Whether you've been nice or naughty(which is nicer than nice in my book, anyways) thus far this year is irrelevant, as I've got a shabby little low-budgeted goodie for that busted tube sock precariously draped over your faux fireplace mantle from the seventies, as directed by none other than the late genre icon, David A. Hess himself.Now, before you go rushing to hand me off that prohibition-era fruitcake that's been evolving in the darkness of your cupboard in return, let me first state for the record:To All a Goodnight isn't one of the better Christmas-based slashers ever made; in fact, it's low end all the way, with precious little holiday feel(Sorry, Cali, but your palm trees and sunshine don't exactly evoke visions of Anderson's Den Lille Pige med Svovlstikkerne for me at all), zero suspense, choppy uneven pacing, a gratingly rotten musical score, and even worse lighting.It's no wonder that Hess never took the director's chair again during his long career in film and television, it looks like Murphy's Law took hold of this production from the start, strangling it until it was hardly discernible from hundreds of other pedestrian slashers.Of course, if you're up for bearing witness to a spate of pedantic-yet-pulchritudinous people biting the dust(at the hands of FX goremeister, Mark Shostrom) and little else, you might come away from this one less dissappointed than I was the first time I sat through it.Contrary to popular interwebs tube legend, Hess doesn't appear in front of the lens here, though legendary porn cocksmith Harry Reems turns up briefly as an airplane pilot and Hess' sister Judy cameos as Mrs. Ronsoni.The derivative script(think Prom Night over the Christmas holiday), was penned by Alex Rebar, the star of 1977's Incredible Melting Man.Like the impatient streetwalker says to the john fumbling with his button flys, "Let's make it, already!"
"I got your fuckin' smart phone...right here!"
The girls of Calvin Finishing School plan to spend their Christmas break getting laid, slipping their housemother a mickeyed milk and inviting a throng of fuck-starved males over for some decadent eighties-style partying, except, at this very house two years earlier, also over Christmas break, a young initiate lost her life during a hazing-gone-wrong doing a concrete swandive(in front of a lens gooped up with enough Vaseline to make Bob Guccione blush) off of a balcony to incidental disco synths.I just bet those gloved hands holding a knife and a framed picture of the dead chick are gonna be involved in an upcoming bloody plot of vengeance against the callous, superficial bitches responsible for her wrongful death.Cynthia breaks out her bobblers before getting knifed in the breadbasket when she goes out to meet her boyfriend, who'd joined the choir invisible himself just moments earlier, off-camera.That which might pass for dialogue if delivered by actual actors in another, better movie gets further diced into incoherence by an amateur editor.A gardener(Fast Ralph, mind you, not Crazy Ralph) who carries hedge shears professes his love for cherry pie and Nancy(Jennifer Runyon), too.A piper cub touches down in a day-for-night sequence bringing male victims who pull rank on the pilot(Harry Reems), forcing him to stay with the plane and miss out on the festivities.One jagoff croons an off-key tune while strumming an acoustic twanger and his nearsighted dork-pal spews medical inanities as a thick slut gets her throat slit by the refrigerator light from a Santa-suited psychopath.Fast Ralph warns Nancy to go to bed and lock her door, because "the devil's here"(I think he meant 'boredom').
"I wanna hold ya, 'til the fear in me subsiiiiiiiiiiiides!"
One of the jagoffs goes off on his own and gets himself smooshed by a huge Santa-powered boulder, while the nerd scores a piece of charity puss from Melody("That's one interesting tune", he later remarks) and the virginal Nancy sips milk while peep-tomming one of the copulating couples from outside their bedroom window.Santa jams an arrow through the back of the skull of one lad, mid-fuck, before chopping his lady's domepiece off directly afterwards.Bloop, bloop, bloop goes the head.Ralph pays Nancy a midnight bedroom visit, and, fearing for her safety, pitches her a bible.The next day brings a picnic in the grass featuring the surviving partiers, where Ralph turns up deceased with a bloody forehead.Sheriff Polansky(!) makes the scene, leaving two horny cops behind to watch over the doomed, talky kids.One inquisitive cop takes an axe to the skull.The nerd and the virgin form a search party and explore the shadows together.Then he tries boring her to death with his back story by the fireplace.Another moralistic lass named Leia dukes the remaining cop then finds her girlfriend's decapitated dome stuck on the shower head while her lover stumbles around with a Bowie knife jutting out of his back.Another sorry bastard gets an extra mouth from Santa for Christmas as his girl escapes in time to team up with the virgin/dork and discover the carnage upstairs in the bed and bath, bumping into Leia, who's in shock, pirouetting around in circles and humming incessantly.Santa shows up and reveals himself to be Mrs. Jackson(!!), the middle-aged mother of the dead girl from the...yeah, her.She purees Tricia and the pilot with the airplane propellor(cue:juicy sack of innards splashing the windshield) and after a suspenseless five minutes of cat n' mouse with Nancy in the shadows, manages to take a flopper off the exact same balcony that snuffed her daughter two years earlier.Her husband carries her broken body inside(note:he's also in a Santa suit), but gets crossbowed in the kidneys by Alex the nerd before he can take revenge for his wife and daughter.The wallflowers run off into the night, leaving Leia madly dancing on the balcony.
I'm always up for some head in the showers, but this is ridiculous.
I could tell Hess didn't hold tonight's entry very high on his lifetime accomplishment list when I brought the idea of covering Goodnight here at the Wop up to him, some two years or so ago, and he responded with: "Let's talk football tonight, Stefano.What do you think about Milan's chances this season?"Let it be known that Orgasma, my naked porcelain water pipe/sweetheart had to be packed and repacked multiple times to offset the migraine headache I was getting from straining my eyes to see the action that may or may not have transpired in front of Hess' lens tonight.As therapeutic as my medication sessions usually are, they didn't change my outlook on this one all that much.Dreadfully standard in approach, execution, and angle, the one saving grace for Hess completists is the tell-tale David-esque dialogue, probably his own script re-writes, that comes out of the characters throughout the picture.Even Shostrom's effects work is marred by shitty lighting and dull axe-edits.On the scale, Goodnight finds a single Wop under it's Christmas tree, a boring cinematic coal lump.
"They say you always remember your first time, and you will remember Santa, won't you!"
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