Life Blood

IMDb
New Year's Eve, 1969: While driving on the Pearblossom Highway, a lesbian couple encounters the creator of the universe. Laid to rest for 40 years, the women wake up on New Year's Day as reborn creatures.



HorrorNews

SYNOPSIS:

New Year’s Eve, 1968: While driving on the Pearblossom Highway, a lesbian couple encounters the creator of the universe. Laid to rest for 40 years, the women wake up on New Year’s Day as reborn creatures.

REVIEW:

Written & Directed by: Ron Carlson
Starring: Sophie Monk, Scout Taylor-Compton, Anya Lahiri, Patrick Renna, Charles Napier

QUICK FIX:

On New Year’s Eve 1968, lesbian lovers Brooke & Rhea go on the lam when one of them kills an arrogant assclown actor for sexually abusing another woman at a swinging 60s Hollywood-type party. So far, I’m in this thing with my full undivided attention. But along the way out of town Thelma & Louise style, Brooke runs over a raccoon or armadillo or something small and instead of throwing pedal to the metal, Bandit style, they pull over for a scene of freaking out. Not making out, unfortunately – freaking out. Suddenly, a desert sandstorm appears and wipes Brooke (the killer) from existence. Rhea (the good heart) is even more freaked out now when out of the sandstorm walks God Herself, only sadly it’s not Alanis Morrisette reprising her role from DOGMA, just some chick I’ve never seen before who isn’t as quirky or hot, and doesn’t even scream to blow up Ben Affleck for being a naughty angel.

Anyway, Goddess tells Rhea that she is to now be her immortal avenger of pure evil – consuming evil and kicking ass for the Lord as a vampire. But Rhea doesn’t want to spend immortality without her extremely unhinged love of her life and begs for Brooke to be her everlasting sidekick. Goddess is apprehensive at first, but soon relents and grants her wish with a warning about how Brooke will never be able to handle the truth or something. Forty years later, BAM, the girls wake up in the same spot in the desert, Brooke snacks on a hitchhiker and some unlucky motorist, and thus begins the battle of wills as Rhea futilely hopes beyond all hope that love will triumph over bloodlust, which gives a whole new meaning to the term “bleeding heart”…

RAMBLINGS:

I actually remember, while I was traveling on the road right around a year ago at this time, through one of the towns along my way I found a video store that was about to close down, and they were having this ginormous DVD sale – everything had to go. I saw this flick staring up at me then and the premise sounded so enormously cool to me that I knew I had to own it immediately. But then, ADD kicked in as I was distracted by something shiny (or more truthfully, a cute lil clerk asking me if she could show me anything…trick question right there, folks) and I wound up leaving LIFE BLOOD behind for another stack of horror flicks that were in the five for ten dollars pile. Then when this screener came to me a couple of weeks ago and I recognized the title, all those memories came flooding back. But after having watched it now, finally, I have to give a shout-out to Claire (or whatever her name was) for the distraction and for saving me the two dollars plus tax.

But first, I gotta say big props must be given for a really decent stab at an original take on a vampire flick, which is basically taking a randomly selected good-hearted lesbian and making her an unstoppable badass vampire killing machine on a heavenly mission to smite the wicked. Even though I can’t help but believe that with all the angry angels, crafty demons, and hungry leviathans flying around between Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory (yeah, I watch SUPERNATURAL, got a problem with it?) that God needed to turn a lowly human into a vampire to strike down Her enemies, but hey, who am I to question?

Oh wait…I’m a reviewer, so I get to question all I want while I smite and strike down MY enemies in the name of the beast they call The Desolate One – the greatest unholy savior on the World Wide Web, The Almighty Horrornews!!! And question, I shall. And the enemy I’m smiting here? Easy…taking a premise that had the balls to be original and the promise of being entertaining and so kickass that I couldn’t wait for it to finally get going that…wait…I spent the next 80 or so minutes actually waiting for it to get going and instead watched it turn into very, very, very, very low-rent LEGION as the two girls waited out the sunlight in a roadside truck stop while Brooke tried half-heartedly to control her cravings while Rhea tried half-heartedly to control Brooke. Okay, if they’re immortal saviors for God against evil, why does sunlight bother them, vamps or not? Can’t they hunt during the day too, or does pure evil, just like the freaks, only come out at night what, what, what??

