Happy Hell Night

**

There are those slasher films that sort of fell through the cracks as the genre was fading into nothingness. 1992 was not a year where the slasher film was thriving. For those that hate these films and its genre, that was a good thing. However, for those of us who do, it was rather a sad time for the genre. A film like Freddy's Dead (as an example) or Jason Goes to Hell (although it has its fans) are all too obvious signs that the slasher was needing to take a break (and it did, except for those that aren't all that well recognized like this film) and it did for the most part.

Quite frankly, Happy Hell Night was unknown to me. I found it as a rec on Netflix. It was a slasher from the early 90s, so I gave it a chance. It was good timing, as the Slasher series typically needs resuscitation during the Dog Days as August ushers in the rawest part of the summer season as even those who love beaches and swimming soon are ready for some windy, colder autumnal chills.

Happy Hell Night is a film I found rather good in parts and quite bad in parts. I think it has a great-looking killer, with his cadaverous, nosferatu-like features, although he would have been even more ideal a heavy had he not opened his mouth. The "no...." whatever he finishes a kill with just does him no favors. Instead, I could see many viewers quite groaning at the decision for the killer to do so. His look is really suitable for some malicious night stalking creep. In the body of a priest who looked to have been dead for a while--and favored a bit like Reggie Nalder in Salem's Lot to me--with the added info that a "calling" was performed that brought about a demon from hell that occupied the body of this priest so that the one responsible (Sam Rockwell makes an appearance that is akin to a blip or two and nothing more; he is the younger version of a sadly slumming (and why wouldn't he be, really?) Darren McGavin) could be blessed with an affluence existence.

McGavin has two sons, both attending their local college, the older head of a fraternity while the younger (in leather jacket, with a motorcycle, who is trying to imitate Brando from The Wild One) trying to get in. Winfield College is the location of the frat, Eric (hunky Nick Gregory) and his younger bro, Sonny (Frank Hughes) are both fucking Liz (Laura Carney), and this puts a tension between them. Things take a turn for the worse when Eric finds Liz riding Sonny in a fleabag hotel. Retaliating angrily, Eric sends Sonny and another frat hopeful to an asylum to capture a photograph of a loony who has been a local boogeyman for 25 years (supposedly, he butchered a number of college students and was locked away to be forgotten), kept concealed so he couldn't hurt anyone else. However, the two frat hopefuls instead accidentally release him! The rest of the film follows college students (who look as old as me, and I'm 37) at the Phi Delta Kapp house, and all that blood flows thanks to Charles Cragin's Malius and his ice pick axe.

I think the film has some very inspired (but rather limited in time on screen sadly) sequences layered in loving Gothic (the cemetery, mausoleum, asylum cell housing Malius, the attic in the frat house), but the pacing problems (it just goes through the motions sometimes when it comes to the characters involved) and erratic direction (it feels like Brian Owens had a hard time figuring out what to do with the characters when Malius wasn't dishing out the bloodshed) keep Happy Hell Night from really taking off.

When it comes to the violence, this film delivers in a way slasher fans should appreciate. Jorja Fox (CSI forensics scientist on the popular CBS flagship show) is a very pretty victim who gets the ax in her head while in the driver's seat of her car. The ax is used in every way possible to stab folks. One victim is sitting in front of a camera about to report the recollections of a tortured McGavin (well, he doesn't necessarily emote this in a fashion that is inspired, but nonetheless his character admits to his wrongdoing and how it must be stopped) for his fledgling public college access show when the ax hammers into his head and out his eye. You have bloody body parts in a mausoleum and a bathtub, blood spilled, splashed, smeared, and sprayed in Happy Hell Night. It just needed a tighter leash on how to build to the slasher violence and how to present the killer. The lines after the kill, already mentioned, would have been one of the things I would have omitted--by this time, the wisecracking killer was passé.

The film does include an odd element of the supernatural (more leaning towards the Christian side of good vs. evil), with a priest (sparingly used) actually "experiencing" a statue of Jesus Christ in pain on the cross, with his pierced side bleeding, falling off and breaking into on the floor near him. It is surreal and just rather unsettling. It is as if it belongs in a whole other movie.

I think this will be an interesting curio for slasher fans who are out to find anything remotely close to the formula. Happy Hell Night is for the most part the kind of slasher that will fit the bill and somewhat satiate you if you just want tits and blood. You definitely get both.

Woof, the performances stink, though. Real dogs in this one. Don't look for any particular character to knock your socks off. The brothers are adequate, but besides Ted Clark (as a nerdy perv with rich parents who bought his way into a frat and camera equipment and studio to do his cheesy show) who is a dork the frat boys tolerate, all the characters (and especially those that portray them) are a giant epic fail in personality or talent on screen. McGavin is a disappointment for me because I love the guy so much thanks primarily to A Christmas Story and specifically Kolchak, but I understand why he wouldn't posit an award winning performance. It wasn't like he shared the screen or was in a movie populated by thespians.

The supernatural plot is as absurd as it sounds. A conjuring that results in a killer harboring an evil from hell and a book that contains a spell that could send him back. Even this scene doesn't work because the director has a hard time shooting it in a way that truly builds up how important it is for the killer to stop it all and the characters trying to end his reign of terror needing to get their act together and just "read the fucking book". The slasher kills are rather clumsy. The slasher formula is known significantly for a "stumbling on crime scenes" style where the final girl (in this case, Liz) starts to encounter dead bodies mutilated by the killer, but the lighting causes what could (and should) be harrowing or shocking to be instead murky quick shots (by mostly flashlight). So this was frustrating. There are flashes of real talent here, but it is so undermined by amateurishness (young filmmaking in its infancy, probably with little money and a lack of talent available) that I think the film is a "what might have been" instead of a "sleeper you should go out of your way to see."

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