Hell Night

source: Hell Night

Even thought it's rated R (presumably for a little gore and an incredibly chaste sex scene), Hell Night is great entertainment for the family during the Halloween season. It's constructed like a fun theme park haunted house. There are cobwebs, secret passageways, and all sorts of things that go bump in the night. Linda Blair leads an appealing cast of sorority and fraternity pledges who are forced to stay the night in the spooky Garth Manor, which was the scene of several unsolved murders years before. Several pranks ensue, but the pledges soon come to realize that maybe they aren't the only ones there. More concerned with atmospherics, scares, and characters than gore, Hell Night was a bit of an anomaly at the time and still is. With the entire cast dressed in period clothes, the film has a timeless feel and looks more like a Hammer film than a typical teen slasher. This helps elevate the film and it's aged a lot less in the ensuing years than its contemporaries. Blair is especially good as the sweet natured Marti and the finale is about as pulse pounding and satisfying as slasher films get. A must see!

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.

The freshers Marti (Linda Blair), Jeff (Peter Barton), Denise (Suki Goodwin) and Seth (Vincent Van Patten) want to join the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity and need to spend the night locked in the derelict Garth Manor as part of their initiation. The fraternity president Peter (Kevin Brophy) tells that the owner Garth killed his family but the body of his youngest son Andrew has not been found. Further, there are rumors that Andrew is still alive and lives hidden in the manor. Later, Peter and his friends May (Jenny Neumann) and Scott (Jimmy Sturtevant) sneak in and return to the mansion to play pranks on the pledges. But soon the group of freshers finds the tricks in the mansion while there is the beginning of a crime spree in the manor. "Hell Night" is a brainless slasher, with a good storyline but awful screenplay. The plot has many flaws and the use of clichés and stupid decisions and situations. How operate with control and speakers in a house without electricity? Jeff and Marti seek out the killer with Marti holding one of his hands while the other holds the rake and the lamp. When they see monstrous killer, they decide to flee. Marti is escaping from the killer and finds a body on her way out and stops and returns to the mansion. The car does not start when Marti escapes from the serial-killer. There are lighted candles in the abandoned and locked manor. There are so many ridiculous situations that it would be possible to write a lot about this subject. My vote is three. Title (Brazil): "Noite Infernal" ("Hellish Night")

What impressed me the most about this "slasher" movie is I honestly cared about the characters and felt bad when they died! That never happens with me & horror movies-- usually the characters are annoyingly lamebrained oversexed fools and I can't wait for them to get axed. HELL NIGHT has much going for it, including an amiable atmosphere, enthusiastic & easy-going performances (especially by the Boom Mic, who I thought deserved an Academy Award for his brief but frequent appearances), decent sets (including the outdoor ones, a bit reminiscent of The Shining), and villains who I swear looked straight out of SCOOBY DOO. (Not that that's a BAD thing, but it's just not too scary.) I honestly thought the script was well-constructed and funny and character exposition was given in an unobtrusive but helpful way (i.e. Linda Blair working as a mechanic.) There is absolutely nothing new or groundbreaking in HELL NIGHT, but it's a sterling example of how to polish up an old apple and make it look appealing and new-- and taste good. (Sorry for that awful metaphor...) Contrary to what others might tell you, Vincent Van Patten really grew on me, and I loved that surfing scene. He's my boy! Rating: 7/10.

