Holiday Horror: To All a Goodnight (1980) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Scorpion Releasing

When you establish yourself in Wes Craven’s still controversial and shocking transposition of The Virgin Spring with The Last House on the Left as perhaps the most ferocious horror heavy of the 1970s, something songwriter turned character actor David Hess did with a brutal unforgettable vengeance in the role of Krug, where do you go from there?  Though appearing in Italian crime films such as Hitch-Hike and Ruggero Deodato’s The House on the Edge of the Park, the jack-of-all-trades film worker decided after starring in many a horror film it was time for him to make one himself.  

While the film itself, a Christmas themed horror slasher entitled To All a Goodnight, pales in comparison to some of the films it later spawned ala Silent Night, Deadly Night or the jointly released Christmas Evil, the one and only feature directorial effort from actor/musician David Hess still manages to whip up some Santa slayings while also presenting the screen debut of Ghostbusters actress Jennifer Runyon in a bona fide scream queen role.

 
At the height of Christmas at the rural Calvin Finishing School for Girls, a young female student is chased by a pranking sorority group who accidentally drive her to her death by pushing her off of a balcony.  Two years later, on the same campus grounds five students, good girl Nancy (Jennifer Runyon) and her four trashy girlfriends Melody, Leia, Trisha and Sam, decide during Christmas break to stay behind on campus to have a weekend romantic gathering with their boyfriends.  

After drugging the housemother and sneaking their beaus into the mansion for some boozing and sexing, their dream party is cut short when a masked murder dressed as Santa Claus begins terrorizing the kids, murdering them one by one as the body count rises.  Only Nancy and her nerdy beau Alex (Forrest Swanson) stand in the way of the murderous Saint Nick’s holiday rampage.

 
Written by Alex Rebar who was in the lead role of The Incredible Melting Man and coming on the heels of such iconic 1980 slasher fare as Friday the 13^th and the aforementioned Christmas Evil, horror heavy David Hess’ one and only directorial effort is a pretty entertaining holiday slasher flick despite being rife with day-for-night shots.  While the gory kills themselves are clearly trimmed slightly to appease the ratings board, having an axe wielding murderous Santa running amok still has the capacity to upset the moral majority while giving horror goers what they want.  

The cast of characters of oversexed college girls getting naked for most of the movie mostly play it up well with Judith Bridges’ mean girl Leia being not quite as bad as Nancy Allen’s vengeful demon from Carrie but bad enough to demand an ugly fate.  Having only seen Jennifer Runyon in Ghostbusters opposite Bill Murray in the film’s opening scene, it was curious catching her leading the charge in her first film production.  Also there’s a sneaky cameo from porn actor Harry Reems (billed as Dan Stryker in the credits) as an airplane pilot.

 
Visually if you can look past the day-for-night scenery and a seeming lack of much Christmas regalia on display save for some stew and college girls getting naked, the cinematography by Bil Godsey is passable.  Richard Tufo’s clearly casio keyboard score for the endeavor is chintzy but it gets the job done and isn’t that far removed from the score for Friday the 13^th.  

Hess’ direction is mostly okay though nothing in it signifies him as the ferocious monster that raised backwoods splatter havoc leading The Last House on the Left.  Save for some creative kills including an airplane propeller echoing a certain Nazi battle in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film wears its shoestring production roots on its sleeves.
 
Granted a limited theatrical run during dumping ground January 1989 before being released on home video by Media Home Entertainment, many complained the film’s darker scenes were unviewable on the VHS tape format.  Given mostly negative reviews by critics, the film was lambasted for “borrowing” from Bob Clark’s 1974 holiday horror classic Black Christmas.  

Around 2014 however, Scorpion Releasing in conjunction with rights holder MGM finally released the film on DVD and blu-ray disc including newly filmed interviews with actresses Jennifer Runyon, Katherine Herrington and screenwriter Alex Rebar.  Seen now in light of an ongoing slew of holiday horrors, sadly, David Hess’ effort is among the weaker ones.  But for those keen on wintry regional slasher efforts, To All a Goodnight mostly gets the job done.

--Andrew Kotwicki