Starring: Nick Gregory, Laura Carney, Ted Clark, Frank John Hughes
Directed by: Brad Owens
Written by: Brian Owens & Ron Petersen
The Story:
I never joined a fraternity. My roommate in college and I considered it, and then quickly dismissed the idea. Now I'll admit I don't actually play well with others....but the real reason, at least for me was that all of the guys I knew in fraternities were assholes. Just like in this movie only they didn't get laid as much. (if they did, hell, I would've joined then)
Hell night is coming up and the brothers at Phi Ima dickhead or whatever the name is of this fraternity have a hazing prank that will literally open the bowels of hell. Goofy Boy (I think his name was Ralph, I didn't write it down) wants to join the frat badly and his friend Jake, a member is trying to help him. Together with Frat brothers Eric and Ned they plan a hazing prank that is supposed to be really cool. For some reason everyone keeps telling Eric that his younger brother Sonny needs to hurry and show up because he needs to be there. Apparently the party can't really go into full swing without Sonny, like he's the freaking Fonz or something. Eric isn't so sure that Sonny is dependable, from dialogue we get the idea that Sonny has let him down in the past, but its not elaborated on. Even their father, Henry, calls Eric on the phone and mentions to Eric that he wants him to help Sonny join the fraternity....but dear ol' dad gets the willies when Eric mentions something that happened way back when dad was in college. Something about an Evil Scary Dude killing some frat brothers. Daddy Henry makes up a lame excuse and hangs up. (hilariously he says his other line is ringing....I guess dad forgot that Eric would actually HEAR it if it were ringing)
The haze that Ned has come up with is thus....in the State Insane Asylum the guy that killed the frat boys sits in a dungeon like cell, unmoving for thirty odd years. Goofy boy and Sonny are tasked to somehow get in there and get a picture of him. This task seems impossible in real life and at least difficult in the movie's little universe.....and that makes Eric happy since he caught Sonny boning his girlfriend Liz earlier in the afternoon.
However the asylum is ridiculously easy to get into. Goofy boy and Sonny have only to contend with one bored nurse on duty, and she's so busy watching late night TV she doesn't even notice them skulking into the lower depths of the place. Man, our health care system does suck. But even as they do get the picture of the Evil Scary Dude in his cell, ESD rips Goofy Boy's arm off through his little door slot and frees himself. Sonny, in a burst of divine intelligence hot foots it. Well, intelligence and cold bloodiness. He could have at least warned the nurse. She gets it next, when Evil Scary Dude cuts her throat.
Evil Scary Dude then makes his way to the fraternity party and proceeds to open a can of Satanic whoop ass on various floozies and moronic college boys. Meanwhile oblivious to the carnage, Liz shows up and tries to make it up to Eric. She knows that he knows that she's been screwing Sonny. What a bitch. He pretty much tells her to go to H-E-double hockey sticks so she goes off to pester Ned, who is a serious sick bastard. Ned's hobby is secretly taping his frat brothers having sex. Liz manages to get him to spill the beans about Sonny and Goofy Boy's mission. For no real reason Liz becomes concerned about their welfare and goes to see Father Kane the local priest. She no more then mentions the asylum when Kane instantly wigs out and says he must prepare and that she must warn her friends. Liz leaves and Kane goes to pray before a big cross in the chapel. A big cross with a big Jesus on it. Ever see that olds Madonna video for "Like a prayer"? Remember when Madonna, all sweaty and slutty looking was in the church and the statue of Jesus came to life? That freaked me out when I first saw it. Well, Kane gets it worse....not only does his marble Jesus come to life and start bleeding, it groans awfully and all and then falls to the floor. Don't worry, you won't see Father Kane hauling ass like a chicken. You'll next see him when....
