I don’t want to bring the room down. But out of all the schemes concocted to exploit a celebrity death, none is more ghoulish than Dana Plato’s Last Breath. This CD-magazine combo from 1999 documents the final days of Plato—tragic star of the infamous 1980s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes—including an alleged audio recording of her final minutes. You would think that cultural artifacts related to Dana Plato couldn’t possibly get more bizarre than this.
You would be wrong.
Night Trap was an interactive, full-motion video game starring Plato that was released for the Sega CD console in 1992. Almost overnight, the game exploded in controversy because it featured women in halter tops battling driller-killer vampires. Along with Mortal Kombat, the game prompted a U.S. senate hearing to discuss concerns over video game content. This eventually led to the ESRB ratings system. In 2018, Limited Run Games reissued Night Trap for Nintendo Switch with a curious extra. Night Trap: The Movie was a bonus VHS containing the game’s footage edited together as a 50-minute horror movie. I have no idea who was responsible for this, but they deserve many head-bumps from kittens.
Strange things are afoot at the Martin winery estate. After the disappearances of several teenagers in the area, S.C.A.T. (Special Control Attack Team!!) tap into the surveillance camera system at the Martin family mansion. The team is shocked to discover secret rooms and traps in the house. S.C.A.T. sends undercover agent Kelli (Plato) and four non-undercover ladies to act as decoys during a slumber party at the mansion. All seems well until Kelli and friends discover . . the Augers! The “Augs” are vampires who wear black combat gear and drain the blood from humans with the help of a giant drill. There’s also a next door neighbor named Weird Eddie. He stops by the house, but leaves after someone calls him a goon.
Night Trap: The Movie isn’t really a movie. It’s an objet d’art that combines heavenly camp with early found footage mechanics to generate an unearthly horror relic. The 16mm footage from the game was never meant to be watched on its own. So with that context removed, we step into a newly discovered shadow realm. It’s like the 1990s TGIF programming block on ABC was transmuted to Laura Palmer’s living room in Twin Peaks. And instead of a sitcom like Step By Step, the channel broadcast this thing; an extraterrestrial beast that shimmers with zebra-print leotards, purple carpet, glowing green eyes, shredding guitars, 8-bit teleportation effects, necks being drilled, and lines like “so these are your lovely new friends from the shopping mall!”
From the chilling visuals of upside down corpses in the kitchen pantry to the lip-synch performance of a Night Trap theme song (complete with a tennis racket subbing for a guitar), from Dana Plato breaking the fourth wall to the endless fractures in logic, Night Trap: The Movie upends all expectations you might have of a movie that includes the word “movie” in its title. Still, the pace is uneven and the edit is sloppy. Plus the brief moments of unfortunate racial stereotyping don’t fly today. But the fact that this thing exists—and continues to inspire multiple fan edits—makes me happy.
Speaking of happiness, the producers of Night Trap made another full-motion video game called Double Switch in 1993. It stars Corey Haim. You can’t see me, but I’m making heart hands.
