Hell Night (1981)

Taking part in a poll on ICM for the best films of 1981,I started to keep a look out for DVDs of titles from the year. Becoming more aware of her credits after a friend kindly gave me a personalised signed photo of her last October,I was taken aback to spot Linda Blair's 1981 flick in the local DVD shop!,which led to me getting set for a hellish night.The plot:Deciding to give four new students a challenge before they are welcomed into the group,the president of the Alpha Sigma Rho,gives Marti,Jeff,Seth and Denise the task of spending a night in haunted estate,which the lone survivor of a family massacre is said to haunt. Desperate to join the group,each of them decides to take part. Using the estate as an urban legends,members of Alpha Sigma go to the estate to freak the four out by pretending to be ghosts. As they start making spooky sounds,the Alpha Sigma discover to their horror that they have stepped on an estate whose resident does not want any visitors.View on the film:Made during a (how should we word this?...) "hazy" phase in her life,Linda Blair gives a very good performance as Marti,whose "Final Girl" innocence allows Blair to show a Gothic Horror queen reserve manner,which is torn by Blair getting Marti to show some guts in the final Slasher phase of the flick. Stumbling round as the "jock" goofball, Vincent Van Patten gives a terrific performance as Seth,with Patten using Seth's comedic exchanges with Denise to show some wits which become more prominent as the night of hell begins.Initially looking like a typical dumb frat party Slasher movie,the first screenplay by Randy Feldman reveals the satirical bite that Feldman would later use on Tango and Cash. Playing around with Seth being annoyed at just being seen as a complete idiot,Feldman turns the "dumb jock" image of Seth into someone who actually shows intelligence over how to survive the night,which allows for a firm bond to be made between the four. Whilst being a bit inconsistent with the mythology of the estate,Feldman pushes those flaws aside with a delicious blend of the Haunted House and Slasher film,as the creepy things that go bump in the night that the four hear,is smashed by elaborate body count slayings.Making one of his few non-"Adult" flicks,director Tom DeSimone (who reunited with Blair as a co-director on Savage Streets) and cinematographer Mac Ahlberg (who later worked on Re-Animator) give the hellish night an eye-catching,stylised appearance,via slightly "mis—framed" shots bringing attention to the evil bubbling behind the gang. Filmed in three different locations, DeSimone cleverly makes it all look like one location,thanks to whip-pans and overlapping shots circling the estate,as the hell night unfolds.

HELL NIGHT is a run-of-the-mill slasher flick from the early 1980s, notable only for the casting of THE EXORCIST's Linda Blair as a college student who decides to spend the night in a haunted mansion along with some of her equally unaware companions. Of course, what starts out as a night of fun and hijinks soon turns into something a lot darker.To be frank, HELL NIGHT has little to make it stand out with other slashers from the era, except that it focuses more on building the usual creepy stalk-and-slash atmosphere rather than providing more gruesome thrills (the bloodshed is limited this time around). The characters are the usual archetypes, and nobody can go into this expecting Blair to deliver a good performance; she's here to show off her cleavage, and that's about it.The eventual unmasking of the villains makes for an effective spook-show scare, however, and I admit to liking the last half hour or so, where things really start to kick off with some great chase material. The presence of British actress Suki Goodwin in the cast was a nice surprise for me, even if the male actors deliver completely undistinguished performances. In the end, HELL NIGHT is one of those ghost train rides captured on film; good fun at the time but completely forgettable afterwards.

Four fraternity pledges must stay the night at creepy Garth Manor on Halloween night for their initiation into the fraternity. Of course the place is booby trapped by the fraternity brothers and sisters for fake fun. At the gates of the manor before they enter, fraternity brother Peter (Kevin Brophy) tells the scary back story of the place. He tells of how the owner of the house murdered his entire family except his retarded son Andrew who is rumored to still be around. This turns out to be more than a rumor. As the older members play harmless pranks, all of them are being stalked for real. Hell Night is part haunted house, but mostly slasher with the monster creature running about decapitating and twisting heads around. Director Tom Desimone gets some decent atmosphere with the cool location and delivers some good stalk and slash. The plot is simple, almost too simple as everything happens in predictable fashion. The characters are pretty wooden and the actors here are trying to sound convincing with poor dialog. There is way too much walking around waiting for something to happen, but the climax with Linda Blair struggling for her life with the monster on the prowl is high energy horror. The gruesome demise of the killer is inspired and memorable. Hell Night is well made and fun, but could have been better with a tighter script and better pacing in the second half of the film especially.

I didn't expect much from this film. I figured it would be a campy 1980s horror flick. Let's face it, if you've seen Linda Blair act before, then you know this movie can't be all that good. The only time she did a convincing performance was in the Exorcist and even then the makeup and effects pretty much did all the acting for her.I watched this movie anyway so I could see the "exciting" and "clever" ending, of which many of the other reviewer have spoken. Are they kidding? "Exciting," "clever"? All she did was drive the car into a fence and the guy got impaled. So what? It wasn't even that good and certainly not worth sitting through the rest of the movie. There wasn't even nudity to give this movie at least some value. Even when they came close to nudity it was the most lame sex scene that I'd ever seen in my life. Basically it was two kids in their underwear rolling on the bed and laughing and talking, the scene of which was peppered nearly throughout the entire movie.Sorry other reviewers, this movie isn't worth the time to watch it.