Hell Night (1981) — Triskaidekafiles

HELL NIGHT

WRITER: Randolph Feldman

DIRECTOR: Tom De Simone

STARRING: Linda Blair as as Marti
Vincent Van Patten as Seth
Kevin Brophy as Peter
Jenny Neumann as May
Suki Goodwin as Denise
Jimmy Sturtevant as Scott
Peter Barton as Jeff

QUICK CUT: A group of college kids spend the night together and grow closer through the evening.

THE MORGUE

Marti - A young woman pledging a sorority. She’s not really into that scene, but it was a free room, car, and some status. She’s got some skills with cars, and is easily scared.

Jeff - Marti’s love interest, and he comes from a rich family, so we get some star crossed lovers stuff here.

Seth - A surfer dude that is a bit of a player. He’s also got some knowledge of guns, and knows when to get out when the getting is good.

Denise - A young woman that Seth is hitting on most of the movie. She’s not the brightest tool in the shed, but that might just be more because she’s drunk.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! It FEELS like it's been a hot minute since I did a frat/college based horror movie, so I'm probably overdue. Which led me to finally get around to a decently known movie staring Linda Blair, called Hell Night. Also, nice to NOT be doing a 50 packer this week.

The movie opens up at a costume party hosted by the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity, and we meet a few characters amidst the drunken chaos. Peter and his buddy Scott are getting things quietly set up for later shenanigans, when Linda Blair catches Peter's eyes.

We get a few awkward introductions in the "gosh who's that over there?" category, but at least it could be worse.

There is some muttering about some big event coming up, but the night is young, and not even any kegs have been thrown threw any windows yet. Which that is then dutifully taken care of, so it is time to get this plot going.

Peter leads the entire party off to another mansion, for the big initiation. We soon learn this is Garth Manor, and in order for an initiate to become a full member, they must spend one night there.

The place has an appropriate dark history for this spooky night, and to give it some eerie cred. 12 years ago, Raymond Garth murdered his family, and himself, because all four of his children were born deformed or with mental problems, or both. It is rumoured that the youngest child, Andrew, survived, and lurks the grounds to this day.

As the story goes, the Garth family valued their privacy, so there are no modern utilities. No phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury.

Peter leads the four main victims into the manor, and this leads me to question, if this is a frat thing, why are there girls there? I get the sense it is a joint venture, but it's not super clear. Not a huge deal, but feels awkward to not say SOMETHING.

So, they get locked in behind the gate to spend the night, as everyone else leaves. That party dispersed quickly. Oh, and just to keep things interesting, Peter and friends sneak in the back way to the grounds, to set up scares for the victims.

We have two boys and two girls, so you can figure out how the group splits up. Pretty small crop of pledges this year, huh? We spend the next little while just having everyone get settled into the manor, getting to know them; you know the drill.

There is a surprising moment between Marti and Jeff, when she finds out he's from a rich family. They have a short conversation about why is it so evil to be rich, and good to be poor? And how the rich feed off the poor, etc. It's not the usual sort of conversation you'd see in a silly horror movie, especially not in the early 80s.

Outside, Peter's Posse rustles around setting things up, both for the pranks, and establishing there are holes in the ground around the manor walls that lead into the basement, as well as several hidden doorways.

The quartet hear screaming and reconnect in the halls, realising it's none of them. But the prank doesn't last long, as Jeff finds the speaker and disable it.

Peter sends Aunt May to go take care of the next diversion, and she ends up finally being this movie's first victim, as someone pops up and slices her head clean off.

There's more screams, and the boys go to investigate. Meanwhile, Marti gets a visitation by Jacob Marley's Pepper's Ghost.

Scott makes his way to the roof to prep more shenanigans, and he ends up being the next victim, as whomever it is cleanly snaps his neck.

Things frustratingly calm down enough for our four victims to actually manage to think they can curl up in bed and get some sleep.

Denise thinks she hears something, so she takes that as an excuse to prance around in her underwear through the manor for a bit. For funsies.

Things are starting to not go as planned for Peter, since the rest of his team are kinda dead. He makes his way to the roof to see what's up with Scott.

Eventually, he finds his right hand bro's dead body, and knows something is up. So he goes running through what behind the scenes features make clear is a hedge maze.

I kinda hope this douche weasel dies from his own panicked stupidity. Either falling over his cape, or running into his own tricks, or falling into one of those holes or...

…Or sure, getting stabbed in the guts by the killer. That works too, yeah.

Back inside, the oblivious pledges are just kinda hanging out, not sleeping, and having sex or making out.

Marti shares a story from her youth about how she thought she saw a witch once. Yeah, best to save the "I was possessed by the devil" for a third date.

Seth goes to the bathroom afterwards, leaving Denise all alone, to be kidnapped by whomever is Garthing around the house.

When he comes back, he sees 'her' covered up in bed, and I appreciate the fakeout that it's gonna be her dead body, or maybe the killer lurking, but nope, instead it's May's severed head from earlier.

You dolt, I said put a HORSE head in the bed with him!

Seth panics and makes a run for it, but unfortunately, the gate is still locked. So he tries to climb over it, and deal with the razor sharp iron spikes at the top. He somehow manages to not impale himself, and says so long suckers.

