Sorority House Massacre

This week, I'm still not home yet, and my laptop was acting funny, so I apologize for the delay. With that in mind, I present a pretty random one, the bizarre Sorority House Massacre, starring absolutely no one I've ever heard of in my entire horror-movie-watching life. Great...I'll do You're Next as soon as I can get back to my apartment again to see it, I swear! Oh, and SPOILERS ahead...

So, we see, in the first scene, a young woman named Beth, sitting up in a hospital bed. Beth is visited by an older woman, presumably a neighbor, and she asks Beth "what happened". That, of course, leads into an extended flashback of the movie...

Beth is now walking along a sidewalk, and carrying an overnight bag. She heads toward a large white sorority house, then we see a figure sprawled out on a tiny bed. The house is entered, and the camera gives us a tour of spacious, empty rooms.

The figure in the bed begins to have convulsions, then we get to visit the second floor. As we see Beth arrive at the front door and open it, the stranger in the bed begins to punch their own arm. Kooky.

Beth is greeted by one of the sorority sisters, and then we finally see that the person in the bed is an unshaven man. He opens his eyes and stares into the camera, and there's a scream that brings a pair of interns running. Beth, meanwhile, is shown to room 5, which she'll be sharing with 3 other girls. She's not a member, but she was apparently invited to take a tour for the weekend.

The pair of schlubby interns exit the room again, and they reveal that they used tape to subdue the patient. They argue over whether to call a doctor named Lindsey, but decide that it can wait until morning. The patient is then seen struggling to free himself from confinement.

That night, Beth has yet another dream. In it, she's walking slowly toward the house again, but she watches a trio of little girls digging in the dirt and playing. They ask her where she's going, and she indicates the house. They warn her to be careful, and watch her enter again.

Beth makes a beeline for the dining room, where she finds a group of life-sized dolls seated at the table. As she circles around them, she notices that the silverware has been replaced by hunting knives. A drop of blood then hits the white tablecloth, and several more follow. Beth realizes that the blood is leaking through the ceiling, onto a chandelier, and the stain appears to be massive,

Beth goes upstairs to investigate, and finds the bedroom where the blood originated from. A glass container filled with marbles crashes to the floor in another room, so Beth wanders over for a look. She finds what sounds like a child in bed, covered entirely up by blankets, but pulling them back reveals more blood in the bed. Beth backs up, gasps as something behind her scares her, and the dream ends.

A girl named Sara bursts into the room, and they introduce themselves to each other. After trying to mooch a sweater from the houseguest, Sara makes a hasty retreat. This sorority house is like the Twilight Zone.

As various house sisters go on with their morning routine, we see Sara ask a girl named Cindy for a jacket, but she grumpily refuses. Another girl, Linda, tosses her a matching jacket for her blouse. Exciting stuff.

In the bathroom, Beth is just staring at herself in the mirror while other girls shower. Then we see a glimpse of our favorite mental patient, struggling to free his arms. He breaks free, tears the tape off of his mouth, then sits up. Finally! We're 11 minutes in, and I was starting to think that I had the wrong movie!

A girl named Tracy complains to some of the others that she finds Beth to be "glum". The other girls chastise her for being catty, then they all gossip anyway. Fortunately, they shut up seconds before Beth enters the room. As they head outside, they talk about having some kind of big party.

Beth realizes that she grabbed the wrong book, so she goes back into the house. In the bedroom, Beth looks into a mirror, but sees a guy glaring back at her instead of her own reflection. He raises a knife and plunges it through the mirror, where it gets trapped halfway into the glass, and drips with blood. One of the sorority sisters walks in, and Beth realizes that none of it was real.

The patient, now standing up, is busy throwing himself into the walls. A young female doctor asks an intern about how the patient acted the previous night, and they appear to be heading to his room. As soon as the flunky unlocks his door, the psycho attacks him, so the doctor swiftly shuts the cell door, then watches the scuffle through the door's tiny window.

After our sorority girls tell Beth a really corny story about a pet pig, we see that the killer has been sedated again. The doctor has a machine brought into his room, probably for something like electroshock therapy. BZZT! Do I smell toast?

We see a couple of the girls struggle in their classes, then Beth has another vision. This time, the killer is leering at her from the window. She disrupts the lecture, so she decides to leave.

A creepy nerd named Andy tells Sara about an experiment that involved killing kittens to see if the mother cat could sense the loss through telepathy. That discussion leads back to the killer. The machine is being used to see how his brainwaves react to the things she says to him.

Beth has a conversation with a woman who is apparently the house mother, Mrs. Lawrence. She's going away for the weekend, so she gives Beth some instructions to tell the other girls. Then she walks out of the movie, presumably forever. Is anyone else starting to think that this has way too much plot for a supposed slasher flick?

Back in the hospital, the doctor begins to ask the patient some questions about his sudden outbursts. After each question, she consults the machine, to see if his brain activity gets stirred up by anything. Oh, and before that, we find out that the killer has a rare condition, one that allows him to be both awake and dreaming at the same time.

Her questions get more specific, and she discovers that the killer had one of his waking dreams just before he went apeshit. She asks him what the dream was about, and he says the name "Laura". Who the heck is Laura?

The line on the graph starts to jump around like a kangaroo on crack, and the intern tells the doctor that he's amazed to hear the patient speak. Then we see Beth back at the sorority, nervously looking through each room for more scary images. As she sees flashes of her dead parents, the mental patient appears to be able to see her from his cell. Even worse, she sees him.

The patient has another outburst, so they pump him full of sedatives. They leave the room, but we see that he somehow managed to remain fully alert. Then Beth has a jump-scare while backing out of the house(Why do these nimrods always back into people?), and meets up with the group of girls from the previous sequence.

They all celebrate having the house unsupervised, and get ready to party. The wild night includes eating another girl's ice cream, and trying on some of Cindy's clothing. What a fun group. Girls Gone Mild. We even get a generic "look at us in different outfits!" montage.

At the end of the scene, they realize that Beth is upset. As she starts to discuss her dreams, we travel back to the psych ward, where the patient is about to get served his lunch. The guy delivering the tray has headphones on, and never hears the killer sneak up on him. The patient bashes his head into the wall, killing him. Then he boldly marches out into the world.

Beth wraps up talking about the dream, and they all decide to consult a book about dream interpretation. Then the killer literally jogs out of the hospital, and jumps a security fence. Yay! At this rate, he should get to the house by the third movie.

The girls start reading and drinking, while the killer strides into a sporting goods store. He smashes a display case, grabs the largest hunting knife he can find, then stabs the elderly clerk in the gut. Keep the change! Oh, and the old man does some Shatner-level emoting as he dies. Funniest scene in the film, so far at least.

Okay, so now the girls are looking up the images in Beth's nightmare about the dolls, and trying to sort through all of the possible symbolism. None of it goes anywhere, which is beginning to be a pattern with this movie, A car horn honks, and they abandon the book to see who it might be.

The killer steals a station wagon. Meanwhile, Tracy reveals that she had a bunch of stuff dumped onto the front yard, to decorate for the party. And then we see the killer reading highway signs. Would it kill this movie to actually be scary? I mean, I like plot and suspense, but this thing has no clue about where it's going.

A car arrives at the sorority, but it's just a collection of nerdy guys. Literally. Despite being the oddest misfits in the universe, the girls start to make out with them. The nerds see all of the random junk on the lawn, and offer to help with the decorations.

A bored-looking hospital worker discovers that the mental patient escaped, then we have to watch the sorority house being set up for the pow wow. This movie is an endurance challenge. A tent is put up, but falls over because one couple is inside smooching. I hope all of these people die in the most painful way possible.

The hospital worker announces the escape over the P.A. system, and we FINALLY learn that the patient is named Robert Henkel. At this point, I'm going to consider that to be progress. The only massacre has been the killing of time...

The girls are in the dark, literally speaking. The power has gone out. They build a fire, then accuse their nerdy dates of playing with the fusebox. The guys deny it, but then the nerdiest one scares the girls as a prank.

The hospital worker calls the cops, and one detective straight out of central casting arrives to interview him. Seriously, this guy is such a Danny Glover clone, I almost expect Mel Gibson to be right behind him. He gets a description of Bob, then starts looking.

The college kids sit around in a group, then try to scare each other. They talk about psychic energy, ghosts, and even refer back to the kitten-torture story. Then one of the guys claims that the house has a violent past. Of course, that's right where the scene ends.

More footage of Bob driving. Then one of the nerds, John, claims that a maniac killed his own parents in the house, and we see it in some flashbacks. The weapon was an axe. As we see the killer pick up a hunting knife and leave the house, the girls beg the storyteller, John, to stop.

After one girl leaves to rest, John continues with the tale. He describes the killer going after his 2 younger sisters, which we also see in a brief clip. Then the group disbands, spreading out around the house.

Beth finds herself alone, and tries a light switch. She bumps into John, and he offers to keep her company. Beth declines, claiming that she just needs some sleep. The others haven't paired off and ended the party, though...they're all watching Halloween. On television. In a house with no electricity. Think about that.

Dr. Lindsey is called. The intern leaves her a message, then the cop asks if she has a beeper. He gets laughed at, not really sure why.

Beth falls asleep, and then has a nightmare that the killer has entered the room. He comes toward her, but stabs at the bunk bed above hers. She gets blood all over her face and screams, and the rest of the group rush in. They wake her up, and the bed is now a regular one. Beth apologizes for being so much trouble, and they convince her not to be alone that night.

One girl decides to look at the fuses. As she opens the panel, her boyfriend Craig jumps at her, just to frighten her. He talks her into setting up the teepee for some sexy fun.

Bob arrives, parking at the house next door. As he looks at his childhood home, he starts to shuffle slowly towards it. Run, Bob, run! Get going on this massacre.

John asks for information about Beth's nightmare, and the girls give him an earful. Then Beth claims that she felt unafraid of the killer at first, as if she knew him...

Okay, I'm calling it. Beth is one of the killer's sisters. She somehow forgot about her family getting slaughtered by her brother, then also managed to pledge a sorority in the same house. It's stupid as heck, but I'm pretty sure that I'm correct. Just you watch.

Heh heh heh. She must have heard me, because now Beth "knows" that the killer hid one of his weapons in the fireplace. Intrigued, they all decide to have a closer look. Oh, and Bob is STILL just walking up to the house. How slow does he walk?

They put out the fire, and Beth points to a specific brick at the base of the fireplace. Sure enough, they find Bob's original knife.Of course, since a roaring fire was just there, the knife is incredibly hot to the touch. Andy ? fumbles it, and it get imbedded in a wooden surface in front of them.

They see dark stains all over it, and realize that it's blood. Sara picks up the knife, places it on the mantle, then declares that it's "neat". Another girl tosses it right back into the fireplace.

After Dr. Lindsey checks her phone messages,we see Craig pound in the last stake for the tent, using a brick as a makeshift hammer. He then tosses the brick a few feet away, and the camera clues us in to what the next weapon will be. Boy, that was subtle.

Doc Lindsey calls the intern back, and has him find Bob's file. They go over the details of the case, even telling us that one sister survived (See?), and manage to get the address for the house as well. The intern promises to give the address to the detective as soon as he hangs up.

Back in the house, Beth is encouraged to try to unlock memories through hypnosis. Andy then realizes how late it is, and leaves the party. As soon as he's alone, he runs into Bob. The killer stabs him, then heads for the house again.

