The Night They Came Home is the kind of movie that makes one disappointed in humanity. Where does one begin with the terrible film? Why don’t we just throw caution to the wind and skip the yellowing queues while we can? Perhaps it could be the ineffective scenes that portray Danny Trejo as an elderly man narrating the plot to two characters that don’t serve any purpose as the beginning of the movie can be quite deceiving. It is no surprise that American men show signs of taking pride in their violent behavior towards women and as an artifact from that time period, these episodes are quite disturbing. Trejo has racked up a number of horrific episodes throughout the story, and towards the end, some angry men brandishing rifles storm somewhere. As the tense robbery finale is seen, it isn’t surprising to hear what sounds like an explosion simply because it isn’t accompanied by a shotgun.
In truth no. Let’s begin there, however, since this appears to be a ludicrous proposition. Where has this film placed modesty? You would expect to see the typical visual aspects related to an American film, or a Western for that matter, and the genre implies a great deal of empty space. None of the effects were terribly imaginative.
Maybe the budget can be used to provide a reason why this production looked so low quality and cheap. But still, low-budget films do some amazing things and this is not really an excuse now. Nor does lack of resources excuse the ridiculously bad screenplay. A film by John A. Russo and James O’Brien has a decent premise but somehow leaves out the entire point, leaving the audience with a confusing story. The Night They Came Home’s marketing claims it is a semi-organized crime story that is inspired by true events. This telling documents the disrobing and re-draping of a Rufus Buck Gang that had fuelling ideas by Buck (Charlie Townsend) and came across a sheriff (Tim Abell) who wanted to go look into their matters.
This is a pretty peculiar movie and seems to want to cut the story in the middle. Neither Buck’s gang or the sheriff is remotely interesting, as it appears Volk’s overall direction was to wrap up after one take of any spoken lines. That said, the equivalency of these sides is rather telling as we know from the start where our allegiance would likely rest in the demise of the gang. Yet even as they have numerous violent acts (of a sexual kind and other), Volk along with the screenwriters build the climax towards a sympathizing posture towards Buck and his men.
Of course, there is no justification for this and The Night They Come Home reaches the end with a rather senseless gunfight set piece which includes the aforementioned bland sound effects which did not lend credence to the scene in any way. By the end of the film, we have already understood from various points in the story as well as different characters (besides a seemingly out of place Trejo, Robert Carradine pops up as a possible but unlikely informant, and even early on Brian Austin Green appears as another of the gang’s victims) who are expletives lost in a meaningless war of time, resources and most importantly, audience’s patience.
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