To All a Goodnight

To All A Goodnight is a cheesy 80's schoolgirl slasher, in which a number of rich, overly promiscuous, youths (and a couple unlucky adults) are targeted by a killer in a Santa suit, at an all girls boarding school over Christmas holidays.

This all takes place after the accidental death of another young girl- who was in the process of being hazed- at the school.

So, you are kind of led to suspect that she somehow survived and has returned for vengeance, though, they do include other suspicious characters that might also be responsible.

There are a number of cheesy deaths in this. And, while, most of the killings are by rather traditional means, they do manage to keep things diverse enough to seem fresh.

But the gore is pretty lame.

In the end, all the hormone driven boys and girls end up dead...while the nerds and innocents manage to survive.

And it seems like they tried to set this up for a sequel too, though I don't think that ever came to fruition.

All in all, it's a pretty standard and all around average Christmas season slasher.

5 out of 10.

"To All a Good Night" is directed by David Hess-the star of "Last House on the Left" and "House on the Edge of the Park".The plot of this obscure slasher is pretty simple:some college girls are stalked and killed by a mysterious Santa Claus after they have drugged up their housemother and invited some boys over.This film is so incredibly bad that it truly has to be seen to be believed.The acting is atrocious,the plot is stupid and highly unoriginal and there is no suspense at all.Still there is a seriously high body count and some of the killings are actually fairly gruesome for example a guy has his head split open with axe.The twist ending is okay,but nothing special.So if you love early 80's slasher films give this one a look.6 out of 10.

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.

David Hess is better known for playing the evil Krug in Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, but in the 80's he decided to take the plunge into the world of film directing and the results are a bit mixed. Granted, it's nice to see this film cleaned up and on Blu-Ray since my first exposure to this film was on a truly awful, muddy, and dark Media VHS, but even a great remaster can't hide the flaws.

The plot is pretty much the exact same as Black Christmas with a group of girls staying at their sorority house over the Christmas break and being killed one by one by some psycho. It adds an insanely quick opening prologue (so quick that one wonders if it was the last thing they shot on wrap day and had 15 minutes to do it) that shows the girls accidentally pushing another sorority girl off a ledge (while chanting "sorority! sorority!" Huh?) so we know this is going to pay off later and probably be the killer's main motivation.

Some of the death scenes are inspired and some are cursory at best and the ending is bizarre to say the least, but the pacing doesn't lag too much and it's a fairly quick investment of your time. There are certainly worse slashers out there (or even Christmas slashers out there).

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.