Beth, now in a trance, is told to go back to her dream, then back to wherever the dream originated from. As I predicted, Beth is Bob's sister. She survived his killing spree by hiding in the basement. Oh, and she's also the mysterious "Laura" we heard about earlier in the film.

A flashback shows Bob finding Beth, and her friends see that she's in distress. After several attempts, they manage to break her trance. As ridiculous as this sounds, not one of them ever realizes that the event was something from Beth's actual past. This is just soul-crushingly stupid.

Tracy and Craig head back to the tent, and Bob watches from a hiding spot. As Beth and her date watch the rest of Halloween with the volume cranked up, he murders the couple. Some of the girls upstairs hear the screams, and assume that it's all from the television.

Craig gets away while Tracy is being killed, and shouts a warning to the rest of the household. He runs into the nearest bedroom, completely naked, and finds the phone dead, Then they remember that Cindy has a second phone line, so they rush to check it out. Just as they dial 911, Bob cuts that line as well.

He enters the house, walks straight over to the fireplace, and fetches his old knife. Then Beth, who somehow managed to fall asleep with John before the mayhem, has another nightmare about her brother. She finally wakes up, just as Bob prepares to stab her, and he ends up killing John instead.

Beth runs upstairs, with her brother close on her heels. She reaches the others just in the nick of time, and they try to figure out what to do as Bob pounds on the door. The pounding abruptly stops, but they can still hear breathing from the hallway.

They attempt to get help by yelling out the window, then breaking some glass, but the neighbors don't respond. Then one girl remembers that there's a fire ladder, which they hang out the window. Craig goes first, bracing the ladder for the others.

As Linda starts down, Bob rushes up behind Craig, covering his mouth and stabbing him under his ribs. Linda sees Bob waiting for her, and furiously scrambles to reach the window again. He grabs her by the ankle a few times, but Linda manages to get back inside, with help from the other 2 girls.

They unhook the ladder from the windowsill, but Bob manages to reach the window before they do it. They slam the window down on his hands, and Bob screams. Then they mace him, and Bob plummets to the ground below.

They decide to escape before he revives, in case the fall didn't injure or kill him. Bob wakes up, just as they reach the front door. They open the door, and Andy's corpse is discovered leaning against the door. After locking it again, they run back to the bedroom.

Beth remembers the crashing jar of marbles, and Bob crashes through the window and loses HIS marbles. They look into each others' eyes, and then the race to flee continues. They find another victim, then arrive outside. Unfortunately for them, he also reaches the yard.


He shambles in their direction, in a visual "homage" to Michael Myers. They get scared and back away, because running would make too much sense. Linda and Beth get away, but the third girl(Tracy? Sara?) is a goner.

They hide in the basement, and Beth tries to convince Linda that they can survive the rampage, Then Beth recalls that there is a spare key to the door. They run upstairs again, alternating between hiding and searching for the key.

They hear sirens. Linda tries to be optimistic, but Beth doesn't see how the police could know about their predicament. Beth finally realizes that she's related to the killer, and she dumbs it down for her new friend. She even explains that Beth is her middle name, and her real name is Laura.

And the dreams? And Bob tracking her down? Beth thinks they have a psychic link, like the mother cat from that story. How can a movie with psychic siblings, college babes, a high body count, and silly montages be so boring? This should be crazy-fun!

Bob gets into the basement, so they try to be even stealthier. Linda spots the spare key and grabs it, and Bob attacks them both as they hurry back up the stairs. As they lock him in the basement, Bob attempts to stab his way through the door. Beth uses her telepathy to time his next impact, and they run to the fireplace to grab the other knife.

Bob reaches them as they try to open the front door, and he corners Beth. She tries to hit him with a shovel from the fireplace, but it's small and ineffective. Linda helps by slamming him from behind with an actual shovel, but Bob barely reacts.

As he raises his arm to stab Beth with a fatal blow, Linda's shovel slams into the back of his head. She pummels him a few more times to be sure, then decide that he must be dead. As they limp away, Bob manages one final kill, planting his knife in Linda's back.

She takes a few more steps, then falls against a doorway and dies. Bob is trying to crawl after Beth like a snake, but she sees him coming. They attack at the same time, and Beth succeeds in thrusting her knife up through his chin, and out of his skull.

The cops find the house at last, and a pair of them help Linda. As she recovers in the hospital, she asks a nurse how bad the wounds are, and the nurse assures her that they'll be fine. After the nurse pulls her curtain shut, Bob pulls it back again. Beth screams, revealing that it was another nightmare. THE END

Wow, what a terrible experience this one was! There were only 2 silver linings: One was that the women were quite attractive and charming. The other was that we got to at least see some of Halloween. 1.5 killer trees out of 5 for this travesty.

And what did I learn from Sorority House Massacre?

-When the best friend is the character you'd rather see alive, you have a terrible main character.

-It takes all night to walk across a single lawn.

-It's possible to forget your entire past, despite seeing it every day in your head. Oh, and to also not remember where you lived, then move back in to the SAME DAMN HOUSE.

I'll have to pick my next one more carefully, to avoid getting a movie-related brain tumor. Any suggestions for a good slasher online that I haven't done yet?

Smiley

Well, I've been saying it since I started this blog, and now I have the proof: Slasher movies are destroying my brain! The movie that I was planning to watch this week, He Knows You're Alone, was one I had done already. Luckily, in a weird twist of fate, I was accidentally also sent Smiley, that movie that I never got around to watching last spring, when I was hospitalized. What comes around, goes around. So, back by no demand whatsoever, we get to finally watch Smiley this week. Settle in for SPOILERS...

So, this one begins with a fairly standard slasher premise: A young teen babysitter named Stacy is texting someone while on the job. A scary face suddenly appears in front of Stacy, but it's just the little girl she's watching, trying to scare her. Stacy puts down her phone to talk to the girl.

She discovers that the young girl is pretty Internet-savvy(What kid isn't these days?), as the kid shows her a Chat Roulette-type of website. Then the girl explains the legend of Smiley, the killer we're waiting for...Good, let's get in gear!

The legend is a basic rip-off of Candyman...You get onto any sort of online video chat. At any point during the chat, you type the phrase "I did it for the lulz", 3 times in a row. After the third time, a figure wearing a Smiley-face mask made out of flesh appears, then he kills you. Or the other person in the chat. Or something.

Believing the story to be nonsense, Stacy laughs it off. Then she gets jumped again! Oh, this time it's the little girl's father. He apologizes for being so late, then offers to write the babysitter a check. The entire time, he's also drooling over poor Stacy. Perv.

When she gets home, Stacy boots up her laptop. She signs on to one of those online chats, then browses through some of the possibilities. An angry-looking guy in thick glasses pops up, and his screen name is "Stranger", which seems kind of ominous. After a short introduction, Stacy tells Stranger that she likes his glasses. He replies that he's going to murder her.

A noise causes her to look over her shoulder, but the bedroom is still empty behind her. Stacy wanders down the hallway, finding a glass door slightly ajar. She creeps back to her room, still afraid that she might not be alone in the house.

She sits down to resume her chat with Stranger, then impulsively types "I did it for the lulz" 3 times. The bedroom door swings open, then Smiley grabs Stacy, stabbing her through the back. Stranger sees the murder, turns to a friend in the room, and starts to laugh. Then the opening credits roll.

Next, we meet Ashley, a cute young coed about to move into a house near her college. Her dad is nervous about her living off-campus, but she assures him that everything will be fine. After a quick hug, they part ways.

Inside the house, Ashley meets a girl with the unlikely name of Proxy. Proxy??? Not "Roxy", which would actually be a name, but PROXY? Really, movie, you want to irk me this early? What are the other characters called, Fallomba, Snik-snik, and Fartknockers? (By the way, if anyone who reads this wants to make a slasher flick with a character named "Fartknockers", I guarantee you at least ONE 5-star review.)

Anyway, Proxy sees Ashley as the stereotypical "innocent young woman trying too hard to fit in", and tries to ditch her by making plans to go to a party that evening. Ashley somehow misses the subtlety of her cold shoulder, and begs to go the party with her. Proxy gives in, and off they go!

They walk around the grounds of the campus, and Proxy reveals that she hasn't ever actually met most of the people at the party that they're going to. She knows them online, through the 4chan website. Ashley starts to get nervous about the party, so she and Proxy get a little bit buzzed on a joint along the way.

The party is pretty huge, and they soon meet a friendly guy by the name of Zane. He flirts with Ashley quite a bit, bragging that he's a bit of an expert on "The strange and retarded," whatever that means. Proxy says that it sounds like the title of a crappy soap opera.

Zane elaborates, explaining that he's fascinated by people who believe in myths that have no basis in reality, like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra. Then he makes a quick joke or two, and disappears to go get wasted, leaving the girls laughing over how strange he is. Or re...nah, too easy.

Proxy encourages Ashley to talk to another guy across the room, so she heads in that direction. His name is Binder, but Zane interrupts the conversation and dubs him "Pedobear". 2 other guys start to bully Binder, and one of them was the guy who laughed when Stacy was killed by Smiley in that online chat.

Speaking of that scene...it plays again, except now we realize that we're seeing it from his side of the chat. After Stacy is killed by Smiley, Ashley screams, and the group at the party just laugh. Proxy assures her that it's just a trick, and then repeats the legend of Smiley, and how to summon him.

The party gets wild and crazy, and so does Ashley. She gets plastered, and soon they're all just laughing and behaving like loons. At one point, she even starts to write stuff on a sleeping guy's face. I hope she doesn't have class the next day...

Ashley sleeps until past noon, and rushes to class. Heh. She gets to her first class just as the professor is giving his introduction, and she gets to the nearest seat. The class is called Intro to Reason and Ethics, and the instructor, Prof. Clayton, asks them why they think the class is a required course. Ashley gives him an answer that he likes, earning her some brown-nosing points. They talk after class, and he assures her that he won't hold her tardiness against her.

That night, Ashley and Proxy compare how their days went. Proxy teases her a little bit about how much she drank at the party. Then they see a video of the guy whose face Ashley drew on in that video chat site, and he viciously get attacked by Smiley. Ashley insists that they should bring the video to the police, but Proxy points out how silly the story would sound.

Ashley tries to laugh it off as well, but she still seems worried. Proxy offers to set her mind at ease by typing "I did it for the lulz" 3 times, just to prove that nothing would happen. They scroll through a bunch of random chats, before settling on some shirtless dweeb. Proxy then advises Ashley to envision Smiley in her mind before typing.

She tells the shirtless guy that he's going to die, and then types "I did it for the lulz" 3 times in a row. Nothing happens at first, so they relax. Then Smiley rises up and stabs the nerdy guy, and they scream.

Ashley declares that they need to go right to the police, but Proxy has a different take on the issue. She argues that going to the cops will bring them unwanted attention, and the killer could then learn who they are. The discussion is disrupted by a call from Ashley's father.

He can tell that she sounds tense, but she explains that she's just nervous about being away from home, and that she misses him. He buys it, then Proxy pops up, prompting Ashley to end the call. She goes back inside, and the matter of the video is dropped for the night.

