Girls Nite Out

The early '80s was a boom-time for slasher films, which is how a cheesy-kill fest like this one made it to the big screen. Girls Nite Out is about the average expectation of a low-budget 80's slasher.

It's a dark night at Dewitt College in rural Ohio. The basketball team is on cloud nine. The students are clowning (and fooling) around. The disk jokey is belting out golden oldies at the campus radio station. And a scavenger hunt as been planned for the evening. What could go wrong? Well... it seems that an insane man is loose, or is it someone else who is running around killing people in a bear suit? Yes, I typed bear suit. *Laugh here* Anyway, it seems that the scavenger search party may just be in danger of getting sliced.

Yep, business as usual in body count world - only this time there's little gore and no nudity. There's plenty of college kids goofing around though. Still, the young cast is energetic and likable enough to keep the movie from completely sinking and the murder scenes have a kind of amusing tongue-in-cheekness to them.

It's certainly not the best of the '80s slash boom, but it's not the worst either. It's worth a look, if only for laughs.

** out of ****

If you were to tell me that there was a slasher movie out there where the killer worse a bear mascot suit with Freddy Krueger claws and shouting obscenities every time they killed, I'd have said "that sounds ridiculous." Yet, here I am having just watched Girls Nite Out and, sure enough, that's exactly how the killer in this looks and behaves.

It should be silly. It should be campy. It should be ridiculous. And yet...somehow...it's surprisingly effective. Maybe it's the gritty film stock and low lighting. Maybe its the mostly naturalistic performances. Maybe its the genuinely unnerving final 5 minutes. I'm not sure what it is, but it works.

Girls Nite Out is light on plot and is in desperate need of a main character. Most of the time, the film cuts from one person to the next as if we're watching a series of random vignettes. The usual "final girl" trope is thrown out for the most part and it seems as if the last ones standing are only doing so because the writer threw darts at all the characters.

There's an odd vibe running throughout Girls Nite Out that's hard to shake off. It has moments that are almost bafflingly unnerving and there's a mean streak a mile wide. That's certainly enough to separate itself from some of the other slashers from around the same time.

I saw this obscure slasher knock-off right about the same time I saw that godawful Disney movie Midnight Madness starring David Naughton and a pre-pubescent Michael J. Fox. Both movies centered around a late night college scavenger hunt and both featured a truly annoying oldies-style soundtrack (to this day I can't get that damn insidious theme song to Midnight Madness out of my head). But this movie had what the other film quite sorely lacked--a maniac dressed in a bear costume killing off all the idiotic characters. Hal Holbrook is the above-the-line star here (did the producers have compromising photos of him with a barnyard animal?),and Julie Montgomery, who went on to appear in Revenge of the Nerds before dropping off the face of the earth, plays the young female lead. The rest of the cast is forgettable and long forgotten. The plot is your standard formulaic slasher movie scenario. But see it for the bear. Growling, snarling, shouting misogynistic curses as he hacks up cast member after cast member with his razor-sharp claws (how many bear mascot costumes come with razor-sharp claws anyway?), the bear is the best and most original part of the movie. This is the best killer bear flick since Grizzly

A pretty by-the-numbers slasher entry from the early '80's. A maniac in a bear suit with steak knives for claws (Freddy?) prowls around a college campus on the night of a coed scavenger hunt. There's a small body-count, a really dumb ending and a little blood. The film is pretty dark-looking, but there are some good atmospheric shots, and the acting is above average for this type of film. The story moves fast enough, but the murder scenes seem poorly executed, leaving little to offer slasher fans. The bear costume is original though. Too bad the ending is incredibly stupid (that dubbed-in voice just does not work). Features a few messy neck shreddings, but little else. Two Stars.

Set at Dewitt University, a small Ohio college, this one starts out as a routine drama after a basketball game which Dewitt U wins the title cup. Afterwards, the first 30 or more minutes has the guys of the team partying, drinking, talking and talking with their co-ed girlfriends, etc. Then, an unseen killer, posing as the mascot for the basketball team, begins stalking and killing a number of young girls from the cheerleading squad. Mostly riping their throats out with a hand-made 'claw' in one of the paws made from kitchen knifes. Meanwhile, Mac (Hal Holbrook) is the campus security guard, looking very puzzled to what's going on, who wades through a series of red herrings.

Not the best of the early 1980's slasher flicks, with the bear costume the only original thing about this one. Worth a look for horror fans, with some nice touches to the low-budget.

Contents: seven killings; inferior slaughter; one psycho in a bearsuit; no sex or nudity; lots of Golden Oldies on the soundtrack; much duller and dumber than usual. Note: proper punctuation is not all this one is missing.