The Stay Awake
The Stay Awake
R | 17 April 1987 (USA)
The Stay Awake Trailers

The ghost of a serial killer, executed for murdering students at a Catholic girls' school, returns to the school to take revenge on the current student body.

Reviews
Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
shazbat69 ..... I played the dead nurse at the beginning of this film LOL. It was a long long time ago but it was fun to be involved in :) I never actually saw the full film until recently, so I don't think I will be recommending it to my kids! "The acting is terrible; it's so bad that even the accent of the main actresses is horrible. The situations are slow and boring. There's little action in the movie but it's so cheesy that you can't tell if it's intended to be funny. The demon is laughable! those red eyes are pathetic. The serial killer ghost suddenly appears and tells things about darkness and it's power."I agree with the rest of the reviews too - rubbish!But it's nice to see yourself on film, even if it's just as a body half buried in the bushes LOL.
kclipper Here is what is probably one of the worst of the direct-to-video films of the 1980's. It starts off with the execution of a maniacal serial killer who supposedly raped and murdered eleven young girls. The first six minutes or so of this movie is quite effective in creating the false illusion that this might be a good flick, but ultimately what's to follow is an irredeemable and hopelessly dull, heaping pile of trash. The executed man from the beginning is somehow transformed into a demonic spirit that calls itself "Angel of Darkness", and wrecks terror on a group of annoying girls that are spending the night at a school for girls. Take "The Slumber Party Massacre", omit all of the nudity and gore, and you will have something close to this wannabe slasher film that miserably fails to exploit all of the usual 'Nightmare On Elm Street' clichés. The performances fail to be even slightly convincing, especially when they're supposed to be responding to any frightening confrontations, and the ghost eventually materializes into some green-skinned demon monster with red eyes that doesn't even stir up any laughs let alone scares. If you can make it through to the ending of this nonsense, then you are either on speed, or you have a serious case of insomnia.
insomniac_rod I'm almost sure that this didn't get a theatrical release. It's so bad it's bad; not to laugh about or feel pity for it.The acting is terrible; it's so bad that even the accent of the main actresses is horrible. The situations are slow and boring. There's little action in the movie but it's so cheesy that you can't tell if it's intended to be funny. The demon is laughable! those red eyes are pathetic. The serial killer ghost suddenly appears and tells things about darkness and it's power. "The Stay Awake" is a prime example of how low budget horror movies shouldn't be made. Pathetic f/x, horrible acting, terrible direction and worst of all there's no connection between the events.Please avoid this one at all costs. There's nothing good about it... There aren't even attractive women.Horrible movie to boot to the trash can! You better rent a direct to video horror flick from the early 2000 rather than watch this. Any Full Moon Pictures movie is way superior.
FieCrier I didn't find this to be nearly as bad as others have, but it isn't very good either, and certainly needn't be sought out to be watched.It starts well. Somewhere in America, a killer is being walked down a very white hallway, down a red carpet, to an execution chamber. This is intercut with the crime scenes of the various women he has killed. This prologue was nicely done, I thought. The killer makes threats to return to kill more women, to kill these people's children, and he claims to be the angel of darkness and speaks in a demonic voice.Nineteen years later, inexplicably somewhere in Europe, a group of young women are staying overnight at a girl's school doing a "stay awake" to raise funds. The killer shows up, first apparently as a poltergeist. We see shots from his POV, drifting into the school, through the hallways, as chairs move around, a picture falls from a wall, etc. This is intercut with the women doing aerobics in the gym. This scene goes on for some time. Some young men show up at the school to try to scare the women, and to hook up with them.It's quite a while before the killer strikes, about fifty minutes, I think. He appears both as a sort of cross between Gozilla and a giant rat with glowing red eyes and a whip-like tongue, and as himself with glowing red eyes. As the former, it's pretty silly-looking; as the latter, he's fairly creepy looking.There were some scenes I liked. One I recall: the women are scared by a gorilla mask which is thrown in front of them. They laugh at their fears, but when one of them picks it up she finds it to be heavier than it should be....The voices do seem to be strangely dubbed. As far as I could tell, the actresses were speaking English, but at least a few of the voices don't seem like they would belong to the actresses. The young women's characters aren't well differentiated from each other, nor are the young men. Frankly, it's hard to tell most of them apart even visually.