In class the next day, Clayton gets the class into a discussion about how to prove a hypothesis. With her mind still on Smiley, Ashley asks the professor what you'd do if your hypothesis turned out to be so incorrect, that something seemingly impossible seemed to be the result. Clayton introduces her to the concept of ideology, the idea that you have complete confidence in something you THINK that you know. He lists guys like Hitler and Bin Laden as examples of people who followed their ideologies to extremes.

After class, Ashley decides to do some research at the campus library. While looking at various book titles, Ashley literally runs into Binder. They get friendly, and Ashley asks him if he believes in Smiley. Binder's theory is that some legends grow in strength as more people believe in them, and that Smiley is one such entity.

When Ashley asks him if that means that Smiley is real, he responds that, even if Smiley isn't real, the videos of him are. She likes that explanation, and they exchange phone numbers. Then she heads back to the house, just in time to be invited to another party hosted by Zane.

More crowds, more music, and more drinking. Proxy leaves Ashley to go find the bathroom, and Ashley overhears 2 girls talking about the latest video of Smiley. She spots Zane across the room, and decides to see what he knows about the urban legend.

Zane and his buddies laugh at her questions, but then Zane gets serious after his obnoxious friends leave. He asks Ashley what she knows about the murder of his friend, and accuses her of invoking the presence of Smiley. He admits that he even conjured up the killer, but assumed that it was all just a prank. Then he accuses Ashley of knowing more about what happened to his friend than what she's told him.

She staggers away, but not before Zane demands to know what she's going to do if Smiley comes after them next. She walks back to the house in a drunken stupor, then stop;s in the middle of the campus quad when she thinks that she spots Smiley. She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and the killer looms right in front of her, so a chase begins.

Ashley runs the rest of the way to the house, but Smiley follows her. The killer lurks at the front door, so Ashley goes from room to room, desperate to find a good place to hide. Smiley finds a way to enter the house, and ambushes the frightened teen, so she screams for help.

The whole thing turns out to have been a dream. Proxy finds her in the bedroom, screaming in her sleep, and doesn't believe that the chase was anything more than a nightmare. Ashley shows her a part of her blouse that Smiley ripped, but Proxy still doesn't see how that proves anything. After all, if Smiley had been there, then why would he have left her alive? Proxy asks Ashley if she takes any medications for mental disorders, and that gives Ashley a reason to awkwardly pause. Uh oh...

Yeah, she takes anti-psychotic pills. Or, she DID take them, at one point. Ashley weaned herself off of the pills gradually, as she reveals to the school shrink, but perhaps she might want to get her prescription updated. Oh, and the school shrink resembles Maura Tierney a little bit, so, you know, "hubba".

She doesn't tell the shrink about Smiley, so the advice she gets is pretty iffy, at best. She merely admits that she's been on edge and frightened with some frequency, and the shrink thinks it might be because she's far from home, and probably missing her deceased mother. Ashley gets a prescription for something that will calm her nerves, then is sent home.

As Ashley is leaving, Proxy collides with her. Apparently, Zane has informed her of another murder that was posted online. They quickly make their way over to his place to figure out the reason behind the killings.

Zane is over the edge. He's got a gun, and he's ranting and raving about security. It turns out that he's not really a student, but an elite computer hacker; the sort of guy who just hacks into national banks when he needs money, and delves in the personal history of anyone he might want to use and abuse.

He points his gun at Ashley, and demands to know what connection she has to Smiley. Then he admits that his hacking might have brought him to the attention of any number of government superpowers, but that wouldn't explain the presence of Smiley. Ashley proposes that the killer is somehow weirder and more powerful than any of those things, and Zane admits that anything might be possible. He sends them away, then returns to hiding out with his gun.

Ashley has another nightmare, then she endures another class. The discussion in class this time concerns the very existence of life itself, and whether or not we exist because something else exists on a level above us, allowing us to have self-awareness. Or something like that. I don't know, maybe this would have been better if I had watched it while high. Certainly wouldn't have hurt.

After class, Ashley decides to do some research about Smiley on the school computers. She searches for more of his murder videos, as well as information about 4chan, and other hacker knowledge. Unbeknownst to her, a dark figure is approaching the computer, and he has a knife in one hand.

It's Binder. She jumps at the sight of him, and he shows her an employee ID card, revealing that he's in charge of the campus computer network. She tells him about her research into Smiley, and he remains skeptical, until she says that she caused a student to die by summoning the killer.

Binder's reaction is...odd. He claims that when he tried to summon Smiley, nothing happened. Ashley explains that you have to strongly desire the harm to inflict it, and that only seems to get Binder more excited. Ashley gets upset, and decides to return to the house.

She returns to the video chat from her bedroom PC, and scrolls through a handful of different subscribers. Then she sees Smiley himself in the last one, waiting for her. She asks him what he is exactly, and he threatens to pay her another visit. She asks him where he is, and he responds, "right behind you", which is freaky. To make matters worse, his screen has gone black all of a sudden, with no indication of where he might be.

Ashley turns around, and finds Proxy standing there, demanding to know what she's up to. They have a fight, and Proxy storms out of the house. Ashley decides to call her father, but something at the window scares her, and she drops her phone on the sidewalk below, smashing the phone to pieces. Proxy is standing there, and she assumes that Ashley was throwing the phone at her.

Ashley decides to pay another visit to the school shrink. She tearfully admits that she's having some kind of breakdown, and the shrink decides that they should meet on a daily basis...starting tomorrow. For now, she just wants Ashley to get some sleep. She prescribes a stronger pill, then sends the poor girl back home.

On her way across the quad, she texts a quick apology for her abrupt exit at the library to Binder. He lets her know that he's been upset about the recent events as well, and that seems to ease some of her tension. She decides to pay a visit to Professor Clayton's office, and he's there to greet her.

They discuss whether or not the human race is doomed to kill itself off, and Clayton offers her a stiff drink. She declines, but he pours himself one. Then he launches into a diatribe about how our instinct to survive at any cost, and to use up every planetary resource to further our own progress makes us all parasites.

Oh, and he starts to close all of the blinds in his office, in the most menacing way possible. Clayton then hovers over her, whispering all of his crazy, menacing crap about death, all while slowly getting drunk. Ashley finally decides that she's had enough, gets up, and leaves his office.

She returns to the library to work on a school assignment, but gets the unnerving sensation that she's being watched. A glance around reveals nothing, but then Smiley appears on her computer monitor. He waves at her in a mocking manner, and she overreacts, smashing the computer, and yelling and screaming. She collapses onto the floor in tears, then becomes aware that other students are watching and even filming her.

Ashley returns to the house, where she has a brief hallucination of Smiley. She takes a couple of the new pills that she was prescribed, looks at them, then decides not to ingest them. She cries, and heads to her bedroom.

Another nightmare or hallucination occurs. In this one, several versions of Smiley appear in the bedroom, and one of them starts to strangle her. Ashley screams, and a shadowy figure darts past her bed. It appears to be her deceased mother at first, but then it transforms into Smiley.

Ashley screams and wakes up yet again, only to find Proxy at her bedside, holding her hand over her own face. Apparently, she came into the room to check on Ashley, and was punched in the face for her efforts. Ashley apologizes to her, then places a call to the police, to tell them everything she knows.

She meets a weary detective named Diamond, and gives him her statement about the killing spree. After making her recount every detail, he informs her that they've never found a single shred of evidence that a crime was ever committed. No bodies, no crime scenes, no murder weapons, just a big, fat pile of nothing. Oh, but they do have one thing: a video of Ashley, showing her destroying a school laptop.

The cops tell Ashley to stop wasting their time, and just go home. Detective Diamond also suggests that perhaps Ashley should get help from a psychiatrist, to which she sobs that she already is. That doesn't go over too well.

After a brief chat with Proxy, Ashley keeps her next appointment with her doctor. She admits that her sense of reality might be a bit off, and is told that she's making progress toward recovery. The positive feedback gives Ashley a reason to smile.

She calls Binder, and he visits her to give her some advice on how to keep her computer information encrypted. He even goes a step further, giving Ashley an old laptop of his, complete with the latest security updates. She thanks him, and they share a few impulsive kisses. Proxy breaks up the intimacy, and we discover that she's going away for the weekend.

That night, Ashley assures her dad during a call, that she's doing much better. She gets a message from Proxy, and the roommate is in a tizzy because her boyfriend isn't returning her calls. Ashley offers to go check on him, and she takes her phone with her.

At the boyfriend's place, no one appears to be home. Ashley finds the front door open, but no Zane in sight. A room-by-room search reveals that Zane has been added to the list of Smiley victims. Ashley calls Diamond to report the crime, but he hangs up on her.

She returns to the house, but Proxy urges her to place another call to the police. Ashley has a different plan in motion. She locks herself into the house, then tells Proxy to type "I  did it for the lulz" 3 times, to lure Smiley to the bait.

It's a terrible plan. Not only does he now have her trapped inside, but now he can be anywhere he wants to be, and just take her right out of existence. As if to prove their point, all of the Smileys come at her at the same time.

Ashley backs away from the many killers, then dives out of the nearest window. She dies. and the killers watch her from the window. Then they congratulate one another for the way they all pulled it off. Binder, Zane, Stacy, all of them. The rest leave, and only Proxy and Zane remain behind to chat. They grin into their webcams, then Smiley attacks Proxy, mauling her in front of  Zane. During the credits, we get one final scene, showing that Ashley isn't quite dead yet, but that she is ready to get back at them. the end...?

Let's hope so! I hate watching a slasher flick where there aren't any victims. And they wasted what could have been an interesting concept on such a dull film. I can't imagine what I would have thought back in April, when I was felling sick and confused. Yuk. 1 out of 5, for at least the concept of Smiley. Now just place him in a better story.

And what did I learn from watching this?

-Never assume that your "clever twist" is actually that clever, because it probably isn't.

-Colleges are filled with insane people.

-Friends don't let old friends murder new friends, especially if it's just for "lulz", or whatever.

Up next, a heartwarming tale about killer kids, and the families that have to murder them to survive. Fun, lighthearted stuff!

Dark House

Once in a lifetime, you view a piece of art so magnificent, it changes you. It puts life in perspective, and you realize that maybe--just maybe--there is beauty in everything we experience, and wonders to behold around every new corner. It makes your entire existence better for the experience.

Dark House is not any of that. Get ready for SPOILERS...

The movie starts off with many, many images of baby dolls and stuffed animals, all piled up together. It's like an orgy scene out of Toy Story. Then blood begins to spray the dolls, followed by a scream. More blood. And some praying.

Then the story begins "14 years ago", before the Texas Doll Saw Massacre, I guess. a trio of little girls ride their bikes to a creepy old house. One girl mentions that it's a foster home, and all 3 suddenly hear a scary cry coming from inside. One girl spontaneously decides to show off, and enters the house, even as her friends beg her to turn back.

Almost immediately, the girl finds the bloody body of a battered boy. Boo-yah! She finds more corpses further in, and all look like recent kills. Moaning sounds lead her into the kitchen, where she finds another body, and a woman drenched in blood, mangling her hand in a garbage disposal. Sure am glad that I had a big dinner tonight!

The little girl hears something in a nearby pantry, and looks through the keyhole. Another eye stares back out at her, and the girl stumbles back, and hits her head on the kitchen floor. She blacks out.

