Review of Happy Hell Night

The world-famous horror subgenre of "college slashers" almost completely died out in the late 80s and made a glorious comeback in the mid-90s thanks to Wes Craven's "Scream". Every slasher-entry made during this interbellum period inevitable ended up in oblivion, and, judging by the quality level of films like "Happy Hell Night", righteously so. It's an endurable hack 'n slice flick from Canada with a few good moments and an interesting guest appearance of 70s TV-horror star Darren McGavin ("The Night Stalker"), but overall quite forgettable and unoriginal. The set-up feels very familiar, almost even formulaic, and takes place during a fraternity's initiation party. Two newbies are assigned to breaking into a mental asylum and bring back a photograph of a patient who committed several gruesome murders on campus 25 years earlier. They succeed, but the psychopath naturally escapes and returns to the campus with them. The killer turns out to be a sort of demonically possessed priest, and this forms more or less the only difference with standard slashers from the 80s, where the killers usually were of flesh and blood (albeit still immortal). Charles Cragin, as the killer, looks reasonably menacing and reminded me of a crossover between Max Schreck from "Nosferatu" and Michael Berryman in "The Hills Have Eyes". Unfortunately, however, he loses all his scary impact when he opens his mouth, and his catchphrases ("No parking, "No TV, "No sex", ...) are pathetic. There are naked breasts and the killings are committed with a sort of mountain-climbing pickaxe. When they are depicted on-screen, they're fairly gore (like the car-rooftop moment), but the film certainly should have contained more bloodshed. There are also a few "impossible" murders, and those deeply annoy me. For example, when they are in the attic, two girls are holding each other's' hands, but three seconds later one of them is sitting in a rocking chair with her hand and head chopped off. There's a limit to my suspension of disbelief, you know.