No to anemic slasher

HAPPY HELL NIGHT (1992)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What can one say about a slasher flick when the demonic killer's only level of communication is to spout one-liners! They are not even clever one-liners - they are insidious one-liners. Example: After killing a female nurse watching TV, the killer says, "No TV." When the killer hacks away at a video peeping tom who happens to run a cable show from his campus called "STV," the killer responds, "No STV."

This brilliant work of art is from a writer-director named Brian Owens whose only other credit is devising the story for "Brainscan" (a far better horror pic). "Happy Hell Night" is his only film, rottenly directed and acted though some level of atmosphere is maintained. Owen knows how to frame dark corridors and dark, cavernous rooms, especially in a mental ward. The college campus, however, looks like it is occupied by only a handful of students. There are so many silhouettes that it is difficult to discern whom we should be looking at or caring about.

The story centers on a demented priest who killed several students from the college fraternity. The priest (who was hopefully defrocked) was kept in a mental ward for 25 years, never moving a muscle. The nurse at the ward checks on the guy twice a month - if the killer is evil incarnate, why keep him in a room resembling a cell block kept shut by a silver cross? Nevertheless, the killer is waiting to be set free, and dammit if some frat brothers aren't the ones to do just that. Of course, some other priest was expecting this to happen. Let me ask this logical question: how about removing all the mental patients except for the wacky priest and burn down the ward? Why keep this silent to the community if the killer can't break free anyway?

So we get mercifully short and gory impalings where the killer uses a hook-of-sorts and drills it through his intended college student victims. We are never given any insight into the killer's motives - why would a demonic priest kill a bunch of fraternity and sorority students? Because they drink and like to have sex? Should this killer be welcomed as a member of the Moral Majority? And I can see why "CSI's" Jorja Fox is not listed in the credits - I don't think she wants to be remembered as a slutty tease of a sorority girl who is pierced through her skull with that damn bloody hook.

"Happy Hell Night" is never scary or even genuinely creepy. The killer is creepy at first - think of him as a member of the Cenobites - but since he possesses the most elementary humor skills and an electronic voice, we can't take him too seriously. As a monstrous figure of pain, there is no pathos and no humanity. Darren McGavin shows up but don't get your hopes up, he is not doing a reprise of Kolchak. He gives a short synopsis of what happened 25 years earlier, but it is muffled and delivered as a voice-over while the video peeping tom tries to listen in. You see every bedroom in this campus has a video camera unit and a mike. I was reminded, when this movie was over, how much better Linda Blair's "Hell Night" was (which isn't saying much). Do yourself a favor and check out the blackly comical and scary sorority flick "Black Christmas." Last I heard, Margot Kidder didn't mind including it in her resume.