SLASHERS – Hell Night

Published on: 27th August, 2009

SLASHERS - Hell Night  | read this item

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Had Hammer ever made a slasher film it would no doubt have been something like Hell Night, Tom DeSimone’s gothic chiller that owed as much of a debt to William Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill than Halloween. Forgoing the usual contemporary setting of high schools, summer camps and suburban neighbourhoods, Hell Night instead tried to subvert the expectations of the slasher genre by avoiding all manner of modern conveniences. Utilising the fancy dress formula that had served Terror Train so well the previous year, DeSimone attempted to create a stylish and atmospheric tale of a group of pledges that are trapped in a haunted mansion and forced to spend the night with the various ghosts and mad axe-men.

DeSimone had grown up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and had spent his youth immersed in cinema along with his brother Robert (who would later appear in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning). At the age of ten, he fell ill with rheumatic fever and remained bedridden for some time, prompting his father to purchase a projector and a selection of old films to help pass the hours. It was from this that he first took in an interest in filmmaking and began making Super-8 shorts with his family and friends, an obsession that took him through high school and college. Upon graduating he enrolled at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) where he began to seriously consider a career as a filmmaker. His first major achievement was Wooden Lullaby, a short film that would win the young director various awards.

Upon leaving university, DeSimone landed his first industry work as an editor for Bosustow Productions in Los Angeles, where he continued to make short films, resulting in another success with One Special Dog. Eventually, he decided to form his own production company and began shooting X-rated movies, crediting himself under the alias Lancer Brooks, and creating such tasty titles as How to Make a Homo Movie, Prison Girls and Swap Meat. But it would be at a New Year’s Eve party that his luck would change, where a chance meeting with producer Bruce John Curtis would lead to more commercial projects. The first would be a script entitled Lips, a perverse comedy about a woman with a talking vagina that would eventually be released by American International Pictures as Chatterbox in 1977.

DeSimone would once again return to the adult industry to produce several more X-rated flicks including Gay Guide to Hawaii and Wet Shorts, before once again collaborating with Curtis, this time on a horror movie. Hell Night was the first screenplay by Randy Feldman, who would later find success with the Sylvester Stallone/Kurt Russell action thriller Tango & Cash, and Curtis felt that it would be the perfect vehicle for his director to move into the mainstream. It had many of the elements that were a guaranteed sell to young audiences (sexually promiscuous youths, fraternity pranks, gruesome set pieces) and its isolated location could also serve as an advantage. The story told of Alpha Sigma Rho, a fraternity house whose brothers were daring a group of young pledges to spend the night in the infamous Garth Manor.

Whilst the script would include the usual back-story (the house had been the scene of a massacre many years earlier) that would explain the motives of the antagonist, DeSimone sensed something fresh and exciting in the material. In an effort to distance the project from its contemporaries (such as Friday the 13th and Prom Night), DeSimone suggested that the frat kids and holding a fancy dress party, allowing the protagonists to dress in more gothic-style clothes, instead of having teens wandering around an old mansion in jeans and t-shirts. DeSimone was determined to avoid the usual slasher clichés and instead focused on recreating the atmosphere of old Hammer, Universal and Roger Corman films, whilst still providing a cast of young, good-looking actors to provide the eye candy.

Prior to DeSimone’s involvement, the project had already been presented with its leading lady attached. Curtis had previously worked with former child star Linda Blair on the 1974 television movie Born Innocent, in which the young actress had played a teenage girl who is sent to a care facility where she is constantly abused and tormented. Following on from her success with The Exorcist, Blair would make several unusual and daring career choices, although sadly these would eventually ruin her commercial appeal. But Curtis was convinced that Blair was the right actress for the role and that her presence would help generate interest in the project. Despite attempting to distance herself from the horror genre after the disaster that was Exorcist II: The Heretic, Blair was intrigued by the story and agreed to take the lead role. Her co-star, Peter Barton, would return to the slasher genre three years later for Joseph Zito’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

To help with the funding and marketing of Hell Night the filmmakers approached Irwin Yablans, who had previously been instrumental in the production of John Carpenter’s Halloween, as well as the underrated and little seen 1980 flick Fade to Black. One name that would appear on the credits as an Executive Producer was Chuck Russell, who would later become a director in his own right with A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors and The Blob, before moving onto more family-friendly material with the Jim Carrey hit The Mask. The cinematography would be handled by Mac Ahlberg, who had previously worked with the likes of Ingmar Bergman and would later lens films for Charles Band and Sean S. Cunningham.

Whilst it was not DeSimone’s intention to make a straightforward splatter film, he was aware that audiences would demand a certain amount of gore and violence and so the producers sought experienced makeup artists. Ken Horn had gained acclaim for his work on Wes Craven’s notorious exploitation flick The Hills Have Eyes and the creepy mannequin horror The Tourist Trap, whilst his collaborator Tom Schwartz had recently completed work on David Cronenberg’s Scanners. To help edit the movie, the filmmakers brought in Tony Di Marco and composer Dan Wyman, who would later work on Prince’s Purple Rain and the Stephen King adaptation The Lawnmower Man, respectively.

Principal photography lasted for approximately six weeks and consisted of all night shoots. During the first week of filming, DeSimone’s shooting script was stolen from the set, forcing the director to have to re-write his notes instead of sleeping. The external shots of Garth Manor were filmed outside of Kimberly Crest House, but due to the estate refusing the crew access inside the interiors were filmed in an old house in Pasadena, with the underground tunnel and rooftop sequences shot at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. The one scene that was designed to cater to the gore fans involved the decapitation of one of the characters, in which the neck would be severed with a blade and the body would fall to the floor, whilst the head still twitched in the killer’s hand. Sadly, however, this effect would be severely trimmed by the MPAA, leaving Hell Night relatively bloodless.

The movie was released in America on August 28 1981, during the summer of arguable the most successful year ever for the slasher genre. Fans had already seen the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Friday the 13th Part 2 and Happy Birthday to Me and so their taste for the genre was at an all-time high. Unfortunately, due to the neutered violence, Hell Night would fail to find the same success as many of the other slashers, although its reputation would eventually grow through word-of-mouth. And whilst come critics praised its stylish look, others simply dismissed it as boring. Over the years, however, Hell Night has gained a reputation as something of an overlooked gem.

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