My first love occurred sometime in the early 80s when I discovered horror films. With a young mother going through college, I got to experience Spotlight, (which would later be bought out and replaced by Showtime and The Movie Channel) a premium cable channel which showed theatrical films uncut, and it was there I saw my first scary movie. I had started it somewhere in the middle, so I didn’t catch its name, but the memories of it stayed in my mind for years.
I remembered specific scenes involving someone coming out of a stack of hay with a pitchfork, someone getting impaled on a fence of sorts, and there being multiple killers.
Synopsis:
Four college pledges are forced to spend the night in a deserted old mansion, where they are stalked by the monstrous survivor of a family massacre years earlier.
IMDb: 5.6
Rotten Tomatoes: 57%
Tagline: Pray for day.
I posted on forums like IMDb, as this was before the times where you could just join a Facebook group and ask, or simply search Google and find out in mere seconds. No avail. Not even a nibble of an answer.
Years came and went. I got married, had kids, and discovered boutique label movies. Scream Factory. Shriek Show. Tartan. Criterion. I walked into a V-Stock for the first time and saw a movie sitting on the new release shelf. It was a movie called Hell Night. Something inside of me beckoned for me to purchase it. I had not thought of the lost film of my youth for many years, and everything came back to me in a flash of youthful exuberance. Wait, Linda Blair was in this?
I watched it, and much to my surprise, or was it simply my sixth sense that made it NOT a surprise, THIS was the film I had been longing to see. I was reunited with my first love. She had come back to me, calling me like a whisper in the wind, beckoning for me to take her back into my arms, wrap my hands around her, and slide her into my PS4, harkening back to our affair some 35 years prior.
So many famous people worked on this picture behind the scenes. Famed director Frank Darabont was a production assistant on this film. Kevin Costner was a grip on it. Chuck Russell, of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 fame, was executive producer. And if that isn’t enough, Tom DeSimone, a successful gay pornographic director turned exploitation filmmaker of such films like Concrete Jungle, Savage Streets, Reform School Girls and Angel III, directed the flick. Dan Wyman, who worked with John Carpenter on the soundtracks to Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween and The Fog, did the music. He also composed the music for The Dead Pit, Without Warning, and Lawnmower Man before seemingly leaving Hollywood productions in 1992 and moving on to other avenues of music.
I hope you recognize Linda Blair, here in her peak cute girl phase at age 22, before she looked all haggard from cocaine, crack and Rick James, but do you recognize Peter Barton from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter?
Once again, Linda Blair is at her peak cuteness here. She is still young and nubile, still two years before her whirlwind romance with Rick James where she aborted his baby and smoked crack with him. She had already been arrested for selling cocaine three years prior to this film, at the age of 18, just 4 years after her star-making role as Reagan in The Exorcist. She would spend the 80s in exploitation films, regularly showing off her goodies to support her drug habits. Nowadays, she is more famous for her interest in animal rights, forming the Linda Blair World Heart Foundation.
The Halloween costume party idea really lets the filmmakers play with costume design, and lets people really dress outrageously and not look out of place. The art direction is fun as well, with the setting of the manor, and the gothic touches that permeate the film.
Is it a gothic horror film? Or is it a slasher? It’s both. And it plays to both genres while being a great movie. No, it’s not the best of either, but it’s still a fun and entertaining film. It’s always interesting to see Linda Blair in a good girl role, since she always played quite the opposite in both her career and her personal life.
The music is good. I enjoy revisiting this old 80s classic. Kind of like saying hey to that old girlfriend from your youth who you haven’t seen in many years, that you don’t have any hard feelings for and only have good memories of. Wait. Does that person exist?
