One Of Isaac Asimov's Best Sci-Fi Stories Was Adapted Into An Unrecognizable Mess

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Isaac Asimov's short story "Nightfall" was first published in 1941 in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction Magazine. It was one of his earliest stories, and it takes place on a distant world, Lagash, that is uniquely situated in the heavens. The planet is part of a six-sun solar system, meaning that at least one sun is shining at any given time. Some of the astronomers on Lagash, however, discover a disturbing, recurring 2,000-year star cycle in where the planet will experience a mysterious phenomenon called "night." During this night, all sunlight will be obscured and Lagash will see mysterious, ominous lights in the dark sky called "stars." Naturally, everyone on Lagash has an inherent fear of the dark.

Everyone fears the mysterious coming of night, too, and Lagash's own history is marked by 2,000-year-old apocalyptic fits. The ancient people worked themselves into a frenzy, thinking they were under the influence of the stars, and they became uncontrolled beasts. The ancients set their own buildings on fire just to make things bright again. When night finally falls, the people of Lagash see tens of thousands of stars, and realize, for the first time, the sheer vastness of the cosmos. Everyone goes insane. The story was one of Asimov's most popular at the time, and some Asimov fans might still consider it his best. 

In 1988, the legendary Roger Corman's production company, Concorde Pictures, adapted "Nightfall" into a feature film. It was written and directed by Paul Mayersberg, perhaps best known for writing the David Bowie alien film "The Man Who Fell to Earth." 

By all accounts, the 1988 "Nightfall" film is a dumb piece of junk.

The theme of Isaac Asimov's original "Nightfall" story is, of course, the limitations of the human mind in comprehending the cosmos. We cannot fit the infinity of space into our heads, and if we tried, we'd go insane. Moreso, the story is about how we reinterpret our cosmic panic through religious zealotry. The characters in "Nightfall" are concerned with weird (and invented) godlike forces controlling their actions. It seems, though, that the 1988 film version of "Nightfall" doesn't have those things. 

Indeed, if one reads through some of the movie's Letterboxd reviews, one will find that the movie juiced up Asimov's stories by sprinkling in a lot of sex. Even some of the kinder reviews, which praised the Arizona shooting location, costume design, and production design, still note that the cast is pretty miscast, the editing sucks, and the dialogue is even worse. 

The movie stars David Birney as Aton, a romance novel stud of the highest order. Aton is a character carried over from the short story. His wife (Sarah Douglas) listens to the doomsaying machinations of a creepy old prophet (Alexis Kanner) whose performance is wildly over-the-top. Naturally, the titular nightfall happens at the film's climax.

Many of the reviews were negative, although I did find a fun five-star Letterboxd review from a user named JoshSimmons who loved how terrible/campy the movie was. "It's like they hired Neil Breen to film it at Burning Man and they roped in whatever pretentious weirdos on too many drugs were nearby to star." That's a pretty glowing recommendation. 

The production of "Nightfall" was detailed in the September 1988 issue of Starlog Magazine, and the path from page to screen was evidently quite long. It seems that Julie Corman, Roger's wife, found the story in 1979 and thought it would make for a good, low-budget sci-fi feature. In the Starlog Article, Roger Corman pointed out that "Nightfall" was a difficult screenplay to crack because Asimov's story is very talky and not very cinematic. Adding salacious, cinematic things to "Nightfall" would betray the spirit of the source material, while being wholly faithful would make it boring. 

Per the Letterboxd reviews, "Nightfall" is both a betrayal and boring, and it does have a lot of forcefully inserted sexual material. Even Peter Mayersberg, who made the movie, was quoted as saying that sci-fi wasn't a very cinematic genre since the best sci-fi stories are idea-based, not image-based. In light of those comments, Corman and Mayersberg probably weren't the best picks to adapt "Nightfall." 

Chris Williams of the Los Angeles Times also gave it a very negative review: 

"If there was little suspense in which side Asimov was on in the science-vs.-religion battle, writer-director Paul Mayersberg at least paints the movie's rationalists as being as messed-up as its ignoramuses. Unfortunately, this he does with a 'Dynasty'-style series of sexual affairs and murderously jealous cross-affairs, resulting in many gratuitous shots of writhing limbs. He also shows a ridiculous flair for [an inept] editing style, resulting in many quick flashbacks to the gratuitous sex."

Yeah, that doesn't sound fun, does it? Curious souls, however, can rent it on Prime Video. We here at /Film once ranked it as the second-worst of all the films and TV shows adapted from Asimov's stories.