Halloween Night

Christopher Vale witnesses his mother brutally raped and killed before being hideously burned and being sent to a mental asylum. Years later some local dweebs get together and throw a party in a nearby cabin. But good old Chris has escaped from the nut-hut to terrorize them. This 'Asylum' outfit has produced 50 some movies, you'd think one of this would be actually watchable, right??? Well you'd be wrong as this film's as awful as all the other films under their banner. It doesn't help that Micheal Gingold's story is hopelessly contrived, dreadfully acted, and deathly dull. I don't mean to single out Gingold exclusively (I'm still sore from suffering through "Leeches"). Oh no, the blame can be spread liberally from the director who has yet to make a decent film on down to the atrocious acting and further down to the sloppy editing and mediocre special effects. Awful with a resounding capital A.

My Grade: D-

Eye Candy: Jan Anderson, Alicia Klein, Stephanie Medina, Erica Roby,and Amanda Ward all got topless. (but you can see Stephanie's twin talents in the MUCH, MUCH better low-budget film "the Janitor")

Halloween Night is about the psychotic adventures of a child who grows up in a mental institution after witnessing his mother's death and also getting severely burned and disfigured. He runs around in a costume on Halloween slashing the heck out of everyone he sees, mostly young scream queens. Some lesbian scenes and a modicum of nudity add to the offensive nature of this film. A few really well scripted scenes make it watchable. Some good musical scores and some bad cinematography. But overall it is a take off on many previous slasher films. If you're looking for some naked girls and a lot of screaming and slashing, this is for you.

From Michael Gingold, the editor of Fangoria...

You would think that Gingold, after viewing thousands of horror films, would know how to make a good movie. Now, granted, he did not direct it, he just wrote it... and granted, it does have a fair amount of gore. But he seems to have the same problem Rob Zombie does: he has seen so many films that he no longer has the ability to be original and can only steal from other (better) films.

And why is the audio not synced up? Nothing makes a picture even worse than when lips do not match the words they speak. The visuals are alright, though, so I guess it is not a complete loss.

Students throwing an epic Halloween party are infiltrated by a real homicidal maniac escaped from the local mental institution and who apparently doesn't like parties or partygoers. Clumsily edited, quickly made cash-in on the 2006 'Halloween' remake starts off okay, but despite some over the top, gory makeup effects, it quickly deteriorates into a cheap farce, little more than an orgy of mindless slaughter that defies logic.

I'm guessing the budget went on the costumes and the extras fees, and I hope there's receipts, because there's nothing else to show for it on the screen. The dialogue is an occasional highlight with some literary gold e.g. 'the real deal was psychological horror not medieval decadence' and my personal favourite 'you get tired of tasting tuna, you call me'.

Overall despite the tongue cheek tone and a reasonably sympathetic antagonist, there's only so much gratuitous nudity and corny one liners on which you can trade before you need to stump up on a coherent storyline. Unfortunately 'Halloween Night' the story, like its neglected killer, needed more attention in its development. Might just qualify as 'so bad it's good' and if you do take the plunge, make sure to stick around long enough for the coat-hanger killing, the whole set-up for which is totally wild.

Clearly an attempt to cash in on the success of other Halloween-themed slashers, "Halloween Night" offers nothing new to the genre. However, new offerings does not equate to entertainment, and this movie certainly entertains. For a low-budget DTV, it certainly isn't terrible...I have seen much worse.

The BAD: A weak script, and sub-par acting are this films main faults. Many have posted opinions of the guy who plays David's acting--honestly, I didn't have a big problem with him. That is probably because NOBODY was good in this movie, even Rebekah Kochon who gave a good performance in "When A Killer Calls." None of the actors seem to be really into the film, which is problematic. The script is laughable in parts on the dialogue really consists of nothing but high school hallway banter. The films looks like it was filmed all in one day, and yes, the killer resembles a zombie much more than he does a burn victim! Have the filmmakers ever even seen a burn victim???? I'm pretty sure they don't like they just climbed out of a coffin after decaying for 15 years. I also felt extremely let down by the ending....it was pretty predictable and by-the-book, but also very rushed. There wasn't a big chase scene and really no suspense as to who was gonna live/die.

The GOOD: Some pretty decent death scenes are about all this has going for it, and they aren't even THAT great. Also, the killer here is pretty ruthless and viscous, which some genre fans might find refreshing. But mainly, this entertains because of the old "it's so bad it's good" cliché, and sometimes, like on Halloween eve, that's all I really need out of horror flick--entertainment, no matter what its source. Still die-hard and picky slasher fans should probably just stick to watching the original "Halloween" for the 30th time.

My Grade: D-