LAST WORDS:

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Conan The Barbarian

ok Neighbor wants this one


Rotten Tomatoes
A quest that begins as a personal vendetta for the fierce Cimmerian warrior soon turns into an epic battle against hulking rivals, horrific monsters, and impossible odds, as Conan (Jason Momoa) realizes he is the only hope of saving the great nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil. -- (C) Lionsgate


RogerEbert
"Conan the Barbarian" involves a clash of civilizations whose vocabularies are limited to screams, oaths, grunts, howls, ejaculations, exclamations, vulgarities, screeches, wails, bellows, yelps and woofs. I'd love to get my hands on the paycheck for subtitling this movie.

The plot involves — oh, never mind. You have your Barbarians, and they kill one another in an unending series of battle scenes. I guess Conan is the good guy, but what difference does it make? He has no cause or belief. He's driven by revenge against the sadistic Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), who trapped Conan's father under a vat of molten iron, assigned young Conan to exert his little muscles to try to keep it from tipping, and screamed at the old man: "You will watch your child die trying to save you!"

Luckily, Conan (the muscular Jason Momoa) survives and grows up with no worse than a photogenic scar on his face, where some wayward molten iron dripped. He and his father Corin (Ron Perlman) had earlier forged his sword at the steel moltery; earlier still, the infant Conan was delivered on a battlefield by an emergency Caesarian performed by Corin's own sword on the child's mother, who survives long enough to say, "He shall be named Conan." She was so weak she lacked the breath to say, "Conan the Barbarian."

The movie is a series of violent conflicts. People who despair of convincing me to play video games tell me, "Maybe if you could just watch someone else playing one!" I feel as if I now have. Conan carves, beheads, disembowels and otherwise inconveniences the citizens of several improbable cities, each time in a different fanciful situation. The evil Khalar Zym and his daughter Marique (Rose McGowan) turn up regularly, uttering imprecations, with Marique especially focused on Conan's warrior gal pal Tamara (Rachel Nichols).

This Marique, she's a piece of work. She has white pancake makeup, blood red lips, cute little facial tattoos and wickedly sharp metal talons on her fingers. At one point, she blows some magic dust at Conan, and the dust turns into a team of warriors made of sand. This is a neat special effect, although it raises the question if you turn back to sand when Conan slices you, what kind of a life is that?

The film ends with a very long battle involving Conan, Khalar Zym, Tamara and Marique, a sentence I never thought I'd write. It takes place largely with Tamara strapped to a revolving wheel above a vertiginous drop to flames far below. Mention is made of a volcano, but never further explained. The entire cavern crumbles around them, big chunks of rock falling everywhere except, luckily, upon them.

"Conan the Barbarian" is a brutal, crude, witless high-tech CGI contrivance, in which no artificial technique has been overlooked, including 3-D. The third dimension once again illustrates the principle that when a movie largely takes place indoors in dimly lit spaces, the last thing you need is a pair of dark glasses.

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Steel Trap

HorrorNews

Steel Trap (2007)
Tell me if you heard this one? A small group of friends are chased by a killer on New Year’s…..
Crappy film, that probably only gets mentioned this one time of year.

As an extravagant party unfolds on the top floor of an abandoned towering skyscraper, five different guests receive a mysterious text message inviting them to join an exclusive VIP party being held on the 27th floor of the same building…

IMDb

Seven guests are invited to an after party on the abandoned floor of an office building, handpicked to play a series sadistic and deadly puzzles.