Eric and Sonny's dad, Henry, arrives. He finds Kane hung on the cross upside down and mutilated. By this time Sonny, Eric, Ned and Sue...well, not Sue...she lost her head....nyuk, nyuk, nyuk..... are hiding from Evil Scary Dude in the frat house. That's a big freakin' frat house. But Henry shows up to lay some exposition on them. Back in the day when he was a student there, he and some friends made a deal with the devil for wealth and power.
They broke into a mausoleum and took the body of a dead priest to use in a bizarre ritual. They raised a demon in the body and it promptly killed all of them except for Henry. Father Kane showed up to exorcise the demon, or at least subdue it. The demon was then sent to the asylum so now we know where Evil Scary Dude came from. Henry says he knows how to destroy the demon, but he never gets to capitalize on that knowledge as he gets whacked soon. But Liz finds his book of "how to summon Evil Scary Dudes and then make them F**k off". The gang manages to get to the mausoleum, since the ritual has to held where they demon was summoned, but Eric is wounded by Evil Scary Dude. Evil Scary Dude handcuffs himself to Sonny just as the incantation is almost done ....hoping that Liz and Sonny won't finish it...if they do, Sonny will have to go to Hell with Evil Scary Dude. (where'd he get the damned handcuffs? I guess handcuff are prerequisite items for demon guys, taking place of the pitchfork). Sonny though, says 'damn the torpedoes' and does it anyway. Both he and Evil Scary Dude are sent directly to the gates of hell. Its over, but as Liz boards the ambulance bearing the injured Eric we see that the driver is....man, you know its Evil Scary Dude. the end.
This flick has a date of 1992, which is close enough to the eighties that it seems like an 80's scary flick. To be honest, for what its worth, it delivers on what we all expect from a movie like this. There's gratuitous sex, but not enough to be downright sleazy, and there's a killer that has supernatural powers. Of course, the whole "He's the ambulance driver now!" thing is kind of lame, but it happens all of the time. My only pet peeve is that the characters are a bit too relaxed about things. Its hard to feel any regret about Sonny's selfless act at the end of the movie. First of all he was humping his brothers girlfriend behind his back...he didn't even think about warning the nurse that Evil Scary Dude was on the loose...not to mention that if he had, maybe Goofy Boy might have not bled to death....and he had a second chance to admit his mistakes when a cop pulled him over after leaving the asylum. Yeah, Sonny was an asswipe. But even when Evil Scary Dude is after them, the rest of the gang seem to take it too easy as if they were only confronted with a mean mangy dog that bit someone. They see Sue's head fall the hell off, and they' barely register an "Oh, Snap!".
I guess media violence does desensitize people.
Best Lines: “No STV"- Evil Scary Dude when he kills Ned.
Are you kidding me?
1.) At the beginning of the movie we see the an orderly showing a presumably new nurse her rounds in an insane asylum. I've never been in an insane asylum, but this is the typical movie insane asylum, you know the kind that looks basically like an abandoned building with no lights. All they needed was a few crack heads sprinkled around. The orderly stops in front of one of the cells and says to the nurse "We only check on this one twice a week to see if he's still alive." Good Gravy, aren't there some kind of state or Federal inspections for these places? You only check on a mental patient twice a week while he's locked in a dungeon like cell? The freakin' Count of Monte Cristo got better treatment!
2.) I sure hope Liz isn't supposed to be the heroine of this movie, because even less than halfway through this flick, I'm convinced she's a skank. She's screwing her boyfriend's brother, which is, well a lot worse than just screwing some random guy on the side. She even walks in on Ned while he's watching a videotape of one of his friends banging some chick and doesn't seem too upset. Basically she'll obviously have sex with anyone she feels like and doesn't much care that Ned is a voyeur, even though she must by default know the people he's been secretly filming. Don't get me wrong....I wouldn't kick Liz off of a mattress but she's no paragon of virtue.