This film is everything most slashers are - i.e. redundant, pointless, silly and all the rest of it. However, unlike the majority of the sub-genre; this one isn't all that bad. The plot is hardly original in it's fusion of the haunted house tradition and eighties slasher trash, but at least it gives the film a slight edge over it's less imaginative counterparts. The plot sees a group of four high school 'kids' having to spend a night in a creepy old house as an initiation ceremony for the fraternity they want to join. However, this isn't just a creepy old house and by way of a super-camp story telling sequence, we learn that the master of the house killed himself, his wife and three of his four horribly deformed children. This, of course, means that one survived; and that one, is course, rumoured to still be hanging around the creepy old house. That is, of course, a rumour that turns out be true! What then follows is the usual slasher sort of stuff, with the kids inside getting sliced and diced along with the ones outside, who were just trying to make their new frat-mate's stay a little scarier. Linda Blair, now all grown up since her role in The Exorcist, takes the lead role and does pretty much what you would expect the heroine to do. There's some nice murder sequences in this film, but the gore is never over the top. I actually like over the top gore, but despite not having much of it, it never really harms this film. The murders are stylishly shot, and the way it portrays them allows it to be shocking without the need for a lot of bloodshed. In a sub-genre that is primarily concerned with bloodletting; this is actually quite admirable. The sets are one of the best things about this film. The Gothic mansion gives it that great atmosphere that is usually reserved for haunted house movies. The movie doesn't always make best use of it's settings, however, with too many scenes being restricted to close-up's when a shot that takes in more of the surrounding area would have been better. The fact that the killer is deformed gives it a bit of an edge over the likes of Halloween because aside from there being a killer, you also want to see him to find out how badly deformed he is. It is a disappointment when he's finally revealed...but the wait holds some suspense. On the whole, this isn't all that good; but it's not bad either. Slasher fans will find something to like.

I watched FRAT FRIGHT (also known as HAPPY HELL NIGHT), NIGHT SCHOOL, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE and this film, HELL NIGHT, one after the other during the span of an entire week, and I have to say that all horror films in academic settings pretty much suck. HELL NIGHT is totally cheeeeeeeesy. If it weren't for the (very) few sex scenes and the little gore seen here and there, this would play exactly like a SCOOBY DOO episode. 4 college students stay in a mansion with a bloody history. Some other students roam around the mansion to scare the 4. As expected, the 3 other students are killed first by the creepy people inhabiting the mansion. Then the 4 college students are next. Who's going to survive? Well, that's easy to figure out. The story doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If the students do this every year, why do the people living in the mansion suddenly decide to kill off the students now? No reason is given for why they decided to go on a murderous rampage. Anyway, the whole thing was a total bore. The only thing that kept me awake and watching was trying to spot the *many* moments where the microphone was clearly visible at the top of the frame. Too funny. The ending was the only good thing about HELL NIGHT. The last shot at the gate is very good. But it's too little and too late.

HELL NIGHT comes from the long-defunct studio who brought the ever popular HALLOWEEN to the big screen (Compass Int'l Pictures). This was partially what I expected, mixing the good with the bad. At times, it's chilling. Other times, it isn't. Possibly the best way to make a low-budget picture was to have the whole set turn dark and let the actors move around in a ridiculously slow pace until the point where something frightening happens. Hold your breath until the conclusion, folks, because that's when Linda Blair actually steals the film on purpose for the last few minutes. Some electronically scary sound effects help create the real feel of being in the dark, though. As a personal commemorative bonus, this is the 10th movie I've seen that shows off mics at the top of my TV screen! Can anyone spot the shadows of actual crew members standing in the way? It's nice to see films like this come back from the grave due to the recent rebirth of Slashermania, but this is just plain ordinary and similar to what we've seen before.

Linda Blair stars as one of four college pledges who must spend the night in the creepy old mansion(reputed to be haunted, with a murderous history) in order to join the sorority and fraternity. Seniors plan to pull pranks on them for fun, but discover to their dismay that "reputed" turns out to mean "factual"... Surprisingly effective thriller may not be original, but has good performances and direction, which create characters you come to care about, and a genuinely spooky atmosphere, especially when it moves underground. Scary and (reasonably) smart, this one stands out from the usual "slashers" of the period, and results are above average, with a memorable ending.

Group of coed's for pledge night have to spend the night in a manor that local legend says a father went insane and murdered all of his family. The lone survivor, his deformed son, is rumored to be haunting the premises living in the underground tunnels and killing off unwelcomed visitors. Guess what, the legend is true as the coeds start to disappear one by one. Spooky teen slasher builds up a good amount of atmosphere and delivers suspense instead of the usual nudity and gore. It also takes the time to build up characterizations for some of its characters. Linda Blair ( a highly underrated actress) turns in a very appealing, strong & sexy performance and is supported by a better then usual cast, including Peter Barton. The finale is especially exciting. Rated R; Violence.