made "Nightfall," other than to say that whatever it was, it wasn't good. That he was given the chance to make other films subsequent to this stinker argues strongly against the prevalent stereotype of Hollywood being heartless. Clearly, pity must have played a role in providing him with an additional opportunity.

My impressions: the locations appear to have been Topanga Canyon (although the IMDB lists Arcosante, Arizona), and the costumes (wigs and all) look like they came right out of the Ten Commandments' propman's trunk--probably the first time they'd seen the light of day since gracing Mr. Heston & company's loins.

If Isaac Asimov's surviving kin have any respect for him, they should seek to have his name removed from the credits; whatever the legal cost might be to achieve this, it would be worth it.

My wife and I stumbled upon this movie one weekend in 1988 thinking it would be a Sci-Fi thriller. The newspaper ad had a graphic making it look like there would be spaceships in battle, etc. Little did we know that it was the worst movie we had ever seen. I mean, the WORST... the worst acting, sets, screenplay, directing, film editing, music... everything. In fact, this movie is so BAD that people were walking out of the theater. I think it played the next week, but the theaters yanked it out before the next weekend. I've found a copy on VHS and love fooling my friends that it's a 'great epic'. Someone should start a new 'cult phenomenon' like 'Rocky Horror' for this one.