Happy Hell Night (1992)

Redundant and unnecessary.

One of my all time favorites.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Oh Canada. We've celebrated your movies for an entire week and you continue to deliver pure blasts of polite insanity to our streaming devices and DVD players! Halloween night 1966. A priest named Zachary Malius kills seven frat boys from Winfield College for breaking into his family's crypt and recreating an occult ritual. He's placed into an insane asylum, where the laws in Canada are, well, insane. He's never fed and has been in a catatonic state for years, surviving by eating bugs.Kids have learned nothing in the intervening quarter century as they go right back and do the ritual again. Malius comes back to life and starts doing what slasher villains do best - wipe out people right after they get done having sex. At least he has the excuse of being a priest. One wonders why they decided to make him like Freddy Kruger, yelling things like, "No sex! No TV! No parking!" That said, the fact that the Catholic Church covered up these crimes should come as a shock to no one.Sam Rockwell shows up briefly as the younger version of the character that Darren McGavin plays for the rest of the film. Jorja Fox from TV's CSI also shows up.Director Brian Owens is also behind 80's video fave Brainscan. There is one genuinely unnerving scene where a crucified Christ comes to life and starts screaming, then falls to the floor and breaks into small pieces. Shades of Enter the Devil!There are moments of slow motion flashbacks and hints of art here that are undermined by horrible looking titles. It's like his movie got only so close to being well art directed. It's not the best or worst slasher ever, but it won me over. Maybe I was watching it at 2:30 AM, which always helps matters.

Happy Hell Night (1992) * (out of 4)In 1967 a Priest goes a bit nutty and kills some frat boys. He's thrown into an asylum and remains there until twenty-five years later. As a fraternity prank, a couple boys break into the asylum to try and get a picture but they end up releasing a demon with a dark secret.The slasher genre was very much dead by the time HAPPY HELL NIGHT was released but thanks to video producers still tried to recapture some magic. More times than not these films offered us nothing new and instead we just got the same type of thrills that were being done a decade earlier to a much better effect. HAPPY HELL NIGHT is a pretty awful movie all around and it's too bad because the killer himself could have been put to much better use.Pretty much everything about this film is rather bad. This includes the acting, the direction and there are a couple goofs throughout the movie as well including one really embarrassing one. What really kills this movie is the fact that it really doesn't offer any fresh ideas as it follows the slasher story book 100% and it also doesn't do anything new with the possession ideas. The entire movie just has a very cheap feel to it and there's really not a single time where you can take it serious.There aren't any scares to be found in the film and there aren't any good gore effects either. The murder weapon is a mountain-climbing pick and it's put to poor use and more times that not we just see the aftermath of the attack with a fake looking pick sticking out of whatever body part. As it stands, HAPPY HELL NIGHT just doesn't have much going for it.

A late entry into the mid-80's/early 90's slasher explosion, "Happy Hell Night" remains obsolete for good reason: it's not very good.With an unusually high IMDb rating for a film like this, I was expecting much more. The film basically centers around a college campus celebrating Hell Night. In the meantime, a crazed, escaped murderous priest escapes from a mental hospital and goes on a murderous rampage. Throw in some supernatural elements, and you have quite a mess of a film.I give the film credit for having a damn creepy-looking killer: picture a bald albino with black eyes--not a pretty image. However, the filmmakers ruin the potential creepiness of the character by making him speak cheesy lines before killing a victim. As a result, the killer becomes a comical gimmick, rather than the potential frightening horror villain that he could have been. The pacing of the film is quite slow, as well, and there are long periods of time when nothing of any importance seems to happen. The acting verges on being atrocious from all involved, particular the female and male leads. To top it off, the climax is laughingly ridiculous as the survivors try to lure the killer into a circle to kill him.Overall, this film is a bore and I would only recommend seeing it if you are a DIE HARD slasher fan. Even then, this film offers nothing new or exciting. My suggestions-rewatch an 80's slasher classic like "The Burning," "My Bloody Valentine," or "Stage Fright." 3 out of 10

This would be an excellent movie for Mystery Science Theater 3000 to do. Predictable plot with lots of gore and a hideous bad guy with good comic relief like spouting "no parking" after killing Jorga Fox in the car.Only time I would recommend it is if you were having a marathon horror flick on a weekend near Halloween, would be an interesting one to add to the fare for the '90's nostalgic look, the ugly, yet comical, demon and the adequate gory special effects. Only other reason would be if you are a Darrin McGavin or Jorga Fox fan as it displays their attempt to breathe life into cardboard character of the script.