Happy Hell Night (1992)

Oh Canada. We've celebrated your movies for an entire week and you continue to deliver pure blasts of polite insanity to our streaming devices and DVD players! Halloween night 1966. A priest named Zachary Malius kills seven frat boys from Winfield College for breaking into his family's crypt and recreating an occult ritual. He's placed into an insane asylum, where the laws in Canada are, well, insane. He's never fed and has been in a catatonic state for years, surviving by eating bugs.Kids have learned nothing in the intervening quarter century as they go right back and do the ritual again. Malius comes back to life and starts doing what slasher villains do best - wipe out people right after they get done having sex. At least he has the excuse of being a priest. One wonders why they decided to make him like Freddy Kruger, yelling things like, "No sex! No TV! No parking!" That said, the fact that the Catholic Church covered up these crimes should come as a shock to no one.Sam Rockwell shows up briefly as the younger version of the character that Darren McGavin plays for the rest of the film. Jorja Fox from TV's CSI also shows up.Director Brian Owens is also behind 80's video fave Brainscan. There is one genuinely unnerving scene where a crucified Christ comes to life and starts screaming, then falls to the floor and breaks into small pieces. Shades of Enter the Devil!There are moments of slow motion flashbacks and hints of art here that are undermined by horrible looking titles. It's like his movie got only so close to being well art directed. It's not the best or worst slasher ever, but it won me over. Maybe I was watching it at 2:30 AM, which always helps matters.

A promising concept, is let down by its stringy narrative and so-so execution. I've never even heard of "Happy Hell Night" before and this early nineties, offbeat campus low-budget slasher is something that wouldn't have felt out of placed in the 80s. Tacky, gory and sleazy, but something just seemed to be missing or should I say something felt out of place. I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been much better.In 1963 seven members of the Phi Delta Kappa Fraternity were found brutally mutilated inside Winfield Mausoleum. The accuser priest Zachary Malius was put away in the local State Asylum. Twenty five years later, a hazing prank goes wrong when some guys accidentally release Zachary from his cell and heads back to Winfield College to continue the butchery.The killer is suitably creepy and genuinely unnerving in appearance, but when he opened his mouth to spout out an amusing quip (ala Freddy Krugger style). It simply killed the mood. "No…" this, "no…" that. Done in a scratchy tone. No, please stop talking. Sadly this is too distracting (including its loopy tone), as it does bestow a nasty, atmospheric ambiance with some striking imagery… especially with the sequences of the killer lurking in the shadows and of course when he's stuck in his cell. Even then odd surreal images crop up too, involving a Jesus statue in a church and the setting has a Gothic touch. The darkly twisted, but untapped story takes awhile before hitting its strides, with the usual campus lounging and dramas. But when it kicks off the slaughter, buckets of blood flows (very cheap jolts), sex and nudity escalates (sometimes kinky) and stupidity is ensured. Some passages during the stalk and slash stages, just seem to jump around in a rather jaded manner. Not making much sense with little in the way of cohesion. The music does create some chills with its foreboding cues.The cast attached features some names; Darren McGavin, Sam Rockwell, Jorja Fox (from the TV show "C.S.I") and Ted Clark. But these folks have nothing more than minor roles. The rest of the performances are extra-ordinary… some rather bad in their amateurishly buoyant deliveries. Crude dialogues come out of their mouths with a real joke-like emphasis.Nothing special, but kind of fun over-the-top, b-grade shocker.

This is a surprisingly great low budget slasher, that's creepy, with a very cool killer and lots of blood!. I wasn't expecting much when i picked this up on DVD, however what i got was a surprisingly great slasher that was quite creepy at times, with decent characters and a very creepy setting, plus the ending was awesome!. Sure some of the dialog was cheesy, and it may have a routine feel at times, however i couldn't help but really enjoy it, and the finale was quite suspenseful, plus it has lots of great bloody death scenes for gore hounds (like me)!. The killer is really cool looking, and the plot is somewhat original, plus all of the characters were very likable!. It has plenty of nudity, to enjoy, and the character development was above average, plus the opening was pretty cool. This is a surprisingly great low budget slasher, that's creepy, with a very cool killer and lots of blood, i highly recommend this one!. The Direction is very good. Brian Owens does a very good job with the low budget with great camera work, creating a lot of creepy atmosphere, using a creepy location, good POV shots of the killer, and keeping the film at a pretty fast pace!. There is tons of blood and gore!. We get bloody stabbings,impaling's,man crucifix-ed upside down,ice pick in the foot,ice pick in the hand, slit throat,very bloody corpses,severed head, severed hand,ice pick in the head and out the mouth,decapitation,ice pick in the eye,tons of severed limbs all over the place, and LOTS of blood!. The Acting is surprisingly good for a slasher film!. Laura Carney is very pretty and is pretty decent here, she was fairly convincing, likable had good chemistry with the 2 leads, and did a pretty decent job overall i rather liked her.Frank John Hughes is very good here as Sonny he had good chemistry with Laura Carney, was likable and gave a solid show. Nick Gregory was somewhat unlikable at first however he turned out to be a decent guy i really liked him. Charles Cragin is fantastic as the killer!, he was extremely creepy, and gave an awesome show. Sam Rockwell and Darren McGavin have small thankless roles and are wasted. rest of the cast do adequate. Overall i highly recommend this one!, give it a shot. ***1/2 out of 5

Happy Hell Night missed their decade by a few years. I believe that's why the movie is so obscure and not very well received. It had a lot of bad characters, choppy editing, and a wasted Darrin McGavin. There also seemed to be some missing ingredients. We would see a character sitting in a chair and the next time we saw that character he would be dead on the floor with no explanation. It does have the creepiest killer since Barlow from Salem's Lot though. There were also some very creepy moments in the film, just too few of them. If the whole film would have taken on the tone of "Scary Jesus" scene, the film would have been great. Other than that, this is not the best fraternity prank/slasher film. How to do it right: Hell Night. How to do is so terrible wrong that it becomes right: Pledge Night. This film is somewhere in between those two and, thus, not as enjoyable. Keep an eye out for a pre-fame Sam Rockwell and Jorja Fox.