Terreur dans la nuit

To All a Good Night (1980) is a movie I randomly came across on Shudder. The storyline follows an all girls school with a tragic past. When the President of the school leaves for a holiday trip the girls plan a party with boys and shenanigans. Wouldnt you know it that this is when the school is visited by a killer Santa Claus?

This movie is directed by David Hess in his directorial debut and stars Jennifer Runyon (Up the Creek), Kiva Lawrence (JAG), Sam Shamshak (Bulworth) and Harry Reems.

The storyline for this is fairly cliche and straightforward. There is an interesting character in this, Ralph, whose awkward and unpredictable and adds a level of suspense. He was well written and executed. The kill scenes are uneven with a couple good ones and some very bad to average ones. There is a cool airplane scene in this towards the end and the final villain reveal is okay.

Overall this movie is fairly average but is an okay slasher flick to watch during the holiday season. I'd score this a 5/10 and only recommend watching it with the appropriate expectations.

I read all the bad reviews before watching but I already know going in that it's from the 80's. A lot of the charm of an 80's movie is it's cheese factor, and this movie is no exception. The acting is not as bad as all these reviews say, I thought it was decent. The story is typically of that time period. A gathering of young adults to party and get naked and have sex to get hunted by a crazy Santa. It gets five stars for me, nothing great but watchable if in an 80's slasher mood.

The set-up is somewhat like that of "Black Christmas", with an opening minute that will remind the slasher fan of "Prom Night". At a finishing school for girls, one poor lass plummets to her death (or rather, a dummy does) after being chased around by her peers. A year later, a small group of gals who've stuck around during the Christmas holidays will find themselves stalked by a murdering fiend in a Santa Claus costume. The cops show up on the scene, but much like most things in this movie, they're not very good at their jobs, so our killer isn't going to face very much of a challenge.

This demands a viewing on the basis of its curiosity value. It's scripted by The Incredible Melting Man (a.k.a. actor Alex Rebar), and is the feature directorial debut for Krug (a.k.a. actor / composer David Hess). Rebars' sorry excuse for a screenplay is bad enough to make one think that he and everybody else were just sort of winging it throughout the shoot. Hess delivers no tension or suspense. Then again, you DO get the impression that they're not taking themselves that seriously. You couldn't, not with dialogue and performances as bad as this. The one rather cool moment occurs when the maniac is actually wearing something other than a Santa Claus suit.

The lovely Jennifer Runyon ("Ghost Busters", "Up the Creek") made her film debut as Nancy, a standard issue Nice Girl. Forrest Swanson is nerdy Alex, who seems to take a while to really notice the girls. Kiva Lawrence is not that bad as the kindly housemother Mrs. Jensen. And that's porn star Harry Reems playing the hapless pilot. Gore effects are supplied by the young Mark Shostrom ("Evil Dead 2"), and some T & A is delivered by Judith Bridges as the slutty Leia (however, some may be disappointed by the latter).

This doesn't go on too long, and tends to alternate between being dull and being uproarious. Only die hard devotees of slashers and bad movies really should bother with it.

Five out of 10.

Forget the cheerful seasons greetings, as here's another nasty little holiday slasher that's only made more interesting for the fact it was directed by genre actor David A. Hess. However his presence might have been better suited in front of the camera than just behind it. "To All A Good Night" is another addition to the Christmas --- Santa Clause slasher cycle and probably one of the least known, despite coming out around the same time as "You Better Watch Out" and even before the likes of "Silent Night, Deadly Night" and "Don't Open till Christmas". Still with that on mind, it's your typically rancid and atmospherically moody slasher that amusingly passes the time but in the end there's not too much to write about.

Sticking to a formula that seems to be popular; it opens in the past showing a prank going horribly wrong then moves to the present time which has a group of horny rich girls at Calvin Finishing School for Girls waiting to secretly smuggle in their boyfriends for some late-night parting, but after doing so they start disappearing as someone in a Saint Nick costume is going around making ends meat of them. Does the past have something to do with it… I can't see it any other way.

It had its moments (death by propeller was a neat touch), an unhinged, if wonky sounding electronic score and a cast (mostly no-names) that weren't too bad either. There's colourful bunch of characters (with expected red herrings; like Ralph the creepy looking gardener who can pop out from anywhere) and gladly they stood out from each other. The angelic Jennifer Runyon (in her debut performance --- although that's pretty for all the young cast) brings a grounded reality to her lead character. Her cute character was more sympathetic, thanks to her forlorn naïve innocence, but even so not worthless for that. Linda Gentile and Judith Bridges have titillating fun with their buxom parts. While Forrest Swanson and William Lauer are tolerable.

The location (a large sorority house) for such butchery is ominously remote, but David Hess' glum direction was kind of clunky with many murky set-pieces with a real uneven focus on the deaths or a real lack of build up to them. Some happen off-screen, while others come off jarringly quick. Some passages are lethargic, like the long stretches of fooling around, bickering and then the waiting game for the killer to strike (oh there's numerous leg shots of our psychotic Santa killer walking stairs). The story kind of starts of plain (with some flat writing) but when it begins to open up to where its actually going, it brings out some rather amusing (though not all that intentional) and odd developments. Plenty of contrived instances make there way in and there's one scene that paints it perfectly. After discovering a dead body one of the characters run to the phone to call the police, but *drum roll* the phone is dead. But just before picking it up… the killer perfectly times it by cutting the phone line just before it reaches his ear. But in the end it's the sudden revelation… well more so the outrageous second one that's a groaner.

A so-so seasonal low-budget slasher.

Sorority girls who haven't left for the holidays are targeted by a Santa suit wearing serial killer.

There's not much meat on the bones of To All A Goodnight. It's not much interested in standing out from the pack very much and seems more comfortable borrowing from other films like Black Christmas, but there's an offbeat low budget charm and bizarre choices that keep it from being a total waste of time and some of the death scenes have their inventive and gory moments.