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.

Sorority girls who stay over the Christmas break are hunted by a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus.

Simple and to the point, To All A Goodnight probably won't become anyone's new favorite Christmas tradition and it can't hold a candle to similar Yuletide slashers like Black Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night, but it's enjoyable enough for what it is. None of the characters make much of an impression and there's little to no suspense in the stalking scenes, but some of the gore effects impress. It also has one of the most confounding endings you're likely to ever see.

To all a Good Night has long since been touted as one of the worst of the genre pieces from the benchmark year in slasher shenanigans. But to be honest, it's really not that bad. Mark Shostrum's gore effects are great, and Jennifer Runyon makes a cute and approachable surviving girl. This is, of course, the first SLASHER movie to include a killer santa, which would be repeated in Santa Claws, Silent Night Deadly Night, Christmas Season Massacre etc. etc. Just for the sake of originality (!), Don't Open Till Christmas opted for a masked killer that killed people in Santa suits instead!

The only problems with To all a Good Night is that it's poorly lighted, a little off the wall and perhaps too under-produced. But it's certainly not the worst of its kind and is just about worth hunting out.

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.

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.