Nightbeast

A spacecraft crashes near a small American town, and the creature aboard begins killing local residents. The alien proves largely resistant to gunfire and is armed with a powerful energy weapon, leaving the sheriff, Jack Cinder, and a group of townspeople to mount a defense. A local politician, meanwhile, has his own plans for the situation, which complicate the evacuation effort.

Nightbeast is a 1982 American horror and science fiction film written and directed by Don Dohler. It stars Tom Griffith as Sheriff Cinder, alongside Jamie Zemarel, Karin Kardian, George Stover, Don Leifert and Anne Frith. The production, from Amazing Film Productions and Kinetic Image Ltd., runs 81 minutes and carries an unusually large credited company of 48 cast members and 43 crew members for a low-budget independent genre picture.

Audience reaction has been modest. On IMDb it holds a 4.3 rating from around 2,700 votes, while on TMDB its 4.1 comes from a much smaller base of 73 votes. The larger IMDb sample suggests that the film has retained a small cult following over the decades rather than reaching a broad viewership, and the low scores place it firmly among the inexpensive regional genre films of its era.