Then we see a young woman, holding the same pose that the girl was in, but resting on a bed. She wakes up from a nightmare, and scurries to the bathroom, to look for some pills in her medicine cabinet. Later, at a meeting with her shrink, he accuses her of not taking her medications nearly enough for them to be effective. Oh, and her name is Claire.

Claire explains to her doctor that the pills dull her emotions, and that's an obstacle to her becoming an actress. When he suggests that her nightmares are tied into repressed memories of her being in the big, scary murder house, Claire reveals that she's tried to return to the property, but is too frightened to even open the front gate. Oh, and the house has a name as well: Chuck. Nah, just messin' wi'chya...it's known as the Darrode House.

At Claire's acting class, her instructor has 2 students, Bruce and Eldon, improvise a conversation, mostly where they just bust each others' balls. Then a guy named Rudy replaces Bruce, and makes a lot of jokes about how Eldon is whiter than he is. Then Eldon is replaced by a bitchy blond named Ariel, who reveals to the class that Rudy has a crush on Claire.

Claire then replaces Rudy, and she and Ariel nearly have a brawl onstage. Claire is replaced by her friend Lily, who quickly comes to Claire's defense, then announces that the entire exercise is useless bullshit. Amen to THAT! Can we get to something resembling a plot now?

Right on cue, an older gentleman enters the theater, and interrupts the class. Yay! He's played by Jeffrey Combs, the Re-Animator himself, in the flesh! I'm elated until he opens his mouth, and announces with a horrible theatrical voice that his name is "Walston Ray"...Really??? All you did was reverse late actor Ray Walston's name! If you're Walston Ray, then I'm Presley Elvis.

Anyway, back to a movie that lost all of my goodwill in the last 10 seconds. Wally reveals that he specializes in running profitable haunted house attractions, and that he plans to open a new on in the local community. Gosh, I wonder if the Darrode House is the place he's going to use? That's a real brain-stumper.

Of course it's the house he's talking about, and he offers each student $300 for 1 day of work, to "scare up" publicity with 2 reporters who are coming to the attraction for a preview performance. If it generates enough publicity, he'll even pay them to do the entire season. They all turn up their noses at the thought of doing a cheesy funhouse-type job, until Claire convinces them that the prospect of working in front of a live audience every night would be valuable acting experience. Because they're all mindless sheep, the suddenly agree to do it.

That evening, Claire does an internet search for the phrase "dark house", which Wally kept using. She gets varied results, and starts to read up on the tourist attractions. She also watches an old news clip about the massacre, and the on-air reporter claims that there were 7 children killed that day. Seemed like more, but whatever. She scrolls through a series of nasty crime-scene pictures, then is grabbed through the screen by the ghost of garbage-disposal lady. Wait, what was she grabbed with, did the mangled hands grow back?

The group of students all arrive at Darrode House, and just gawk at it at first. Then they go in, even poor Claire, who still hears ghostly children all around her. Inside the house, they encounter a strange Val Kilmer/Johnny Depp hybrid, named Moreton, but he quickly abandons them. This movie is constructed like a Mad Libs game.

Luckily(I guess), Wally shows up. He re-introduces them to Moreton, who is some sort of computer whiz; and they also meet Sam, a female assistant of some sort for Wally. As everyone's getting to know one another, Claire wanders off to look at some of the other rooms on the ground floor. Everywhere she turns, she literally sees ghosts of the past tormenting her poor memory.

When she gets to the kitchen, Wally stops her from doing any further snooping. He gets the group to follow him upstairs, and announces that they are about to enter something called a "Corridor of Blood". It's actually a pretty mundane-looking hallway. Seeing that they all remain unimpressed, Wally dares Rudy to start to walk down the hall.

Soon enough, a clowny mashup of The Joker and Harvey Dent is conjured up. And he has an ax. Rudy taunts him, until they're just about toe-to-toe. Then the clown swings the weapon and de-materializes.

It turns out that he and the other ghosts are state-of-the-art holograms. And they further claim that the holograms are triggered by stress and fear emanating from the patrons.

What a load of gibberish. Wally leads the students to a basement-level control room, where a techie named Harrison is monitoring the rooms of the house, as well as tweaking the scary holograms. He reveals that he openly dislikes his boss, and Wally quickly ushers everybody out of the room. Oh, and Claire is still hearing murder and mayhem in her head.

She stops in her bedroom to calm down once more, and has a vision of the crazy killer whipping a child on the bed. The ghost seems to be aware of her, so Claire grabs a sheet, and covers the mirror.

There's a goofy, melodramatic scene, in which Wally talks to the students about how their job of scaring folks is both noble and cathartic. Now, I usually love watching Combs chewing the scenery in any movie, but honestly...he makes me cringe in this one. I don't know why, but I just can't get into his character at all. Geoffrey Rush did it better in House on Haunted Hill.

Oops, now we're back in the control room with Harrison. The computer program controlling the holographic effects is bugging out, and the whole system is glitching up! Somehow, a virus has infected the program.

As Harrison stares at his monitors, one screen fills up with a pair of eyes staring out at poor Harry. A face forms, and it speaks his name. Dumbass leans closer, and the monitor explodes, sending shards into Harrison's face and throat, and killing him in an instant.

Wally meets with the pair of reporters(one male, one female) doing the article on the Darrode house, and he fixes them drinks while they all talk. The male reporter implies that Wally is in real financial trouble if the Darrode attraction is a flop. Then the female reporter questions the decision to exploit the massacre of several children as entertainment. Wally points out that she's doing the same thing to sell issues of her magazine.

Then the preview tour commences. Wally watches from his office with his assistant Sam, as the journalists meet their "tour guides" in the front hall. Claire and Moreton introduce them to "The Shroud", who looks like a magician at a birthday party. He promises to frighten them in extreme ways, then he becomes a swarm of bats.

Wally and Sam then witness all of their monitors go to static as the clock strikes midnight. At the same time, the reporters are brought to "The Corridor of Blood", which is the only way to get to "The 6 Rooms of Doom"...which means I don't know what.

A demonic woman appears at the opposite end of the hallway, with some elongated, funky fingernails. Moreton whips out a comically huge crucifix and approaches the she-demon, and she impales him with her fingernails. More than once, in fact. Thinking that it's just part of the act, Claire leads the journalists past his corpse. An unseen entity drags the body into a room, the door slams, and there's a brief, terrified scream.

In the next area, Eldon is playing a demented mortician named Thaddeus Payne. the "corpse" on his slab has its eyes and mouth sewn shut, apparently to keep the evil soul within from escaping. Eldon removes the stitches from the mouth of the body, and several entities comprised of smoke and light fly around the room. Claire and the reporters exit the room, while Eldon cackles like a loon.

As Wally continues to fret about not being able to watch how the tour is going, Claire leads the reporters into a literal slaughterhouse area. Various body parts are hanging from hooks, with the severed heads begging to be rescued. the butcher is in the room as well, but his back is turned. The killer finally decides to pursue them, and they beat a hasty retreat.

The next area has a prison cage and police tape. Claire warns the pair not to step over the tape, and a group of savage vampire women lunge at them when they do. Eh, kind of tame after everything else so far.

Next up is a torture chamber. A guy is strapped inside an iron maiden, several victims are tied to chairs, and a woman is stretched out on a rack. The torturer gives the reporters the ability to vote on the fate of the one in the iron maiden, by giving a simple "thumb's up" or "thumb's down" to closing the spikes on them. The female reporter votes to spare the guy, so naturally, the torturer goes with the other vote, and kills his victim.

In the following room, Lily plays the role of some kind of clairvoyant or witch, named Zimba. She instructs them to step onto a pentagram on the floor. When they do as she asked, she predicts that they will both die in terrible ways, and then she vanishes.

Female demons surround the pentagram, and begin to dance and shapeshift. At the same time, the computer security program crashes, and announces a system failure. No big deal.

I guess it really wasn't, because Claire leads the journalists into yet another room. This time, they watch as a mad doctor experiments on a patient using corrosive acid to open them up. After the acid tears open the man's stomach and kills him, Claire gives the male reporter a flashlight, so that he can examine the wound up close.

As soon as he does, the doctor splashes a beaker of the acid all over his face. Claire realizes that it isn't a trick, and screams at the female reporter to find some staff to help. The reporter runs out crying, while Claire just stares helplessly at the dead man next to her on the floor.

The female reporter encounters a horde of spirits at a staircase, and tumbles down the stairs, snapping her neck. Rudy sees it happen, and leaps off of the couch. At the same time, Claire's screams bring the other students to her location. Everyone helpfully points out that holograms can't harm people, so Claire provides a compelling counterpoint: "Look at his face!"

Back at the stairs, Wally fantasizes about how much publicity these new deaths will bring to his tourist trap. The other group is still upstairs, because the torturer hologram now has Bruce in the iron maiden. The torturer lets them vote for his fate, but then just slams the device closed, killing Bruce with no warning. Then the killer turns into Miss Darrode, right before disappearing again.

They run downstairs before anything else can appear, and accuse Wally of being the mastermind behind all of the murders. Then they discover than none of their phones work. Amazing how those things always malfunction in these movies...

Eldon rushes for the front door, but it won't budge. The next enemy shows up behind him, though...a scary-looking knight, ready to bash Eldon's head in with a mace. As Eldon continues to evade the crazed attacker, Claire and Rudy try to force a door to open, but it's sealed tight.

Unfortunately, Eldon mistakenly assumes that he can win in a fight with the knight, so he grabs a sword mounted on the wall. The knight obliterates Eldon's head with his mace, leaving just a neck-stump geysering blood. As cool as it sounds, the CGI is pretty bad.

Sam grabs Ariel's hand, and urges her to abandon the rest. She leads the girl to a bathroom, claiming that a window in there is always unlocked. Why would Sam just let her escape? These are literally the 2 most under-developed characters in the movie. Oh, it turns out that Sam wants to "do" Ariel. Classy.

Claire tells the rest that the deaths are being orchestrated by Miss Darrode's angry spirit, but none of them are listening. Wally, in the meantime, is angrily pounding on the locked bathroom door and cursing at Sam. Is there still a script at this point? Was there EVER one?

Ariel helps Sam to open the window, but it slams shut again. Then a shrieking succubus appears in the tub, and coughs a steady jet of green smoke at them. As the room begins to fill up with the smoke, both women begin to choke on it.

Wally then remembers some sort of back-up fusebox on the second floor. Claire, upset that she's not the center of attention for 10 seconds, tells the others that she was in the house the day that the massacre happened.

That unleashes The Wrath of Lily, who blames Claire directly for all of the killings. Wally disagrees, claiming that Harris is behind it all. Oh, and get a brief glimpse of Sam and Ariel gasping for breath on the bathroom floor.

On the next floor, Wally reveals that the second control panel is behind a painting at the end of a long hallway. Rudy volunteers to open and disable it, and is told to remain calm, so as not to incur the violent nature of the holograms. Right, because they can detect your fear. I forgot about that entirely logical revelation.

Anyway, Rudy begins his journey to the end of the hall. Of course, a holographic monster shows up behind him. It's that scary clown, missing one half of his face. And holding the same monstrously big axe. Not a bad make-up job, to be honest.

At first, Rudy has no idea that he's being stalked. Until, naturally, everyone at the other end of the hall begin to yell and scream at him. Nice way to keep him calm.

