Hell Night

(1981) **

I'm fortunate to have one of those great honkytonk video stores near my house. I grabbed Hell Night because I had less than five minutes to pick a movie before they closed and vague memories of seeing the image above posted in the newspaper. It sparked a feeling of longing, because I wasn't old enough to see it then. I went home and checked the Monster List and was astonished that nobody has yet watched this early 80's chestnut. Turns out it's not on Netflix, so hooray for Odyssey Video on Vineland.

Hell Night starts with deceptive promise: a girl screams, the camera pulls back, and she and six other girls are soaked by a hose in what is clearly a wet t-shirt contest. "All right!" I said of my new best friend, Hell Night. The camera pans across a heavily populated college street party of the kind nobody has ever actually experienced, or so I keep telling myself. Eventually we tune in on our players: the young pledges who must endure fratly initiation and the frat president who runs it all, everybody looking about four or five years too old.

All the costumed partiers form a party caravan and head to nearby Garth manor, where the frat prez lays down the creepy backstory. Rich family but their kids all turned out freaks, that sort of thing. Twelve years ago Dad kills the lot except for the youngest son, who is described as a... I'm really embarrassed but I forget the word they used. Not "geek" or "gimp," but something similar, like "gork." Anyway some bodies are never found, including the gork's, yadda yadda.

This is all going great when freaking everybody leaves and it's only four new pledges who have to stay the night. The president, his chick and his Eddie Deezen-like sidekick sneak back to play scary pranks. Awwww. I was hoping for a more populous affair. Because sure enough, despite eleven years of incident-free frat initiations, the gork comes out of the tunnels and starts chop chop chopping. But what's seven potential victims in this day and age?

The presence of Linda Blair is this flick's main selling point, which is strange because she displays all the acting chops of an old bowl of yogurt. Despite having dressed her up like a character in Little Woman, the movie hopes you will play along as people spot her across a room and say "hey, look at the hottie." Later she drops and endless stream of Debbie Downer line reads in a plodding "getting to know you" scene with Misunderstood Rich Boy. Their slowly dawning acceptance of each other (who cares?) emerges with the cardboard pathos found in any After School Special.

Added to that, despite the tease of wet t-shirts in the first five seconds, in the movie to follow the guy on the left will be the only person to remove a shirt. He's of the Van Pattan clan, which holds as much clout with me as would a Wayans. That's right, I went there.

Watching Hell Night I was reminded wistfully of The Funhouse, which came out the same year. Better monster, at least one Obligatory Tit Shot, and, uh, a better monster. I suppose "it made me wish I was watching The Funhouse" is about the meanest thing you could say about any movie.