Rotten Tomatoes

Seven adventurous partygoers find themselves trapped in a sadistic game of death after accepting an invitation to a mysterious party. It's New Year's Eve, and a group of revelers are living it up on the roof of an abandoned skyscraper when five of the partiers receive an intriguing text message. According to the sender, there's an exclusive VIP party happening on the twenty seventh floor, and they're all invited. Once on the floor, however, the five guests and two party crashers quickly realize that they have fallen into a trap. The only way off of this floor is to follow a series of morbid clues left by a murderous psychopath. But who conceived these deadly games, and why have they targeted this specific group? As the contestants begin to die a series of spectacularly staged deaths, each precious clue becomes a genuine matter of life and death. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Night Of The Wild

IMDb
In "NIGHT OF THE WILD", a large meteorite crashes into a quiet town, and pet dogs become mysteriously aggressive. attacking and killing the residents. Teenager Roslyn (Mays) and her old but faithful dog Shep are out camping when the attacks hit. Now separated by the chaos in town and blocked roads, Roslyn and the other members of her family must find each other by fighting back against the blood-thirsty hounds before the dogs take over the whole town and escape becomes impossible.



Rotten Tomatoes
Pet dogs turn mysteriously aggressive, attacking and killing people, after a large meteor crashes into a quiet 


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Second Chance

IMDb

A billionaire and a bioengineer bring a dead police officer back to life.

ComingSoon

Second Chance trailer released by FOX

FOX has once again changed the name of their upcoming modern take on Mary Shelley’s classic, which was initially titled “Frankenstein,” then “The Frankenstein Code,” and then the less horror-friendly-but-still-sci-fi-sounding “Lookinglass” to its new title Second Chance. They’ve also debuted the first official Second Chance trailer, which you can view below.

The show, which hails from writer and executive producers Rand Ravich (“Life,” “Crisis’) and Howard Gordon (“Homeland”), centers on a disgraced, 75-year-old ex-sheriff, whose life ends at the hands of corrupt cops. He is brought back to life and given a second chance by a pair of young tech scientists, as a 35-year-old with unpredictable near-superhuman abilities.

Here’s the full synopsis for Second Chance: Seventy-five-year-old Jimmy Pritchard (guest star Philip Baker Hall, “Modern Family,” Magnolia) is a shell of his former self. A drinker, a womanizer and a father who always put work before family, Pritchard was forced to resign as L.A. County Sheriff for corrupt conduct more than a decade ago. Now, some 15 unkind years later, he is killed when he stumbles upon a robbery at the home of FBI Agent Duval Pritchard (Tim DeKay, “White Collar”), one of his three children. But death is surprisingly short for Jimmy, who is brought back to life by billionaire tech-genius twins Mary Goodwin (Dilshad Vadsaria, “Revenge”) and her brother, Otto (Adhir Kalyan, “Rules of Engagement”), founders of the social networking empire, Lookinglass. Resurrected as a younger version of himself, with physical abilities of which he never dreamed, a re-animated Pritchard (Rob Kazinsky, “True Blood”) is given a second chance at life. What will he do with it? Will he seek vengeance against those who killed him? Will he try to repair the damage he did to his family? Will he embrace a new sense of purpose or fall prey to old temptations?

Hugh Fitzpatrick (“Tyrant”) serves as co-executive producer, with Michael Cuesta also executive producing and directing the pilot. Second Chance will get its series premiere on January 13, 2016 on FOX.

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Love Or Whatever

Rotten Tomatoes
Love or Whatever is the story of Corey, a good-hearted guy who seems to have it all - a successful career as a therapist, an exuberant amount of charm and a pair of gorgeous engagement rings; ready to pop the question to his long-term, hot jock boyfriend. But, when his better half commits the ultimate betrayal and dumps him, Corey stumbles and fumbles through a wild and hilarious journey of self-discovery. Caught between his feisty, lesbian sister Kelsey and his hunky, smoldering new love interest Pete, and the hopelessly confused, "flexi-sexual" ex-boyfriend Jon, Corey is faced with a decision that could change his life forever. (c) TLA Releasing



IMDb
Corey had it all - a successful career, a sister who's his best friend and most of all, a bright future with his boyfriend. But, when the boyfriend dumps him for a woman, Corey sets off on a wild journey of self-discovery that leads him to new love and a life-changing choices.


