Dead of Night, a new horror movie inspired by the Night Stalker murders, opens in theaters on Friday the 13th.
The filmmakers say Dead of Night was “inspired in part by the fear that gripped Los Angeles during the Night Stalker era,” the mid-1980s investigation into Richard Ramirez. Director Derek Sulek and producer Oren Kamara drew on the public fear around that investigation rather than recreating the murders.
Inside their fictional story, a TV news sketch of the killer nods to the sketches that circulated during the real manhunt, with the suspect’s identity kept deliberately obscured.
Mark Villalobos of Monster Effects in Los Angeles sculpted the killer’s mask in clay, working from a kabuki-inspired idea from Kamara, with Sulek also looking to the mask designs in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
The fictional story is set in Elmwood Heights, where a teenage girl’s mutilated body is found and the town falls into terror. The newly elected mayor sets up a Neighborhood Watch, the killings keep coming, and Dermot Mulroney’s Sheriff Weaver hunts the masked suspect while his daughter Kelly becomes obsessed with what the killer wants.
Level 33 Entertainment opens Dead of Night in U.S. theaters on Friday, November 13.