After Rudy unscrews the panel in the wall, he glances back and spots the clown. Just as he starts to loosen the red wires, the clown throws his weapon, planting it in Rudy's spine. Then the lights go out. Well, at least if the power's out, then the monsters are no longer a threat, right?

As they stand around in the dark, Wally remembers another open window in the attic. Lily decides that she's going up to the attic by herself, since she no longer trusts Claire. She leaves Claire and Wally, who wander back out to the first floor staircase, as she starts toward the attic.

As soon as they split up, the electricity comes back on. Lily has a brief fright provided by Moreton's body. Then, as she starts her ascent, a hulking soldier shows up in the room. Liliy has just enough time to realize that "war is Hell", before the soldier shoots her to death.

As he begins to unlock the door to the control room, Wally is dragged away, kicking and screaming, by 3 grotesque lunatics. Claire flees into the control room, and uses an axe that she finds to destroy all of the computers and other machinery. The attackers come after her, but vanish as she destroys the computers.

Claire wanders the house, and her memories seem to be returning. When she gets to the attic, Claire sees a ghostly re-enactment of a torture session between Miss Darrode and a group of young kids sitting in a circle. She forces them, one by one, to recite biblical passages, then strikes each reader with a whip.

Then, Miss Darrode gets behind Claire, and accuses her of being possessed by a demon, and then killing the children herself. Claire runs away, and hides in the kitchen pantry. Deja vu, anyone?

She has another flashback, this time recalling that she convinced the other children to rebel against the abuse by burning their bibles. They build a fire, then each child takes a turn throwing a bible into the blaze. They don't realize it yet, but Miss Darrode is right behind them, watching and waiting.

When the last book is flung into the fire, Darrode screams, making all of the children jump. They all run deeper into the house, with the exception of Claire, who hides in that often-seen pantry. From there, Claire hears all of the other children screaming as they are being hacked to death.

Then the noise abruptly comes to an end. Claire cautiously sneaks up to the door, and peers through the keyhole. The psychotic old woman tries to draw her out of hiding, telling Claire that a demon by the name of Juvaar has possessed her young body.

Then Darrode sees all of the blood on her, drops a butcher knife into the sink, and turns on the garbage disposal. Remember this scene at the start of the movie? Well, we get to watch Darrode grind her hands up a second time. Anyone hungry?

Back in the present, Claire pleads with Darrode's ghost, accusing her of being the only sinner all those years ago. She faces the angry spirit, and challenges her, causing the ghost to vanish after being stabbed with her own knife.

The cops find Claire later, sitting on the kitchen floor, and smacking the knife into the floor. The cops decide that the trauma of being back in the house, added to perhaps missing her meds, most likely caused her to kill her classmates and the other haunted house workers. Heck, they even found her fingerprints on every weapon!

So that's that, right? Welllllll...not exactly. Claire is tucked away at a funny farm, and we meet 2 new characters, a young couple, and they're about to enter the Darrode house. Remember how Claire was hiding in the pantry during the massacre? Yeah, well, this character was the little girl who entered the house after her friends goaded her into it.

Now she's a young woman, and she's facing her worst fears by entering the house. Sound familiar? As she describes finding the bodies, an ominous black cloud floats past the couple, and heads upstairs.

She starts to relax, and the happy couple kiss. Then all of the windows and doors slam shut, and they scream. The final scene shows Claire in her padded cell, saying, "I didn't do it, I didn't do it!" THE END

Apologies for how long this one took. I've been overwhelmed with medical stuff lately, and it's been time-consuming and stressful. Hopefully I can catch up at some point, but I may just have to put stuff like this on hold, until I can get my health issues in order.

Anyway, enough about me. Back to Dark House. Much more entertaining than it looked, I have to say. Sure, it's a ripoff of House On Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, but it was still goofy fun. I'll give it 3.5 killer trees out of 5. If they had renamed the Walston Ray character, the score would be higher.

And what did I get out of watching Dark House?

-Holograms are harmless creations of light. Except when they kill people. Which they can't do. Anyone else confused?

-Abandoning a college course to work on a haunted house attraction just seems like the smartest decision you'll ever make!

-Kitchen pantries are like panic rooms for poor people.

Next up:Wrong Turn 5...Wait, they had 5 of those things?

The Silent Scream

Hey hey! Nope, I'm not dead, just been bombarded with appointments, Thanksgiving, and day-to-day hassles. It's probably just as well that The Silent Scream got pushed until after Thanksgiving...one turkey per week is plenty! Anyway, on with the show, my fellow masochists! Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...blah blah blah, SPOILERS!, blah blah blah.

The credits begin by informing us that Rebecca's Balding. Now, either that's the name of the lead actress, or these are the bitchiest credits in movie history. Somebody send Becky some Rogaine, on the double!

Anyway, after the cast credits wrap up, the title splatters itself in our faces, complete with some comical, over-sized drips of blood. In the background, a police car is seen, along with another car driving close behind. In dramatic slo-mo. Yeesh!

Everybody from both cars arrive at a house that looks like it would be occupied by Holly Hobby, if she were a cannibal. They knock, then bust in and discover bodies and blood upstairs. And then they go bye-bye, with no further explanation of what we just saw. Genius.

The next scene opens on some of the butt-ugliest women of the 1970's interrogating students during a college admission/orientation day. Seriously, there was an outbreak of the fuglies when this sequence was shot! It's not all bad, though: this scene also introduces us to our lead character, a cute coed with the improbable name of Scotty Parker. Hey, even with the weird first name, I'll take her!

Scotty is told that there is no on-campus housing available, so she goes around the city to see if she can afford an apartment. After a montage of dead-ends and rejections, Scotty drives out to the beach, to look for a room at the house we saw in the opening scene. Run away, Scotty, run away!!

As she drives toward the house, Scotty nearly runs over a young man who has the same hairdo as her. Gotta love that decade! Scotty keeps taking her eyes off of the road to gawk at the house, and thankfully, no one dies. Yet...When she parks her convertible, she climbs the porch to the front door in massive, exaggerated steps, like an astronaut hopping around on the moon. Is ANYTHING in this movie normal?

No one answers the door, so she starts to leave. Someone coming up from the beach calls out to her, and we're introduced to Doris, who already has a room at the house. She looks kind of like the "Pat" character from SNL, but she seems nice enough. Oh, and Scotty also discovers that the kid on the bike that she nearly ran over is Mason, the teen son of the homeowner, Mrs. Engels.

After learning all of this, Scotty sees another car pull into the driveway. It's driven by a male student by the name of Peter, also looking for a room. They prepare to fight over it, until Mason reveals that there are enough rooms for everyone. Oh, and there's also a tenant named Jack, but we haven't met him yet.

Oh, and as Scotty looks at her new room, someone is seen peering in at her through a small vent above the bed. Jack? An intruder? Leatherface? Oh, I hope it's Leatherface! And, before I forget, Mason tells Scotty that the room used to belong to his sister. Maybe her ghost is still there...

Mason goes to his room, and removes his shoes before sitting up on his bed. He turns his television on and finds a violent crime drama to watch, then looks like he's ready to have an orgasm. HBO would give this guy a fatal heart attack.

Scotty finishes unpacking her stuff, then knocks on Mason's door to ask if there's somewhere she can put her empty suitcases. He suggests the basement, but Scotty complains that her luggage might get damp. Boo-friggin'-hoo! Mason tells her that she can put them in the attic, as long as she doesn't disturb his mother. Geez, maybe his name should be Norman...

Scotty enters the attic, which is like Ground Zero for creepy shit, and admires the view of the beach from one of the windows. She puts her luggage away on top of some boxes, and then meets Mrs. Engels, a stern-faced woman who just stares her down until she goes back downstairs. Creepy, but at least she's real!

Peter and Doris make small talk outside while waiting for Scotty to get ready for dinner, and a long-haired blond dude pulls up on a motorcycle. This is the elusive Jack, and he introduces himself to Peter. Mason watches them from the shadows, and he looks pretty angry. Then, when all 4 of the tenants leave for dinner, we get an unguided tour of the house, revealing secret tunnels behind the walls. At the end of the passageway, a hand is seen frantically trying to make an opening in the wall...and it finally succeeds. Uhhh, I'm going to predict that this is probably a bad development for our main characters.

At a local hangout, the foursome get drunk and goofy. Doris tells a funny story about how several of the girls at her high school got nosejobs from the same surgeon, who gave them identical noses. That stinks, huh? (Oh, stop rolling your eyes...I know some of you at least giggled a little, right?)

Back home, Doris and Peter have a drunken squabble on the beach, over whether or not they're going to have sex. Jack escorts Scotty to her door, and they share a kiss while Mason watches them. In a moment that has to be seen to be believed, Mason's not just peering at them through a crack in the door; no, his ENTIRE HEAD is visible when the camera reveals him. And the best part? He's making a face like the "sneaky snake" office character from MadTV. This movie is cinematic gold, my friends.

Doris and Peter realize that the tide has come in fairly quickly, meaning that they'll have to get their feet wet to get home. Doris swiftly removes her shoes and starts walking, only to realize that he's not following. She returns to the spot where he sat down to take off his shoes, but only his jacket remains.

Scared, Doris decides to make a run for the house, only to have Peter pop up and frighten her. He laughs at her, so Doris slaps him and continues to the house. Peter just laughs some more, then falls onto his back in the sand. He wakes up when the water reaches him and backs away to a dry spot, only to be stabbed in the chest several times by an unseen maniac holding a biiiig kitchen knife. The killer then hides the body beneath a large sand castle sculpture, leaving one blood-drenched arm visible.

An autopsy is performed on the body, and the 2 detectives who escorted the uniformed officers in the first scene are there to watch. The larger of the pair, Manny, looks like a portly Groucho Marx. His partner, Sandy, looks like any generic television cop from the era. They talk about the case, then Manny leaves to question the houseguests. Wait, is an announcer going to pop up and announce that this is a "Quinn Martin Production" soon?

Nope. Okay, so we return to the house. The interviews go nowhere, until Detective Sandy talks to Mason. They discuss the tenants, his mother...and his mysterious sister. Despite his creepiness, the cops leave. Then he and his mother have a very brief, tense chat. Upset, Mason opens up a chest filled with his late father's belongings, and paws through all of it.

On the college campus, Scotty bumps into Jack. They start out flirting, until Jack suggests that they go for a swim later, on the beach where Peter was slaughtered. Scotty is understandably upset by his nonchalant attitude regarding the murder, but ends up going with him. In what universe does this seem like a good idea?

On the bright side, she looks great in a bikini. Too bad Peter towels her off like he's punching a side of beef. Meanwhile, the detectives are pressured to solve the murder quickly, by the victim's father. Then Scotty and Peter make out on the beach.

Mason finds the rapiest movie on the Rape Channel to get off on, while Scotty reads before bed. After another brief cop chat about a rape, Scotty finds Doris doing some laundry. After Peter sneaks up and scares her, Marty and he decide to snuggle.

While sitting with her laundry, Doris hears a noise. She explores the rest of the basement, and hears her friends having sex via one of the air vents. Their sounds of passion cover up her murder, which makes zero sense to me. But at least we know that Jack isn't the killer!

He returns to his own bedroom after the lovemaking, and puts on some headphones bigger than his own head, to listen to music(or signals from a distant planet, if the size of them is a factor in their signal strength...) Then the crazy, not-dead daughter is shown watching her mother sleep, posing in front of a mirror, and interacting with a corpse that I think is supposed to be Doris.

