Save your money for something good and enjoyable

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

"Happy Hell Night" has a college fraternity raising hell on Halloween by convincing its pledges to break into an insane asylum and photograph a killer priest who has been locked away, motionless and static in his cell, after being involved in a Satanic ritual in a mausoleum twenty five years ago that left a group of university students dead. Sound like the eighties? You bet. But it's not. "Happy Hell Night" is a definite misfit as far as slasher films go— not in content, but rather in that it made its blip on the radar when the slasher genre was far past its death rattle. It's one of the few, if only films of its type to appear in the early nineteen nineties, arriving to the party post-eighties slasher craze, but pre-nineties slasher revival (ala "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), so it kind of fell through the cracks without any bandwagon to grab onto. For that reason alone, it's something of a relic. The film boasts a typical slasher storyline, with college kids inadvertently releasing a maniacal killer, but has enough of a spin on itself that it, at the very least, is consistently entertaining. As many have noted, the film's antagonist, Zachary Malius, is exceptionally scary; a bald, pale, black eyed demon-possessed killer who evokes Nosferatu, minus the ears. Sitting still in a thicket of cobwebs for two and a half decades, not moving an inch; simply waiting for the right time.A series of subplots involving the college students who unleash him (including a love triangle between two brothers, family drama around a brother's commitment to pledging, and the history behind Malius' origin) swirl around in the film but are never cohesively tied together. In the third act the murders begin to kick in high gear, and there are some outstandingly creepy scenes. One of the charming things about it is that the film boasts some solid special effects akin to the early nineties, yet the film overall very much feels like a product of the early eighties— another rather beneficial idiosyncrasy the film carries.Editing is perhaps the film's biggest weak point; it's sloppily edited, to put it nicely, but it's also decently photographed, with the camera capturing the atmospheric Gothic surroundings and eerie chill of the fall night.To my surprise, I felt like the acting in the film wasn't half bad, despite what many other reviews have said. It's not remarkable by any means, but by slasher standards? Come on, people. The big names here include Darren McGavin as the brothers' father who took part in the ritual in 1965, with Sam Rockwell making a very brief appearance as a younger version of McGavin. Jorja Fox also appears in the film as a New England sorority girl who has one of the best and scariest scenes in the film. And Charles Cragin is downright chilling as the undead Malius, even with his hokey one-liners.While things come crashing down rather lackadaisically in the film's finale, it ends on a fun note and somehow left me with a feeling of satisfaction. If you're a fan of eighties slashers, "Happy Hell Night" is a definite nineties oddity that is worth checking out. The villain is superb and genuinely scary, and the film boasts an effective "campus Gothic" atmosphere. It is not masterclass, nor is it particularly well directed, but it's a real treat for all of us who enjoy these things. 8/10.

"Happy Hell Night" came out at a time when the slasher craze had well and truly died, as the same ideas were being recycled over and over again, and this one is no different, here we have a killer priest who escapes from a mental hospital after 25 years for murdering a group of college students and surprise surprise, he sets out to do it again to a new group of college kids.Happy Hell Night is an OK effort and I actually liked it more than I thought I would, once the first half hour is over and the killer priest starts killing, it actually starts livening up and there are some touches in the gore department, but I could have done without the stupid cheesy one liners from the killer, as it would have made him a whole lot creepier, and the supernatural element was done rather well and it does set it apart from the other slasher fodder that came out during this point.All in all "Happy Hell Night" is an okay movie once it gets going although it does take quite a while and the cast weren't very interesting but they do get killed which is a bonus, and this movie may just be another run of the mill early 90's slasher, but it's still OK.

Amateurish direction, bad acting and a weak script are the best parts of this awful movie. Plot holes, inadequate character motivations, choppy editing and an overall lack of film-making skills. One often wonders who lets these people direct movies. I suppose this is one of those movies financed by a rich relative. It is just typical of the phrase "They'll let anybody direct a movie these days."I watched this because I'm a big Darren McGavin fan. Too bad he didn't end his career with his stellar turn in "The Natural" instead of taking this home movie as a job.

HAPPY HELL NIGHT, also known as FRAT FRIGHT (which I have on VHS), is terrible. There's nothing else to say about it. It's just bad. Almost as bad as PLEDGE NIGHT, which is one of the worst of the worst films of all time. Yep, HAPPY HELL NIGHT is that bad: bad acting, bad cinematography, horrible script, even worse dialogue, clueless direction, etc. The only good things about HAPPY HELL NIGHT are the gore (well made for such a low budget flick) and that really creepy actor playing the killer. He should be in better films.But aside from those two things, the rest is total crap. AVOID!!!