3.) Wow! Eric, understandably pissed off about Liz bumping and grinding with his brother, walks up to a girl at the frat party says he's never seen her before and asks 'Want to ****?'....and she says "Sure!". And she's hot! You know, in my younger years when I was in college I actively sought out sluts and I never found a really hot one that was that easy to get into the sack. He didn't even buy her a drink!
4.) Goofy Boy gets his arm ripped off by the Evil Scary Dude and even in the icy grip of impending death he can't think of anything interesting to say. he just keeps crying 'Sonny, I can't stop the bleeding....*sob*...Sonny I can't stop the bleeding...". No [unwrite] Einstein...you just had your arm ripped off! Damn...at least yell something like "AAAARGH! You son of a bitch!"....or "F**k! That hurts!". Hell, even "Its just a flesh wound!". Evil Scary Dude however answers Goofy Boy with a creeping sounding '"No kidding.".
5.) Ned is the creepiest thing in this movie. What a slimy loser. During the big party he's in his room videotaping the other frat boys having sex and he has the nerve to say to himself 'they get the bitches and I get the riches.'. Hey Ned, I think they made out better in this deal than you did. Maybe if you actually went downstairs to the party you could have some of the riches too. (apparently the girls at this college are easy) To make Ned even more lame, when the power goes out this guy has a gas powered generator in his room! Nothing gets between Ned and his home made porn, by golly!
6.) What the hell? Liz is trying to conduct the incantation that will send Evil Scary Dude back to hell, and she read it herself before....Stay in the Circle....aw, fiddlesticks, we all know that in a scary movie when someone is told to stay in the circle, or don't break the chain of hands or don't say Candy man 7 times, they're gonna do it anyway. But not only does she leave the circle, she turns her back on the Evil Scary Dude...dumbass. Luckily Sonny arrives on his motorcycle to save her, and trust me, you'll have to see this scene to truly understand this....I mean, they're in a friggin' mausoleum....so why in the name of Solomon Grundy is there a funkin' bear trap in there!?
Nudity and Sex: Plenty, though I'm kind of suspecting a body double in Liz's case.
Huh?:
In the context of the movie, there's a problem with the flow of time. after leaving the asylum, Sonny is stopped by a police officer. The officer asks for his license and does the cop thing....you know where they go sit in their car for a few minutes while they check up on you. Fine....we all know that usually takes an annoying length of time....but meanwhile we see Liz go to the fraternity house party, talk to Eric, wander around, go talk to Ned, leave the party and seek out some old priest and a few other things happen....then we get back to sonny and the cop is just finishing running his records! what did she do, send a DNA sample somewhere!? in the movie time frame that must have at least been an hour!
I could be wrong, but I thought nurses were....you know, kind of used to seeing mangled up people. I mean if you go to a hospital and the nurse looks at you and screams, then you're probably [unwrite]ed up beyond medical care. Well, the nurse at the beginning of the movie takes a gander at the killer in his cell at the asylum and goes bananas. Funny thing is, when we see the guy finally, he's creepy looking but not so creepy looking that I'd expect a real nurse to lose it over him.
The sheriff (all of these movies always have a sheriff) visits the fraternity upset because Ned went to city hall to do some research and left "without returning some confidential files". Uh, confidential? if they were confidential how the hell did Ned get to see them? By the words and intonation the sheriff uses Ned was allowed to see them, but shouldn't have left with them. If that's the case then I guess Ned is a city official (yeah, right) or they weren't really confidential.
The Evil Scary Dude is in the State Insane Asylum. Don't ask me what State, but has anyone ever seen a State Insane Asylum? I damn sure haven't....maybe they don't call them "Insane asylums" anymore. I've never seen one outside of TV and movies....and I sure hope they aren't as dingy as the ones you see in the flicks.
I didn't know that Bears were a threat in mausoleums. They must be because there's a bear trap in there!
The Final Judgment: Giving at least what we expect from a movie like this, Happy Hell Night scores three devil heads. I won't be surprised if Evil Scary dude has a sequel out there somewhere.