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Wet Hot American Summer

IMDb
Set on the last day of camp, in the hot summer of 1981, a group of counselors try to complete their unfinished business before the day ends.



Rotten Tomatoes
The setting is Camp Firewood, the year 1981. It's the last day before everyone goes back to the real world, but there's still a summer's worth of unfinished business to resolve. At the center of the action is camp director Beth, who struggles to keep order while she falls in love with the local astrophysics professor. He is busy trying to save the camp from a deadly piece of NASA's Skylab which is hurtling toward earth. All that, plus: a dangerous waterfall rescue, love triangles, misfits, cool kids, and talking vegetable cans. The questions will all be resolved, of course, at the big talent show at the end of the day.


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October Moon

Rotten Tomatoes
Shunned by his loved ones after realizing his true sexual identity, a shy young man slips into a paranoid and violent rage when the object of his affection offers nothing but rejection in director Jason Paul Collum's bleak tale of love gone bad. Elliot is a quiet soul with a pretty fiancé and a loving family, but when Elliot's growing lust for Corwin finds him isolated from his friends and family, the stage is set for disaster the likes of which this family has never seen. Rejected by the callous Corwin and excommunicated from his family and fiancé, Elliot makes a murderous resolve to win Corwin's heart and vows not let anyone stand in the way of true love.


IMDb
A straight man's life becomes disastrous - and obsessively dangerous - when his family, fiancee and friends all begin to reject him after he realizes he has fallen in love with another man.


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Fear No Evil

IMDb
High school student turns out to be personification of Lucifer. Two arch angels in human form (as women) take him on.



Rotten Tomatoes
In this alternately scary and unintentionally silly teen angst-meets-Satanic possession entry, Andrew (Stefan Arngrim, former child star of the Gentle Ben TV series), a tormented nerd, learns he is the Antichrist incarnate and must battle two angels sent to foil his diabolical plans: his pretty classmate (Kathleen Rowe McAllen) and the old lady next door (Elizabeth Hoffman). He begins to exact revenge on his tormentors, one by one, and the rest happens as one might expect, that is, until the climax. Atop a seaside cliff, legions of the living dead under Andrew's command fight the benevolent angels in a winner-take-all bout for control of the world that plays out like a scaled-down version of Paradise Lost! Although the plot is heavy-handed and sometimes juvenile, the action is often quite good, and the special effects are notable, as is the direction. In spite of its obvious cliches and budgetary shortcomings, (#Fear No Evil) is a likeable horror film that shows promise of things to come for Frank LaLoggia, who successfully imbues the film with enough fire and brimstone to satiate the average horror fan; of course, this film is not for every taste. Apart from its artistic merit, (#Fear No Evil) should stand as an inspiration to young filmmakers everywhere, since producer-director LaLoggia managed to scrape up $150,000 to finance the production and find distributors all on his own -- all at the tender age of twenty-three, long before his future success directing the more subdued supernatural opus, (#The Lady in White).


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The Baby

IMDb

A social worker who recently lost her husband investigates the strange Wadsworth family. The Wadsworths might not seem too unusual to hear about them at first - consisting of the mother, two grown daughters and the diaper-clad, bottle-sucking baby. The problem is, the baby is twenty-one years old.

