Search - Happy Hell Night on DVD

They should have left this one in the vault...

cookieman108 | Inside the jar... | 08/24/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Being of the adventurous sort, I tend to like to try new things now and then. When Happy Hell Night (1992) appeared on my radar, I thought, "What the heck?" I mean, it does list Darrin McGavin and Sam Rockwell in its' credits, and I usually enjoy those two actors. Well, color me a sucker, because that's what I felt like after spending a grueling 87 minutes on this abominable turkey. It's funny, the blurb on the back of the DVD case touts how this `rarely-seen' film was re-mastered from original vault elements and presented totally uncut and uncensored, like the company that released this to DVD found some kind of lost cinematic gem. Well, after watching it, the reason why this movie was rarely seen became painfully apparent...it stinks...

Written and directed by someone named Brian Owens (his only directing credit), this Yugoslavian/Canadian production suffers from a great many problems. The story is mostly set in a frat house, and centers on some kind of competition between the fraternities with regards to who can pull off the greatest Hell Night (Halloween) prank and win whatever honors that entails. The boys at Phi Delta Kappa have come up with an idea based on an event that happened twenty-five years earlier, involving some kind of black ritual that occurred in a graveyard mausoleum which led to the massacre of like seven people, many of them members of the same fraternity. Incorporating the customary hazing ritual for new members into the prank, the frat decide to send a couple of pledges to the state insane asylum to try and get a photograph of the killer who has been locked away for so many years. The pledges manage to break in, but end up releasing an incomprehensible horror in the form of a killer ghoul and the massacre begins anew, with the fraternity being the focal point. What's the big secret behind the atrocities that happened so many years ago?

Okay, so what did I like about this film? Well, some of the scenes shot on location were pretty good...and that's about it...seriously. I came into this thing expecting so little and I couldn't even get that. The film began with a promising start, but the downhill slide was fast and furious. First, the plot made little sense, and even when I knew what was going on, it still made no sense. There were a few flashbacks in the movie, but the time line was seriously screwy as Sam Rockwell (who was 23 when the film came out) appeared briefly in the film, in the flashbacks, which were supposed to be twenty-five years previous, putting the character's age at about 20. Now Darren McGavin (in his late 60's at the time the film was released) played Rockwell's character in the present day, twenty-five years later. This is about the right amount of suspension of disbelief the makers of this film expect from the audience, a nearly 70 year old man is supposed to represent a 20 year old man after 25 years have past? I didn't even realize the two characters were supposed to be the same guy until the film beat me over the head with the concept.

The killer started out kind of creepy, a small, bald-headed man with lots of white make-up, but any creepiness derived from his appearance was quickly shot as he was given really lame dialogue to speak after each time he murdered someone. The scripter was obviously trying to emulate Freddy Kreuger, and his tongue in cheek quips, but failed miserably. The actual killings themselves were pathetic to say the least, the main weapon being a specialized pick ax climbers use to climb ice. How do you, with surgical accuracy, remove someone's head with a pick ax? And have absolutely no blood whatsoever? And the blood there was looked extremely cheap and was splattered around with no eye for effect, just gratuitous gore. Also, the killer moved around like the laws of physics didn't apply. One minute he'd be in a closet, and then the next scene he is in the basement...it doesn't figure. Something else I found very annoying...characters we met early on would consistently pop up in other scenes already dead. When were they killed? How? There is some nekkidness in the film, but it seems very pointless and apparently present because the director liked looking at nekkid girlies.

The acting ranged from very poor to somewhat capable, but given the garbage script, they all came off looking like morons. And the complete lack of continuity between scenes certainly didn't help, along with one of the more convoluted plots I've seen in a long time. The whole movie seemed like someone filmed a bunch of scenes, and then crammed them together, expecting them to fit. If you can comprehend more than ten minutes of this movie at a time, I'd be surprised. The influences on the director were very obvious, as he completely copied scenes from much better movies, including Halloween (see the scene where the killer gets knocked out a 2nd floor window with a spear gun, seems dead, and then disappears shortly afterwards...Dr. Loomis is rolling over in his grave), Friday the 13th, Phantasm, and Nightmare on Elm Street, to name a few. I am sure if you backed the director in a corner, he'd claim this thievery to be homage, but I just call it complete laziness and lack of originality.

I don't normally like to trash a movie as much as I did here (okay, maybe a little), but when it offers so little (remember, my expectations were low to begin with) and wastes my time in the manner this film did, I feel I have no choice. Anchor Bay does provide a nice looking wide screen anamorphic print, along with an original theatrical trailer for the film, but that's it...if you feel you have to see this film, get it used...I'll sell you my copy.

Cookieman108
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