The remaining duo head back to the manor to try and find Denise, and stay safe until Seth returns with help.

Jeff thinks he sees something down in the yard, and decides he has to go investigate, because it might be Denise in need of help. He leaves Marti alone, and heads downstairs.

He finds a pitchfork, and shortly thereafter, Peter's corpse.

Meanwhile, Seth actually makes it to the police station, but since this is possibly Halloween and definitely a night of pranks from the frats, well, the police aren't listening to anything.

They tell him to go or get thrown in jail, so Seth makes his way to leave. But before he does, he sees a bunch of guns ready to be logged into evidence, just casually walks into the room, and steals a shotgun and bullets.

Back at the manor, Marti and Jeff are nervously waiting and chatting, while a figure rises up from the floor under the carpet. Jeff stabs at it, but when they pull back the carpet, all they find is the open trap door the figure must have escaped down.

The couple follows the tunnel down under the floorboards and into the basement, with Marti mostly going along so she's not left all alone.

Eventually, they go deeper and deeper, down and down and deeper and down, until they find a room and Denise's corpse. They hear the killer lurking nearby, and make a run for it.

They head back upstairs and hole up in their room, hoping the trap door was the only secret entrance.

Seth steals a car and returns to the manor as fast as he can, and manages to find a broken bar in the fence to sneak through. Where was that a few hours ago??

He runs smack dab into the killer Garth, and they struggle for a bit. Eventually, Seth manages to get a shot off, and blasts the killer. Andy pops back up though, and gets ANOTHER shot in the face. This one does the trick though. Whew, glad we're done with the movie!

Seth barges into the manor, announcing he killed the killer, and the other survivors come rushing out...just to watch another killer jump out of nowhere and kill Seth

Marti makes her way downstairs to get the gun, hoping the secondary killer doesn't get her too. The new killer does pounce, but doesn't grab her. They try and hide back inside their room, but he Fuck Doors right on in.

They run for the window to escape to the roof, and the killer helps by grabbing Jeff, hoisting him into the air, and flinging him outside. Marti, at least, continues to the roof, and down the rope ladder left behind by the frat bros.

I'm gonna keep this long story from getting any longer, the rest of this is a chase between Marti and the killer, as she rushes to try and escape before she ends up dead.

Fortunately, she finds Peter's corpse, and the key to the front gate. She locks it up behind her to slow down the killer, and hops in Seth's stolen car.

Unfortunately, the car won't start.

Fortunately, Marti uses her Chekov's mechanic skills the movie established early on, so she can get the car started.

She crashes into the gate though, positioning it perfectly for one last gag, as the killer lands on the roof of the car.

Marti heads straight for the gate, slams on the breaks, and impales the monster on the spikes, allowing her to saunter away into the sunrise.

Is this the end of albino Jeff Goldblum?

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Pretty solid, being from a decent studio, and with the work put into it from a good distributor.

Audio: Sounds solid

Sound Bite: “It's still early. Look at Sukowski, he hasn't even barfed on the trophy case yet! And the front windows still aren't broken!"

Body Count: Not a lot of characters, but a solid percentage.

1 - 28 minutes in, and May gets beheaded
2 - Scott gets his neck snapped
3 - Peter gets speared through the gut.
4 - Denise gets taken and killed off screen
5 - Seth shoots one of the killers
6 - The other killer takes out Seth with the shotgun
7 - Jeff gets defenestrated
8 - The other killer is impaled on the gate by Marti

Best Corpse: The gag hoisting Jeff into the air and throwing him out the window looked SO good, even though there wasn’t much blood to it.

Blood Type - D+: Which is a recurring theme of the movie, really. The horror is all pretty safe, and tame. It’s not bad, they give you a little blood, and hey, severed heads are never bad.

Sex Appeal: Lots of boobs and underwear going around.

Movie Review: There’s nothing fundamentally BAD about this movie. However, it also doesn’t quite wow me, either. It’s a very okay movie. Everything is well executed…well, almost everything. I get taking on the extra killer at the end to keep the fun going, and have a bit of a twist, but it’s so poorly set up, comes out of nowhere, and it FEELS tacked on. The killers are so lacking in personality, and you barely see them, I genuinely thought the one guy was just REALLY HARD TO KILL the first time I watched it, especially since he survived the first shot anyways! And then it was like, OOOHH there’s TWO of them?? But the movie is paced decently enough, with the pranks subbing in for any real blood until the end of the first act, and the characters are all fairly likeable, so I didn’t mind spending a slower 25 minutes with them. But the story is pretty simple, with nothing terrible original. But it’s a perfectly fine execution of well worn tropes. Three out of five stolen shotgun

Entertainment Value: It’s competently made, so there’s not much here to laugh at quality wise, but the antics keep you fairly invested and interesting. The cutaways to Seth trying to get help were a fun little diversion, and I wish he had escape sooner to make that a stronger b-plot throughline. There’s not a lot of gore, but minus that, the kills aren’t bad, and it’s again, just a solid okay entertaining movie. I wouldn’t be mad if someone put it on, or if I came across it late one night. Two out of five not dead brothers.