- Written by Brian J. Wright




Rotten Tomatoes
An A-list director. A jaw-dropping storyline. And depraved depictions of suburban violence, 70s fashions and 'sick love'. The result remains one of the most disturbing movies in Hollywood history: Anjanette Comer (The Loved One) stars as an idealistic L.A. County social worker who investigates the case of Mrs. Wadsworth (former '50s starlet Ruth Roman of Strangers On a Train fame), her two buxom daughters, and son 'Baby', a mentally-disabled man who sleeps in a crib, eats in a high-chair, crawls, bawls and wears diapers. But what secrets of unnatural attachment - and sexual obsession - are all of these women hiding?


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Jaws

RogerEbert
Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" is a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings we get to know and care about. It's a film that's as frightening as "The Exorcist," and yet it's a nicer kind of fright, somehow more fun because we're being scared by an outdoor-adventure saga instead of by a brimstone-and-vomit devil.

The story, as I guess everyone knows by now, involves a series of attacks on swimmers by a great white shark, the response of the threatened resort island to its loss of tourist business, and, finally, the epic attempt by three men to track the shark and kill it. There are no doubt supposed to be all sorts of levels of meanings in such an archetypal story, but Spielberg wisely decides not to underline any of them. This is an action film content to stay entirely within the perimeters of its story, and none of the characters has to wade through speeches expounding on the significance of it all. Spielberg is very good, though, at presenting those characters in a way that makes them individuals.

Before the three men get on that leaky old boat and go forth to do battle with what amounts to an elemental natural force, we know them well enough to be genuinely interested in the ways they'll respond. There's Brody (Roy Scheider), the police chief, who came to the island from New York looking, so he thought, for a change from the fears of the city. There's Quint (Robert Shaw), a caricature of the crusty old seafaring salt, who has a very particular personal reason for hating sharks. And there's Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), the rich kid turned oceanographer, who knows best of all what a shark can do to a man, and yet is willing to get into the water with one.

All three performances are really fine. Scheider is the character most of us identify with. He's actually scared of the water, doesn't like to swim and, when he sees the giant shark swim past the boat for the first time, we believe him when he informs Quint, very sincerely, "We need a bigger boat." Shaw brings a degree of cheerful exaggeration to his role as Quint, stomping around like a cross between Captain Queeg and Captain Hook, and then delivering a compelling five-minute monologue about the time the Indianapolis went down and he was one of more than a thousand men in the water. By the time rescue came, two-thirds of them had been killed by sharks.

Probably the most inspired piece of casting in the movie is the use of Richard Dreyfuss as the oceanographer. He made this film soon after playing the driven, scheming, overwhelmingly ambitious title character in "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," and the nice kid, college-bound, in "American Graffiti." Here he looks properly young, engaging, and scholarly, and introduces the technical material about sharks in a way that reinforces our elemental fear of them.

Which brings us to the shark itself. Some of the footage in the film is of an actual great white shark. The rest uses a mechanical shark patterned on the real thing. The illusion is complete. We see the shark close up, we look in its relentless eye, and it just plain feels like a shark. "Jaws" is a great adventure movie of the kind we don't get very often any more. It's clean-cut adventure, without the gratuitous violence of so many action pictures. It has the necessary amount of blood and guts to work -- but none extra. And it's one hell of a good story, brilliantly told.

Rotten Tomatoes

Based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel, Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark saga set the standard for the New Hollywood popcorn blockbuster while frightening millions of moviegoers out of the water. One early summer night on fictional Atlantic resort Amity Island, Chrissie decides to take a moonlight skinny dip while her friends party on the beach. Yanked suddenly below the ocean surface, she never returns. When pieces of her wash ashore, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) suspects the worst, but Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), mindful of the lucrative tourist trade and the approaching July 4th holiday, refuses to put the island on a business-killing shark alert. After the shark dines on a few more victims, the Mayor orders the local fishermen to catch the culprit. Satisfied with the shark they find, the greedy Mayor reopens the beaches, despite the warning from visiting ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) that the attacks were probably caused by a far more formidable Great White. One more fatality later, Brody and Hooper join forces with flinty old salt Quint (Robert Shaw), the only local fisherman willing to take on a Great White--especially since the price is right. The three ride off on Quint's boat "The Orca," soon coming face to teeth with the enemy. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

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The Forsaken

IMDb
A young man gets embroiled in a war against vampires.



