“You know how girls love to scream.”
Jeff-Slumber Party Massacre
It’s a tale as old as time. Four college pledges are forced to spend the night in a deserted old mansion while their fraternity leaders try to prank them. There’s only one problem: the monstrous surviving members of a family massacre years earlier start picking them off one by one.
Hell Night’s premise isn’t very original, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its merits. An adequate Linda Blair leads the cast. The rest of the main cast is rounded out with Peter Bolton, Suki Goodwin, and Vincent Van Patten. Van Patten gives the best performance of the bunch, and his charisma is more than needed.
The pacing of Hell Night is a bit of a problem. With only 100 minutes of run, you’d think the film wouldn’t meander, but it does. The second act lacks any real tension or character development. Director Tom DeSimone doesn’t have an eye for horror either. The kills are boring and silly. The horror aspects feel like an afterthought.
The film is shockingly tepid. Not every 80s horror film needs nudity and sex. I would say it’s usually a substitute for quality. But this film lacks any shock factor. There’s sex, but it’s off-screen. Linda Blair’s character runs around with a ridiculous amount of cleavage, but her character doesn’t fit that mold. She’s a conservative tomboy who only joins a sorority because she is promised a car in exchange for doing homework for the members.
This film has one last black eye—the monster or killer design. The freakish, inbred family members terrorizing the college kids are embarrassingly conceived. One looks like Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf and the other is a big groaning oger. The monsters aren’t given much screen time, and we know little about them other than a brief monologue delivered at the beginning of the film.
As bad as Hell Night is, I didn’t have a terrible time. Linda Blair and Vincent Van Patten are a lot of fun when they are on screen. The ending is by far the best part of the movie. There are a few tense moments and one tremendous set piece that surprised me. Hell Night will not be a staple of Halloween films for anyone, but I have seen worse.
Rating: 5.5/10