Scotty goes looking for Doris, but ends up wandering throughout the creepy house in the dark. She finds the secret passage, and is assaulted by the crazy sister, which wakes up the rest of the household. Mama and Mason hold down Scotty to silence her, as Peter goes in search of the source of the earlier noise.

Peter leaves the attic to look elsewhere for Doris and Scotty, and the Engels' panic over what to do. Oh, and the sister's name is Victoria. We find out in a flashback that Victoria tried to hang herself. Oh, and that Mason is her son. Ummmm.....okay.....?

Mason freaks out, leaves the attic, and knocks out Jack. Then he grabs his grandfather's military pistol. At about the same time, our lunkheaded detectives discover the truth, and race off to rescue Scotty and Jack. This is turning into a soap opera now!

Wait. It gets better. Mason returns to the attic, but now he thinks that he's his own father/grandfather, and is dressed in the military uniform. He decides to shoot Scotty, but he and his mother struggle over possession of the pistol. Several shots are fired harmlessly around the room, but the last one hits Mason's mother.

Mason approaches the body, then his real mother stares at poor, innocent, tied-up Scotty. Crazy Mama II picks up the butcher knife she used on her other victims, and creeps toward Scotty. Then, in maybe one of the few grimly funny bits in this monstrosity, she sets her sights on Mason instead, and makes a beeline for his back.

Scotty tries to shout a warning to him through her gag("Mmmmmphnnn!"), and he turns around, but his gun is now empty. He backs away to reload it, shoots Victoria, then kills himself with a bullet to the brain.

Jack comes to, just as Scotty frees herself. Then Victoria pops up again, and tries to finish off Scotty, who just barely bars her striking knife by slamming a door between them. Victoria bursts in at the exact moment that Jack breaks into the attic, and the 3 just stare at each other for a second or two.

Then Scotty pushes her into a wall, and the knife goes into Victoria's abdomen. The cops "rescue" Scotty and Jack, and the end credits roll over an image of dead Victoria. THE END

Well. That was...a movie. Yup. Let's just give The Silent Scream a nice, average, plain 3. It was the slasher version of vanilla ice cream. I did like Scotty, though. Cute actress.

So, did The Silent Scream leave me with ANY wisdom?

-Sand castles don't cover up corpses very well.

-Horny guys will swim anywhere, even in the middle of a crime scene.

-If you want to commit a murder, wait for someone to start having sex first.

My next movie is a cheeseball movie from 1986, called Chopping Mall. Or sometimes Killbots. Whatever. It's goofy by any name. Later!

Dark Ride

Hey all, welcome to another SAW! This week(well, week and 1 day...), we have Dark Ride, an amusement-park slasher to watch. So strap in, keep your arms in the ride at all times, and get ready for SPOILERS.....

Wow, this DVD has about a month's worth of trailers and other ads. I hope there's a movie. Wait, did I have this long, stringy beard when we started? I did? Damn!

Okay, so the movie does actually have a starting point. There's a large, deserted-looking carnival, and 2 young girls are just sort of drifting around in the big empty area of the main fairground. A sign says that the place is in its final weeks, but it looks pretty damned dead even without a sign.

One girl, Colleen, lets some sound effects coming from the funhouse attraction intimidate her, and she starts to back away. Her sister mocks her, and Colleen quickly switches her tune. They each buy a ticket from a grizzled old barker, and he teases them a little to try to break the tension. I think I saw him on Dateline 2-3 times...

After getting belted into their cart, they get pulled into a dark, shadowy area, with various noises heard around them. The ride features what you'd probably expect: giant Devil heads bobbing at them, smog, lots of semi-scary mannequins in the background. As the ride goes deeper into the tunnel, things start to spring up and scare them a bit faster.

Colleen hates it. Even during the non-scary stuff, she keep averting her eyes from the entire experience. The other girl doubles her efforts to humiliate Colleen about her squeamishness. Oh, and neither one of the girls manages to notice a creepy figure who enters the tunnel right behind them. Golly gee, I can't possibly imagine where this is heading.

Following Colleen's latest round of being called names, her sister, Sam(I miss Pam Dawber....), appears to have been snatched out of her seat by someone. The dummies also now seem to be fixed up to look like murdered children. As her anxiety increases, Colleen realizes that her cart has now stopped again, in front of another chilling display.

This new one depicts a brutish hulk dressed in hospital scrubs. He's facing a "patient" on his table, as another figure looks on. Colleen gets a better view of the scene, and sees that Sam is the victim, with her innards exposed and pulled out in all of their glory. As Colleen screams, the title is displayed.

During the credits, we also get some backstory. Both girls were murdered, but the killer went on to have a pretty busy hobby. 14 more people were killed...hey, how 'bout showing us THAT movie? That would kick butt.

Anyway, as the film picks up in the present day, 5 friends are preparing for Spring Break festivities. The group consists of Bill, who seems to be the socially awkward "nerd" of the group; Cathy, an attractive brunette played by an actress who co-starred on The Sopranos(she played the daughter); Steve, who used to date Cathy, and is Bill's best friend and roommate; Liz, who is Cathy's bubbly blond best friend; and Jim, an obnoxious jock-type(who used to date Liz) whose van they're travelling in. Yay, the usual assembly-line of victims.

So, after everyone hugs Bill for some reason, they get the proverbial show on the cliche-riddled road. Before they even get into the friggin' van, Bill freaks out the others by re-enacting a scene from Midnight Cowboy, which seems pretty random. They start off on their journey, which consists of scenery from the Griswold family cross-country trip--set to a 70's-ish sounding tune that would make hippies long for heavy metal--and they all just mouth stuff at each other. Yeah yeah, I know it's a montage set to music, I'm just mocking them to stay awake. Hell, even the people who made this one seem bored, as the footage begins to run at super-speed.

They stop at a creepy gas station(yet another cliche....I'm betting Joss whedon was thinking of this movie when he wrote the awesome and under-appreciated Cabin In the Woods), which is open, yet seems deserted. Bill decides to go inside to have a look, and finds an old man who may or may not actually be dead. Bill acts out another movie scene to try to get a reaction from the geezer, but the guy doesn't even blink.

While Bill looks for a bathroom, Jim decides to see if the old guy really is dead by offering him a blowjob as a joke. He gets the shit scared out of him when the old man pops up and begins to talk at 500 words a minute. The old man gives them a coupon for a local eatery, then makes a wisecrack to Jim about getting oral sex from him. I have to admit, the old guy made me laugh.

When Bill returns to the van, he shows the others a brochure that he found, advertising an amusement park attraction at the Jersey Shore. The brochure refers to the attraction as a "dark ride", which prompts Liz to ask what it is. Bill apparently has an encyclopedic knowledge of dark rides, and he fills her in. It's pretty much just another way of saying "funhouse", but that movie title was already taken, so we get Dark Ride. Again, yay. And also....who the heck finds funhouse pamphlets in gas station restrooms??? You should wear a HazMat suit before picking it up.

Steve then adds that he's actually heard of this particular attraction, because of something that happened there 20 years earlier. I can't imagine what he's referring to. Was Snooki born there? Probably not, otherwise this would be even scarier.

Then we get a bit of time travel thrown into the mix, as the story grinds to a halt, and we see an event that took place 2 weeks earlier. Uh, and they couldn't just show this before introducing the college kids to us, and simply have their intro say "2 weeks later"....why exactly? Oh, and this distracting interlude takes place in a mental institution.

2 orderlies are making their nightly rounds, checking on patients in each padded cell. They come to a cell where a bald guy is sitting on the floor in front of a television showing static, and one orderly starts mocking him. When he gets pushy, the patient splits open his straitjacket, then grabs a flashlight from one of the orderlies and shoves it straight through the poor man's torso. Then he grabs the second orderly, shoves him up against the padded door, and tears him open. Afterwards, the lunatic simply leaves the asylum.

Meanwhile, back in the van, Bill has convinced the rest of the group to go visit the dark ride from the brochure, claiming it to be an adventure, or an act of rebellion, or some other load of bull. They probably agreed just to shut him up. Oh, and then they come upon a hitchhiker, and decide to let her come along with them.

The new girl is Jen, and she's kind of spacy at first. Then she tells the others that she once attended a Phish concert, where she met a guy who debated her knowledge of music before trying to rape her. She responded to him by punching him hard in the balls. The moral to her story? She believes that people are more or less decent, deep down. Uhhhh.......

Anyway, while Cathy and Liz text each other about the looney new passenger, Jen decides to take off her shirt. Then Jim offers her a joint, and all is good again. They tell her about the dark ride, and she gets all excited. As a way of thanking them for the ride, Jen offers up a baggy full of many, many hits of acid. Wish they had included one with this movie. I honestly can't remember the last time a horror film left me this bored.

They must have heard me, because they finally arrive at the dark ride. It's late at night, and they seem bamboozled by the fact that it looks like it's closed. They see a security guy, and decide that they can sneak in between his rounds. Well, everyone except Cathy....she's annoyed by Jen, and opts to remain in the van.

Jim breaks in first, gets frightened by a dummy making a face, then finds the fusebox to get the power turned on. With the lights on and the ride operational, he then lets the rest of the group into the building. Pretty smart thinking, having a loud, illuminated amusement park ride turned on in case another security guy or bystander happens to pay a visit.

Now that everyone is together again, the girls are skittish about exploring the interior of the ride. They are reminded that Cathy is outside, if anything goes wrong, but Jen still whines that she would have been safer accepting a ride from a creepy stalker. Geez, considering how long it took them to get to the place, you'd think they would have voiced these issues before their arrival!

They wander aimlessly from room to room, until Jim picks up a mannequin and begins dancing with it. A massive green monster-head pops out of a window behind Jim, and when he turns back to the mannequin, the face is suddenly mangled. He drops it and re-joins the rest of the group, as if nothing happened. Before leaving, Bill examines the broken face as well. From above the room, the escaped killer watches the incident, and he's now wearing a dollface mask, like the killer in The Hills Run Red.

Outside, the weather has turned rainy. Cathy notices the rain, then goes back to not having anything to do with the main plot. I wonder how much she was paid to more or less sit in a car for the majority of the film? I hope it was a ton of cash.

Jim, while smoking a joint, comments that Cathy doesn't know what she's missing. As they decide to sit in a circle and act out a scene from That '70's Show, Liz claims to see someone watching them. The rest just chalk it up to a reaction from the drugs. Yeah, I'm sure that's all it was.

Jim then begins to tell the story of exactly why the dark ride was closed, until he's interrupteed by Bill, who says that he grew up in the area, and knows the "real story". Hey Bill, how 'bout you chill out so Jim can tell the story, before you decide it's the wrong one? Geez, he's starting to get on my nerves.

Regardless of who tells the story(which Jim tells anyway), it's just the same events we saw in the opening sequence of the film. Jim says that the girls were twins, and that the killer had the mental capacity of a child. Oh, and he supposedly lived in the dark ride, due to his deformities.

And how could he have lived there without being discovered? Why, his dad operated the attraction, of course! Oh, and there was a brother who was younger, with no abnormalities, physical or mental. After the twins were murdered, the ride was shut down. When the girls ask Jim why he pretended not to have any knowledge of the place, he responds that they never would have agreed to go, had they known the history of the place.

