Hell Night (1981) Compass International Pictures/Horror-Thriller RT: 102 minutes Rated R (violence, some sexual content, teen partying, drug and alcohol use, some language) Director: Tom DeSimone Screenplay: Randolph Feldman Music: Dan Wayman Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg Release date: August 28, 1981 (US) Cast: Linda Blair, Peter Barton, Kevin Brophy, Vincent Van Patten, Suki Goodwin, Jimmy Sturtevant, Jenny Neumann, Hal Ralston, Cary Fox, Ronald Gans. Box Office: $2.3M (US)
Rating: ***
I’ve seen Hell Night a few times over the years (total viewings less than five), but somehow I always missed a crucial plot point that I was literally just made aware of. It’s what prompted me to revisit this decent but unexceptional teen horror flick about a group of college kids spending the night in a big creepy mansion where something horrific took place years earlier. How did I not see this? Am I the only one who missed it? Oh, I’m not going to tell you what “it” is. That would be a big time spoiler. I’m not even going to drop any hints. If you know, you know. If you don’t, watch the movie closely.
Hell Night was originally released by Compass International, the short-lived production/distribution company (1977-81) whose big claim to fame is the original Halloween in 1978. They also did Tourist Trap, Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula, Roller Boogie (with UA), Fade to Black (w/American Cinema Releasing) and Blood Beach (w/The Jerry Gross Organization). Company co-founder Irwin Yablans serves as producer alongside Bruce Cohn Curtis (Roller Boogie). If the Yablans name sounds familiar to you, it’s because you’ve seen his name on ALL of the Halloween movies, even the Rob Zombie ones. The director is Tom DeSimone, the same guy who graced exploitation cinema with titles like Chatterbox, The Concrete Jungle, Reform School Girls and Angel III: The Final Chapter. Screenwriter Randolph Feldman would go on to pen the scripts for Tango & Cash, Nowhere to Run (the one with JCVD) and Metro.
Now that I’ve given you a behind-the-camera tour of Hell Night, let’s take a quick look at the talent in front of it. It’s got a pretty good line-up, I’ll give it that. The star of the picture is Linda Blair, all grown up and filled out since The Exorcist eight years earlier. Her co-stars are Peter Barton (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter), Kevin Brophy (the short-lived TV series Lucan), Vincent Van Patten (Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) and one-movie wonder Suki Goodwin. I’ve never seen her before or since. Chances are, neither have you. The two remaining characters of note are played by Jimmy Sturtevant (The Competition) and Jenny Neumann (of the V miniseries and its sequel).
Now that you know your cast, let’s get to the plot. It’s one you’ve heard before; it’s been done countless times through and through. As part of initiation into Alpha Sigma Rho, four pledges are commanded by fraternity president Peter (Brophy) to spend the night in Garth Manor, the big creepy mansion where a family of rich inbreds used to reside. That is, until the pater familias decided to put his simpleton wife and three of his four horribly deformed children out of their misery before taking his own life.
As the story goes, the sole survivor was youngest son Andrew, a “gork”. What’s a gork, you ask? Good question. I can’t really say for sure. Nobody in the movie explains it and nobody thinks to ask either. The world may never know. From what I can infer, a gork is a deformed being with superhuman strength and homicidal tendencies. Whatever it is, he was never found and supposedly still lives in the abandoned house. Now if you know the horror genre, this story meant to scare gullible college kids will turn out to be true. There is a killer loose in that house.
The four pledges in question are Marti (Blair), a smart girl from a working-class background, rich kid Jeff (Barton), blonde-haired surfer dude from California Seth (Van Patten) and British party girl Denise (Goodwin). Peter locks them in for the night and proceeds to terrorize them with cohorts Scott (Sturtevant) and May (Neumann). After roughly 30 minutes of false scares, during which Seth and Denise do ludes and fool around while Marti and Jeff get acquainted, the real ones start. Once the pledges realize how totally screwed they are, it’s a fight for survival as they try to find a way out of their predicament.
I’m probably not the first to admit Hell Night doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel as far as teen slasher movies go. It follows the formula to a great big T. It throws in a few haunted house movie tropes for good measure. It has a few decent kills, but they’re not bloody enough. Gorehounds like me prefer their horror drenched in the red stuff. Also, where are the boobs? There’s not a single boobie shot in the whole picture which is odd seeing that it opens in the middle of a wild frat party with lots of horny guys drinking lots of beer. One girl flashes Peter, but we only see her from behind. What a cheat! As for the big plot twist, is it really all that surprising? Isn’t there always one of those in these movies?
The acting isn’t all that bad. It’s about right for the genre. Blair is an appealing lead even in the worst junk. Her bra size certainly doesn’t hurt [insert lecherous chortle here]. Her character is the virginal one meaning she’s also the soon-to-be final girl. Van Patten is pretty good as a surfer dude who not only knows how to handle a shotgun, but also how to steal one right from under the nose of overworked cops. There’s not a whole lot else to say about the acting in Hell Night. I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse.
That last statement is also true of Hell Night. I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. It’s a decent early 80s slasher flick despite the high predictability factory and the sometimes slow pacing. At 102 minutes, it’s a little too long. DeSimone could have tightened it up a bit, especially in the middle section. However, it’s pretty good when it works. The tunnel scene is well done as is the finale involving a big iron gate with tips that look like spears. That’s another thing! When you see the gate in the beginning, you just know somebody will be impaled on them by movie’s end. It’s fairly easy to call everything that happens in Hell Night before it does, but it doesn’t make it any less fun. It has a few good “BOO!” moments and a non-PC early 80s vibe. And it has a gork, whatever that is.