Rotten Tomatoes
Genre writer/director J.S. Cardone crafts his own history of the vampire legend in this teen horror outing that takes place primarily in desert locations, à la Near Dark (1987) and Vampires (1998). Sean (Kerr Smith) is traveling across the desert to attend his sister's wedding when he picks up an unusual hitchhiker, Nick (Brendan Fehr). A vampire hunter, Nick soon has Sean embroiled in a battle between himself and a band of the undead creatures led by Kit (Johnathon Schaech). Caught in the middle of the supernatural shenanigans with Sean is Megan (Izabella Miko), who had been nearly turned into a vampire herself by Kit and his followers. Sean and Megan develop a romantic attachment, which encounters a further obstacle when Sean is infected with the vampire virus; only Kit's death can prevent Sean from permanently becoming one of the nosferatu.


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The Danish Girl

IMDb
A fictitious love story inspired by the lives of Danish artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.


Rotten Tomatoes
The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer. -- (C) Focus Feature


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Dont Open Till Christmas

IMDb
Somebody with very little Christmas spirit is killing anyone in a Santa suit one London holiday season, and Scotland Yard has to stop him before he makes his exploits an annual tradition.


Rotten Tomatoes
In this run-of-the-mill horror film, it is the Christmas season, and derelicts who need money for food and/or booze get jobs playing Saint Nick in the city's department stores. An insane killer has taken a strong dislike to these Santas and either violently does them in or disfigures them in very ugly ways. A Scotland Yard detective (Edmund Purdom, also the director) has been assigned to capture the serial killer, but when he is unable to get results fast enough, he is replaced by Sgt. Powell (Mark Jones). The list of suspects includes the Scotland Yard detective, a reporter who happens to be on the scene just after one of the crimes is committed, and another fellow who was also around for several of the attacks and is indirectly related to one of the victims. The puzzle will hopefully be solved while some Santas (Father Christmas in England) are still around. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi


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To All A Goodnight

IMDb
A group of teenagers at a party find themselves being stalked by a maniacal killer in a Santa Claus costume.



OHTheHorror

“Lock your door, too. I want you to be safe, Nancy. There’s evil here, I can feel it. The devil’s here.”

For horror filmmakers, the challenge of making a movie set around Christmas is often “how can we make the holiday scary?” The answer is often to corrupt Christmas and have the film go against everything Christmas stands for. A meaningful, peaceful holiday like Christmas is then filled with images of bloodshed and carnage. The easiest and most common target in Christmas horror… the killer Santa Claus. First seen in a segment of 1972’s Tales from the Crypt, the “killer Santa” gimmick would actually not be used again until 1980, when Last House on the Left actor David Hess made a little yuletide slasher film called To All a Good Night his directorial debut.

It’s Christmas break at the Calvin Finishing School for Girls and the girls who share this particular house have only one thing on their minds: Sex. They drug their housemother and invite a group of boys over, to fulfill their needs. Of course, at this particular house, Christmas has always been a bit of a controversy. It was on Christmas break years earlier that a girl was accidentally killed in an initiation gone wrong. And now, with images of studs dancing in their beds fresh on their minds, someone has shown up dressed as ol’ Saint Nick to exact a bloody revenge upon the house. One by one, the girls and their gentleman callers are subjected to a series of grisly, vengeance-fueled murders. Will someone save them or will the girls experience a silent night…forever?