Okay, Bill's turn to tell the same damned story! In his version, the killer was shot, but survived, and eventually spent the rest of his life in the booby hatch. And the big twist in his story is that the twins were also Bill's cousins. Oh, and the giant killer's name is Jonah. Supposedly, Jonah was discovered turning his victims into displays for the ride. After defusing the tension with a joke, they get up to explore some more.

Steve and Jen find a more private room to fool around in, but it's very dark. They grab a lamp from one of the displays, and use a mirror to try to bounce the light off and give more illumination. Doing this reveals Cathy, who appears to be dead, and used as a display to scare them. As they scream, Cathy leaps up, revealing that a prank was being pulled on Steve.

Steve gets bent out of shape over the joke, then gets angrier when he realizes that most of the others were in on it too. Heck, the whole visit to the attraction was the key component to the prank, and the brochure was one that belonged to Bill. He even talked Jen into helping to pull it off, which she was more than willing to do.

Cathy then makes a crack about paying back Steve for fooling around behind her back when they were dating, and that part really sets him off. He tells Bill that he just lost his only friend, and he leaves. While some of the others say the same to Bill, Jim actually seems to like him a lot more for pulling the stunt. Go figure.

As they arrive back at the entrance, they find that the door is locked from the outside. They all assume that Steve did it, but when they beg him to let them out, there's no response at all. Jim loses his patience, and decides to check the fuses and power source, to see if he can open anything from the control panel.

Within a minute of arriving, Jim is jumped by Jen. Faster than you can say, "Stupid idea!", they start to strip down and have sex. The rest of the remaining group all grab light sources, and walk in a line from room to room, to find any alternate exits. This seems like an okay plan, until Cathy sees a dummy on display that appears to be a very dead-looking Steve. She screams, and Jen and Jim stop screwing long enough to comment on it. Then Jen randomly blurts out, "I love this song,", and the sex resumes.

Cathy rushes to get the others, while Bill tries to warn Jim and Jen that something terrible has occurred. They ignore him, so that Jim can get a blowjob, and the killer sneaks into the room. He kills Jen without alerting Jim, and Jim winds up with her severed head in his hands.

Panicking, he tries to run away, and only succeeds in knocking himself out on an overheard pipe. Jim wakes up, and finds himself alone. Unfortunately, there are no unlocked exits in the room. Trapped, Jim is left crying and begging to be released.

Cathy and Liz are still trying to find an alternate escape door, but neither one of them is being very rational at this point. Cathy tries to inspire Liz to be calm and act strong, going into full-on Braveheart mode to get her friend going again. Cathy sees another corpse, and tells Liz that she feels completely responsible for what's happening to them. She runs back into the maze of rooms, and tells Liz to find the exit and get help.

Each room Liz finds is scarier than the last, until the killer finally nabs her. She barely gets away, but he keeps finding her. He finally gets the drop on her, and then drags her body along the floor to parts unknown. Along the way, Jim sees the body, and the killer decides to chase him down as well.

Meanwhile, the security guy outside has returned. He calls for backup, after describing the screams and other signs of activity coming from the dark ride. After a short debate, he's told that back-up is on the way to his location. Yay, more victims!

The security guard decides to enter the dark ride without waiting for back-up, because they always do in these movies. He finds Cathy almost immediately, which would be great, but the killer has somehow managed to get behind him. The killer splits the poor guard's head in half, right down the middle, and after he admires his handiwork, he resumes chasing Cathy.

Then we meet the "back-up". They receive the call to assist the security guard, and one says something along the lines of, "I hope we get there before he splits..." Hardy har har. The only reason for these 2 nimrods to even be in this movie, was for them to deliver that godawful pun.

Anyway, Cathy finds a window, and actually manages to escape from the building! She swiftly gets to the car, gets in, and drives away fast enough to make The Flash envious. Jim watches her leave, and begins to cry. What's with them finding exits all of a sudden? Were these windows somehow invisible until just now? Gotta love the logic on display in this movie.

Anyway, while Jim is running and blubbering(again, instead of going out a window????), the killer pops up next to him. I love how this gigantic hulk always manages to pop up from out of nowhere, like he's somehow hard to spot. Of course, it makes as much sense as anything else we've seen, so at least the writing is consistent. A giant ninja...genius.

Cathy, in the meantime, is trying to figure out how the "phone" part of her cellphone works. See? Actual evidence that texting makes you dumber. She gets a call from Jim's phone, and realizes that he's still alive. She decides that the smart thing to do is to go back into the dangerous building, and rescue the shit out of the lunkhead. Oh, and while we're talking about survivors, where the heck is Bill, our socially inept movie expert? He pretty much just vanished from the plot after they all went into the building...

Inside, things aren't looking too good for Jim. The masked maniac has caught up to him, and Jim has crawled his way into a dead end. The killer raises his weapon to finish Jim off, but Cathy saves the day by crashing the car through the wall. How she knew which wall to drive through, or even how she managed not to kill Jim in the process, is typical movie logic. Chalk it up to "magic", I guess.

The impact of the vehicle sends the killer flying into a wall of spikes or blades. Cathy passes out, and Jim tries to revive her. And that's when Bill reappears. Jim freaks out and gives Bill a semi-embrace, but Bill's only reaction is to ask if the killer is actually dead. Then he also asks if Cathy is still alive.

When Jim asks Bill how he managed to survive, he replies that he knows the building quite well....and then he stabs Jim. While he continues to stab Jim several more times, flashbacks reveal him planning the prank with Cathy, as well as killing and displaying Steve. It's revealed that the killer is Bill's older brother, and the twin girls were his sisters. Bill wanted to help his brother escape from his confinement, so that he could then kill his "friends", because they never really let him fit in with their group...

...and that's when Cathy finally wakes up. She watches Bill take his brother's mask, and he thanks her for helping with his revenge scheme. Cathy, still in shock, wanders back outside. A few emergency vehicles have arrived, and a resuer asks Cathy if she's hurt. Then there's a final close-up of the mask. THE END

Whoo-boy, this movie was all over the place. A good opening scene, followed by waaaay too much set-up, and numerous silly plot-holes and dumb elements to truly make this film scary. 2 killer trees out of 5....I would have given it 3, but these guys kept blowing every opportunity for something interesting to happen. At least the kills were somewhat good, though, so it's not a total waste. (oh, and check out the deleted scenes....some of them are actually decent, for a change...)

And what did I learn from watching Dark Ride?

-Well, if you want to enjoy a vacation with friends, you might want to do a background check on them first...

-Mental hospitals have no security measures at all, except for a pair of badly trained orderlies.

-Windows and doors are invisible until it's almost too late for them to be useful.

The next movie from Ballbuster is Ghost In the Machine, a cheese-tastic rip-off of Shocker and The Horror Show. See you then!

Hell Night

Well, since my movies won't arrive in time for this week's entry, I've decided, once again, to see what YouTube has to offer. Luckily, a few of their slasher choices were new to me...it's always fun to gamble on the unknown! So, prepare to be SPOILED, as I watch something from the early 1980's called Hell Night...

The movie starts smack dab in the middle of a rowdy, drunken bash. Linda Blair stars in this one, hopefully minus the head-spinning and pea soup vomit. There's also Vince Van Patten, so this definitely has the 80's vibe going for it. By the way, if you watch these movie while reading along, watch the volume. The opening rock song is pretty much just a wall of screeching noise.

The first character we meet is Peter, the studly president of the fraternity co-hosting the Halloween party. His costume is some kind of swordsman or something. He turns the charm up past 11, and attempts to woo a pretty girl serving drinks, when his frat brother, Scott--the most awkward-looking pirate ever-- interrupts the conversation.

When Peter looks away for a second, he spots Marti entering the room. She's a new sorority pledge, played by Linda Blair, and she's dressed as some kind of Victorian-era woman or royalty perhaps. She came to the party with a friend dressed in a some kind of leopard dress. Maybe she's supposed to be Wilma Flinstone. Is my complete apathy for this thing showing?

Anyway, according to Wilma, Peter looks forward to the Halloween bash all year. So, given that classes in the fall most likely begin in September, Pete's only excited for roughly 2 months. Unless they mean immediately after the shindig, in which case, he's excited until December 31st, because then he begins a new year. (yeah yeah, I know what she meant, I'm just mocking the movie out of boredom,  until something interesting happens.) I need a nap, so my cat, Tom will watch this until I'm up again. Everyone, meet Tom. Tom, everyone.

Meow meow loud music meow drowning out dialogue meow. Entire party drives through town in cars meow, until they reach big iron gate meow. Pete lets them into place called Garth Manor, meow, because new pledges always spend one night inside meow.

Garth Manor was occupied by various Garth family members meow, until the last Girths gave birth to a mutant girl, meow. Then they had another child, who was born blind deaf, and mute. Then a son, Mort, was born. He was a Mongoloid, meow. The father was so upset his deformed children, meow, that he decided to kill himself and his family. When police arrived to check out the place, young boy Mort's body was nowhere to be found....

Thanks, Tom, I'll resume watching. I'm feeling better meow...errrrr, I mean now. Anyway, inside the mansion Peter tells the 4 pledges that they can sleep anywhere they want, with whomever they want, until morning. The 4 pledges are Marti; an annoying British girl named Denise(her first big bit of dialogue, featuring her trying to act "drunk" is painful); Some guy dressed as Robin Hood who looks like Blake on Workaholics; and a guy dressed in a generic-looking 1800's suit suit, named Jeff. I guess the costume budget ran out.

Anyway, after they're locked in for the night, they're handed a gun through the iron gate, in case they run into trouble. Then everyone else races away into the night.

The four pledges head inside, where Denise reveals that she snuck in some alcohol and drugs. She and Robin Hood run upstairs to fool around, leaving the other 2 alone. Jeff and Marti together downstairs. Jeff gets the fireplace going, while Marti lights candles.

Then they decide to fight. Marti sees Jeff as nothing more than a spoiled rich kid, while he sees her as a tight-ass liberal. Wait, didn't Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan already play these 2 in a movie? I wonder if they'll keep debating each other as the killer strikes?

Upstairs, the action is even worse. While Diane crawls around on the big bed, Robin Hood is distracted by his desire to shoot arrows at different things around the room. This culminates in him shooting an arrow at her ass. Then when he jumps her bones, she'd rather talk about his love of surfing. Using her body as a surfboard, he demonstrates what hitting the waves is like for him.

Outside the house, Peter, Scott and Wilma show up. They've returned to scare the pledges, and try to make them escape before morning. Peter sends Scott and the cheetah to the other side of the house, while he sets up some stuff on his side.

Back in the study, Marti asks Jeff why he's friends with the jerky frat guys, and he tries to list their good qualities. Then he turns the tables, and asks her, if she hates the fraternity/sorority tradition so much, then why is she pledging? She explains that she did it to hopefully get a circle of friends going on campus. In fact, she's a shoo-in to join, because she struck a deal with the sorority:if she helps them on papers and tests, she's in as their sister.

Then someone screams for , like, a fortnight. We discover that Robin Hood is named Seth. Even his date didn't know that, as she'd been calling him Wes. Boy, it sure is nice to root for smart characters for a change...

Anyway, let's get back to the screaming. The pledges hear another one upstairs, so they head up, and find the wire connected to the speakers that the noise was coming from. Jeff fiddles around with it, and Peter(on the roof) realizes that his control box for the sound effects is no longer working.

