At this exclusive finishing school in Southern California a couple of years ago there was a terrible tragedy when one of the students was chased through the residence only to mistake the fun for a threat and all her classmates were horrified to watch her take a tumble from a balcony to expire on the paving below. The incident was settled, but what if someone is not so pleased that it was regarded not as deliberate and therefore no one was punished? What if that someone wishes to perform a few acts of punishment themselves? Which takes us to the present day and the Christmas holidays have arrived, with most of the girls returning home to their families for the vacation, though a handful are staying put. Big mistake...
There are three reasons the Yuletide-themed slasher flick To All a Goodnight captured the attention in a morass of similar - though not necessarily seasonal - shockers, and two of them were behind the camera. First, the producer and screenwriter was The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar, having gotten over being shovelled up at the end of that movie and making moves to create independent projects himself. Second, the director for his only time at the helm was Krug himself, David Hess, who will forever be the man who penned You'd Better Come Home Speedy Gonzales for Pat Boone. Or perhaps the man who raped and murdered his way through Wes Craven's notorious drive-in nasty Last House on the Left.
The third reason was the leading lady, also making her debut though in this case she had never worked in film before. She was Jennifer Runyon, a starlet of the nineteen-eighties who as with many of her ilk won a small but loyal following for her choices of projects, specifically the horrors and comedies though she had range enough to fill a variety of roles until retiring to raise a family with Roger Corman's nephew. Combine those three talents with a bunch of other actors who more often than not barely appeared in anything else ever again, and you had... well, you had a movie that stuck to the template of any number of slasher movies which arrived in the wake of Halloween, or perhaps more importantly Friday the 13th which this followed a shade too faithfully.
Not to worry, most fans didn't watch these to see any major innovations, so the more familiar the better, though conversely if there was a quirk here then that was acceptable as well. Although set at Christmas, it was also shot in a region of California where snow was not simply thin on the ground, it was non-existent, which left Hess with a festive frightener relying heavily on the killer in a Santa Claus suit, although even then they additionally donned a suit of armour which must have taken ages to get into, not to mention be noisy enough to attract the attention of everyone in the house. But didn't. Anyway, stick up a few fairy lights and a tinsel-festooned pine tree and that was about your lot for holiday cheer, notably less seasonal than the daddy of this subgenre, Black Christmas.
Everyone concerned seemed to think they were onto a winner, believing their's was the first chiller to feature a murderous St. Nicholas, not realising the Brits had beaten them to it with a segment of Amicus portmanteau horror Tales from the Crypt. In that case, it was Joan Collins who bore the brunt of psycho Santa's attentions, but here we had the now traditional selection of young folks (and slightly older folks) lined up to try and avoid a variety of death-dealing instruments sharp and blunt alike. The girls persuade a group of boys to head over on a plane piloted by porn star Harry Reems (who proceeds to presumably spend three days on his own waiting for them to get back) and join them for - well, it's not mince pies and mulled wine, so there was a degree of nudity, though Miss Runyon was playing our wholesome final girl and therefore remained fully clothed throughout. This built up to a double twist that still didn't make a massive amount of sense, but the fun of these was often how daft they could get, and it was a stony heart who didn't join in with their own comments.