So a killer Santa Claus might not be the most original Christmas horror movie idea ever, but here, it was only employed for the second time. It would be used in Christmas Eviland then again in Silent Night, Deadly Night. Both of those films are much better known to the horror film world than To All a Good Night, although I do think the killer Santa in this one is much scarier than in both of those. For one thing, like all the best slasher killers, it uses an actual mask… a very creepy, rosy cheeked, friendly faced mask of Santa. Most other killer Santas merely slap on a fake beard and hat, using their own face to scare victims. The Santa mask here, though, is quite effective in the few scenes that you can actually see it (more on this later). The problem is, the rest of the movie isn’t quite as effective. In fact, all around, it just feels a bit generic. I’m all for style over substance if the style is good enough, but here, it’s just kind of plain and with a threadbare script, there really isn’t much to cling to.

For the most part, the kills are good and mean. We get a decapitation, throat slashings, an arrow through the back of the head and out an open mouth, and what might be the signature death scene of the movie… death by airplane propeller. The nudity present in the film isn’t something to write home about. There are a few beauties in this film, but the only ones that appear nude are the ones I would hope to never see nude again. The killer, as I’ve said, is pretty effective in the scenes where you do see the mask. The problem is that, it is gravely underused. Of course, this could’ve been due to the dark transfer of the Media VHS that I watched the film on. It’s hard to say, but I do think in any case, Hess could’ve gotten much more mileage out of the mask had he shown it a bit more (and a bit earlier). I didn’t even know the killer Santa was wearing a mask until nearly halfway through the film.

As I said, though, the script is completely weak. It delivers the same kind of slasher shenanigans that other films do. While that’s sometimes not a bad thing, here, there is nothing at all to liven things up. Want a “Crazy Ralph” type character to warn the kids of something bad going on… you get that here in a crazy, mentally challenged gardener. The opening of the film was very reminiscent of the opening in Prom Night. The little girl’s death in that film is the exact same as the death of the girl during her initiation in this one. We have the usual red herrings set up as to who the killer might be, then one by one they are dispatched of. We also get the kind of over-the-top cheesy romance lines that prevailed in not just 80s horror, but comedy as well. For instance, one girl says to a potential beau… “Time for your advanced course in… relativity.” You just never hear stuff like that anymore. It’s probably no shock as to why, of course. It doesn't help lines like these that the actors and actresses delivering them are strictly amateurs when it comes to talent.

The Christmas mood of the film is minimal, but we do see lights occasionally. The music of the film is the standard 80s synth job. While it has a few nice touches here and there, I was mostly bored with it. Still, it’s a moderately interesting composition for 80s synth buffs. To me, the biggest surprise of the film is that actor David Hess didn’t make an appearance at all. With such a recognizable face on the US and International horror scenes, you’d think he’d wanna be able to slap his pic on posters even if all he did was make a cameo. I guess this time out, he simply wanted to conduct duties behind the camera as opposed to in front of it. While that is commendable, I guarantee that had he appeared in the film somewhere, it would've seen a DVD release by now. Hess' direction isn’t bad. In fact, it’s quite competent. It’s just not particularly memorable or flashy. Take his name off the film, and you could’ve substituted it with any other director of slasher movie ripoffs of the time and no one would be any the wiser.

To All A Good Night has yet to see a DVD release, and the last news I heard was that somehow MGM owned it in their vast library now. It’s a shame, as the film could definitely use a modern restoration. Released by Media Home Entertainment, the film suffered on VHS from what many other horror films released by Media suffered from…horribly dark transfers. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Terror on Tour, Fatal Games, and other releases by Media have some scenes so dark that it’s nearly impossible to tell what is going on in them. To All A Good Night is no different. Many scenes look like the viewer is simply staring at black carpet, while a horror sound FX CD is playing in the background. The darkness does provide a good contrast for the Christmas lights and holiday mood, though. All this said, I do moderately recommend the film for slasher fans. It’s not the best or most original, but I think fans will enjoy the cookie-cutter nature of the formula going full speed ahead, the mean, inventive kills, and the creepy Santa killer. Not the best by a long shot, but certainly worth seeing once. At the very least, it's passable holiday horror fare, but only if you’ve already seen essential flicks like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Black Christmas.Rent it!


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