Garth Manor was built in 1850 by the wealthy Virgil Garth. For decades various generations of the Garth family lived in the mansion. The last to live in the house were Raymond and Lillian Garth. They had four children, Morris, Suzanne, Margaret, and Andrew, each one more deformed than the last. Fourteen years later Raymond couldn’t take it anymore, so he killed his wife and his children. He then killed himself and left a suicide note detailing what he had done. When the police investigated the crimes there were only three bodies. Andrew’s body was never found. Some believe he still resides in the house. These events happened twelve years ago.
The local college fraternity, Alpha Sigma Rho, and its sister sorority are in the midst of pledge week. Four students, Marti Gaines (Linda Blair), Jeff Reed (Peter Barton), Seth Davies (Vincent Van Patten) and Denise Dunsmore (Suki Goodwin) are in their final phase of “Hell Week”. To become members, they must spend the night in Garth Manor. The fraternity and sorority members make a big deal of taking the new pledges up to the mansion and locking the huge wrought iron gate. The president of the fraternity is Peter Bennett (Kevin Brophy). He tells them that the gates will remain locked until morning.
After everyone leaves Peter returns with Scott Zamboni (Jimmy Sturtevant) and May West (Jenny Neumann). The three of them begin setting up some ghostly pranks to scare the four pledges. Before they can really get started May is grabbed by an unknown person and dragged down into a tunnel. Peter and Scott, oblivious to May’s disappearance, continue rigging up their various pranks.
Soon the other frat boys and girls are being picked off one by one by a psychotic killer hidden in the vastness of the old rambling house.
“Hell Night” was released in 1981 and was directed by Tom DeSimone. It is an American horror film and a slasher movie.
The film includes a nice music score and some decent acting. The story is your standard slasher style film but with old dark house elements. Although there is a lot of murder and mayhem, there is less blood and gore than you would have expected. I was OK with the pacing, but I’ve seen complaints from others that there wasn’t enough blood and that the movie was slow. I found enough here to keep me entertained and was willing to stay to the end to see if there were any twists or turns. There were some unexpected ones. All I can say is it gets a lot better toward the end and is worth checking out.
If you like haunted house slasher films, this one checks all the boxes. If you are new to the slasher genre and a looking to try a mild slasher film before getting in too deep than this film might be a good one to try.
Vincent Van Patten, who plays Seth Davies, is the son of actor Dick Van Patten. His actual name is Richard Byron Vincent Russell Van Patten, Jr.