Skull: A Night of Terror!

My review was written in June 1989 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.

"Skull: A Night of Terror" is an uninvolving hostage pic from Canada. Direct-to-video title originally was called "Don't Turn Out the Light".

Robert Bideman is a cop haunted by nightmares of the time he killed an innocent girl while she was being used as a human shield by thugs. Now he's living in the country with wife Nadia Capone and two cute kids, when the nightmare literally comes back to haunt him: cons use a woman as shield and this time he backs down, allowing them to escape.

They coincidentally take over his farmhouse, torment Capone and kill Bonnie Bec, Bideman's secret mistress who also is the wife of Bideman's partner, Paul Saunders. Final siege, sort of "Straw Dogs" in reverse, is not very exciting.

Title heavy Robbie Rox is not as menacing as one would expect, and his scenes with Capone's little daughter are almost fatherly rather than exploitation-oriented. Both monikers for the film are misnomers, as very little action takes place at night.