Frustrated, Peter asks Wilma Flintstone to go around the mansion, to rig another prank. She starts whining about wanting to stay and watch the prank. When she leaves the guys make fun of her. Nice.

Wilma is sneaking around, when she hears a noise. It turned out to be a big, scary completely innocent owl. Hey, have you ever noticed that owls are in the majority of these outdoor scenes in horror movies, but you almost never see one in real life?

Oops, while I was distracted by that, Wilma was being dragged down into a hole that was covered by leaves. She sees her attacker and screams, and the killer then chops her head off. It goes by fast, so don't blink until you see Marti in the next scene.

Marti and Jeff finally seem to be getting along....and that's when the loud screaming resumes. Jeff tells Marti to stay by the fireplace until he returns. In the main hall, he sees Seth, wearing the goofiest pair of boxers that money can buy. After a quick chuckle, he asks Seth to help him find the pranksters.

While waiting for Jeff's return, Marti gets pretty spooked. She finds the door locked, then hears a noise behind her...it's a...it's a....g-g-g-g-g-GHOST!!! And it's limping very slowly in her direction! My god, I haven't been this scared since that one time my girlfriend bought a pregnancy test, and....um, never mind.

Anyway, Velma found a ghost, but Scooby and Shaggy haven't come to the rescue yet. As the zombiesque spirit creeps ever closer, Marti finally forces the door open, and nearly knocks over Jeff and Seth. While Jeff plans to return to the bedroom for some hanky-panky. Peter goes back into the study with Marti, where he has her recreate what happened.

Outside again. Scott and Peter open a hidden passageway. They're getting ready to set the scene of another prank, involving a dummy head, wearing a rubber  mask...If this one ever gets a remake, let's hope that they get rid of most of the prank crap, add more pledges, and have a steadier pace with the kills. I'm practically asleep here.

Up next, Marti watches Jeff climb a tree. He finds the control that locks and unlocks the door, and disables it. Then he goes into Jennifer Love Hewitt mode, and shouts a warning to Peter and Scott, that he'll find them and kick their collective asses if the pranks don't stop soon.

Scott sets up the dummy, and hears a noise. Then the screen goes black, which is as helpful as it sounds. Luckily it doesn't last long, as we see that the killer has hidden in FRONT of Scott. It's as if even the killer knows how brain-dead these guys are, and is siding with the audience.

Anyway, Scott finally realizes that someone is hiding behind the structure in front of him. He stands up to take a closer look, and assumes that it's someone trying to trick him. When he turns back to setting up the prank, a hand grabs his face. The killer then uses his other hand, and Scott gets his neck broken, as well as his head getting some swivel action.

In another bedroom, Marti and Jeff look for more wires and pranks. Then they botch a jump-scare by allowing us to glimpse a fake skeleton through the ajar bathroom door, seconds before the door is opened by Jeff. D'oh! He jumps, then gets rejected by Marti when he tries to get into her bed. Ain't your night, Jeffster.

Back together in another bedroom, Seth and Diane are asleep, but she wakes up with a start. "Little ditty, 'bout Seth and Diane/2 American kids, doin'the best they caaaan/ Jeff's gonna be a surfboard star/Diane'll be an annoying drunk, in the backseat of Jeff's pot-smelling car!"

*takes a bow*

Anyway, so Diane's awake. She's out of alcohol, so she decides to explore the mansion in her sexy lingerie. She grabs a candle and heads for the hall verrrrrrry slooooooowly, and pauses to look around. Oops, she wasn't going out of the room, she's in a bathroom.

As she looks through the drawers and cabinets in the bathroom, someone is seen behind the mirror, watching her. It's Peter, using that secret passage. He goes back outside, When he calls out to his cohorts, there's no answer. He climbs to the roof to look for Scott, and flashes his light around. He then trips over Scott's body, thinking that it's the dummy.

The killer watches from the shadows, as Peter turns a crank attached to a booby trap or prank of some kind. Then he sees a body, and scrambles to get off of the roof. Back on the ground, he heads straight to the front gate. He fumbles with the key, then finally manages to get the gate open.

Unfortunately, his fumble with the keys cost precious time. The killer attacks, starting with another face-palm maneuver. Then he and Peter scuffle, until Peter manages to get away. He runs into the night, only to get lost in some kind of hedge maze. After going around a few corners, Peter sees someone lurking in the shadows, and runs the opposite way. Of course, he runs right into the killer, who uses a scythe to kill the young man.

Marti puts a light on, which wakes up Jeff. She admits that the ghost image really messed her up, which leads to a quick discussion about how he believes in elves, and she believes in ghosts. Then they decide to make out for a little bit.

Seth and Diane are much further along, even though she has to keep reminding Seth what her name is. The killer seems to be watching them, from a room where the door is ajar. As they start delving into cheap porn territory, the camera keeps showing us the half-open door.

After a minute or so of this, Seth gets up to go grab a beer, or pee, or whatever. The killer tiptoes to the bed, and there's an eerie shot of him standing right next to Diane, who has drifted to sleep. The killer fiddles around for a bit, then covers her mouth when she wakes up and sees him there.

In the bathroom, Seth admires his reflection, before heading back to Diane. He gets in bed, only to discover that her throat has been slashed, and her skin is ghostly-white. Seth is horrified, and his shouting gets the attention of Marti and Jeff. They ask him what happened, then run into the room to see for themselves.

Well, I was wrong. In a wider shot, it shows that Diane's head is in the bed, sans body. Seth runs out of the house, and the others follow him. He tries to shoot the padlock on the gate(wait...who locked it back up???), then decides to climb over it. The points on top of the gate are razor sharp, and Seth tries to slowly climb over them, to avoid being impaled.

Despite being jabbed a few times, Seth makes it. After he leaves, the remaining couple clutch each other, and try not to panic. They agree to head back inside, because they're both blithering idiots. Oh, and the background music as they walk back to the mansion is a gigantic ripoff of the Halloween theme, and it takes them a century to open the front door.

Finally back inside, they start to shout out names. Rather thoughtful of them, to give the killer time to hone in on their location. They do more of that slow creeping. Oh, and they find the body of one of the frat boys. Scott, maybe.

They both see something outside, and Jeff is determined to track the person down. Marti begs him not to leave her alone again, but he does anyway. Bastard! He finds Peter dead and runs away, never noticing the keys on the body. D'oh!

Seth gets to the police station, which is really impressive for a dork. He tries to tell the desk Sergeant what happened, but the cops have had their hands full all night, mostly handling pranksters. Seth insists that he's very serious, but the cops threaten to arrest him if be doesn't leave.

Seth prepares to stomp off, but sees a room that is fikked with guns, and is unlocked. He grabs an assault rifle, grabs some ammo, then climbs out of a window. Wow, it's like Superbad mixed with Rambo!

Still hiding in their bedroom, Marti and Jeff talk about whether or not they'll survive long enough for Seth to return. Then a figure arrives, wearing a black shroud. Marti screams, and Jeff uses a pitchfork to stab the gut, They slowly approach the body and lift the shroud, but there's no one there! There is, however, a trapdoor hanging open.

Taking very little time for discussion, the couple decide to follow the killer, even after Jeff tries to leave her behind again. I'm seriously starting to wonder if Jeff is actively trying to bait the killer, by using Marti as a sacrifice. He never seems to think about what might happen to her if she were alone with the killer. Or maybe it's all he thinks about...

Anyway, the underground tunnel is extremely narrow. They finally find a room, but it's darker than The Dark Knight, Darkness Falls, and The Darkest Hour, all rolled into one. They enter the room.  There's another section to explore, so on they go. Turning another corner, they discover all of the people the killer has dispatched, some who seem quite old and dusty. There are also framed pictures, possibly representing other victims.

Then they hear someone coming in behind them, so they go into panic mode. They run away quickly, but the killer can always be heard close behind. They finally get back to the secret door, and run outside, where they try to find something to bar the door lever with.

Then we see a liquor store. Huh? Shouldn't they finish the previous scene before they start a new one? Anyway, that's where Seth is. He carjacks a poor guy with the fake rifle, then tells the man the address to send the cops to, if they want to arrest him.

Seth stops at the gate, and worries over how quiet it suddenly seems. He squeezes through some bars, and heads in the direction of the mansion. Uhhhh, if he could squeeze through the bars, then what was the climbing scene about?

So, as he sneaks up to the mansion, the killer reveals that he was hiding above Seth. He tries to choke the young man, but Seth gets in one shot with his rifle. The wrestle for a minute, and twice Seth tries to grab the rifle, but is dragged away from it by our mysterious maniac.

Well, the 3rd time's the charm. Seth gets the rifle and shoots the killer in the chest, and the body gets blown back into a pool of water. As Seth wanders around the pool to look for the killer, the body rises back to the surface. but still appears to be dead.

Seth is so happy, that he limp-runs the entire way to the mansion. He screams "I did it! I did it!", and his friends come out of the bedroom to see him. As they watch him celebrate in the front hall,  they ask him about the encounter and a hand snatches Seth away, like something a villain might do in a film from the '30's, after some cackling and moustache-twirling.

Another shot is fired, then the gun is flung back into the front hall. When Seth fails to answer their calls, Marti announces that's going to grab the gun. It was just a lure, of course, because the killer was waiting to grab anyone who went for the weapon. He lunges at Marti, and she runs back to the 2nd floor.

Jeff and Marti race into the bedroom, then brace themselves against the door to keep the killer out. He punches his fist through the door, and grabs at Marti, but she and Jeff escape yet again. Oh, and this is where we finally get a real look at the killer. Imagine Peter Weller in Robocop, after the shooting, and he bought a dark business suit at Goodwill. Or maybe John Lithgow, wearing the Young Frankenstein costume.

Marti and Jeff exit through a window, where Marti is clinging to a weather vane. Jeff is dragged back inside by the weird killer, where he is lifted off the ground, and hurled out another window. Jeff's a-flyin' and a-dyin'!...well, it certainly looks like he died. We'll have to see if he pops up at the end...

Marti doesn't want to die on the roof, so she uses the rope ladder to get off of the house. About halfway down, Marti is attacked by the killer, whose hands burst through a window to strangle her. She leaps to the ground, and runs toward the gate. She then fills in the role of "Scared Girl Who Finds Her Friends Dead" (Yup, even Jeff....so I guess my idea for a twist was wrong.) As that part ends, she fixes one of the cars, and tries to bash the gate apart.

The killer has another plan. His ghostly face pops up in her windshield, and Marti tries swerving to loosen his position on the hood. Those kooky gate spikes fall, sticking the killer to the car like a butterfly in some science class display.

The next morning, Marti finds herself still among the living. She squeezes out of the car and starts to leave it behind, and that's about it. It seemed like they were setting up a final scare as the credits started, but nothing happened. THE END

Man, this one had many, many flaws. But it also had a lot of kills, and a good location I read tonight that there is a remake coming....let's hope they do what I suggested...especially the part about toning down, or eliminating, the pranks, in favor of more victims, and actual slasher scenes that involve practical effects.

Oh, and what I learn from Hell Night?

-In Hollywood,love is definitely blind.


-folks at keg pareties dress up in the cheapest costumes they can find.


-Rock music can kill.

Next week, is hopefully Dark Ride. If not, then another