HAPPY HELL NIGHT

Happy Hell Night Movie Review

It's time for that all-American college institution ritual everybody loves so much...yes, it's pledge night, and at Winfield College, this is taken so seriously they have a competition to determine which house can be the biggest jerks to the freshmen. When he discovers his younger brother, Sonny (Frank John Hughes), has been having an affair with his girlfriend, frat boy Eric (Nick Gregory) sends him and a friend off on a mission to photograph a priest named Zachary Malius. Who is Malius? He's a dude who killed seven pledges 25 years prior, and has been in an insane asylum since. Naturally, Malius escapes the asylum and unleashes vengeance on the college...good job Eric. Your drove of jackasses are the winners! 

As picked by him

Yes, this movie is as bland as they come, adding more evidence to my argument that the 1990's was the worst decade for horror flicks (this one was released in 1992). In the first act, we meet the characters, and none of them are even a little bit interesting--the acting is amateurish at best, which makes this even worse. One, Ned, does look like Kevin Bacon dressed as a creeper for Halloween, so there's that--the actor, Ted Clark, is probably the worst of the bunch, which is really saying something. We also have Henry Collins. This character escaped Malius, and is the father of Sonny and Eric. Why do I bring him up. Believe it or not, in this low budget film you have probably not heard of, he is played by two people you almost certainly have heard of--Darren McGavin...

"He looked like a deranged Easter Bunny, I tell ya!"

... and Sam Rockwell.

"Me? An Academy Award winner?

The shooting and editing are arguably even worse than the acting, complete with hilariously bad slow-motion action. Though unoriginal, at least something started developing at the start of the film, but somewhere in the middle it just comes to a complete halt, and the focus turns to Ned, who, as it turns out, doesn't just look like a creeper, but actually IS one. We find he has hidden cameras set up in various places and uses them to watch naked chicks. This doesn't really add anything at all to the story, and feels very much like they realized there wasn't enough to produce a feature-length film, so they threw in a bunch of nudity to fill the time. One of these scenes (minus any actual nudity) features another pre-stardom familiar face--Jorja Fox.

Who are you? Who who? Who who?

While it is fun seeing some recognizable people, their actual screen time is minimal, so if you're a big fan of Rockwell, Fox, or McGavin, don't get too excited for this. The ending is so cheesy and uninspired you may find yourself laughing. In a movie that offers little else, the death scenes are surprisingly well executed, so not all is lost...they're also not good enough to warrant a recommendation to watch the entire movie. If your thing is seeing stars before they were famous, check out Happy Hell Night for the few minutes you actually see said stars; otherwise, there's no reason to watch this one. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 4

Happy Hell Night Movie Trailer