GIRLS NITE OUT (1982)

GIRLS NITE OUT (1982)

Tagline: The next time you go to a Fancy Dress Party....check who's going with you.

(Horror, Mystery, Thriller) [R]

Note: This movie also came out under the name “Scaremaker”. Both titles are as misleading as a Golden Corral ad. Like some other slasher films of the 80’s none of the girls in the posters or promotional material actually appear in the film. 

In this one at Dewitt University, there is a massive party after the basketball team’s victory. After a jealous boyfriend storms out of the party, there is a lot of suspicion on him as the body count rises during a University-wide scavenger hunt. It’s not very often you get a slasher in a bear suit, but who is it, and why are they taking it out on the students?

First off, if you can get through the opening scene with crazy weird and annoying music you will be treated to insanely bad acting, bad dialog, a crappy soundtrack, a mediocre score, and one of the longest most boring party scenes since KILLER PINATA. While this movie does have some pretty funny lines here and there I found the vast majority of the characters bizarrely annoying. 

Acting-wise this thing is rough as heck, but we do actually get some good acting from a few members of the cast. Jim MacVey played by the legendary Hal Holbrook (best known for CREEPSHOW) is very solid in this. He turns out to be one of the main actors, but only has interaction with the cast in the very last scene of the movie. Sheila is played by Lauren-Marie Taylor of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2 fame and is decent in this but had a much better “more likable” role in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. In this, she is hardly on screen and is far more annoying. For fans of hers, by the way, she was also in a FRIDAY THE 13TH fan film called FRIDAY THE 13TH: NINE LIVES filmed in 2020. The movie is on streaming services, but I haven’t watched it. I have no idea if there are any cats in it. Carrick Glenn gets a little screen time, she is best known for THE BURNING. Finally, we’ve got Julia Montgomery who plays Lynn. While Montgomery is a pretty big actress now, her role in this is pretty rough. I will also say that Lois Robbins who plays Leslie seemed like she knew what the heck she was doing. 

The lighting is okay throughout and the dark scenes are actually fine. I watched a really crappy copy and the visuals were still pretty solid. If this movie succeeds on any level it’s having the guts to cast a bear-suited slasher. I kind of thought that was awesome even though the bear for some reason has a goofy lady's wig on? Bloody hell? 

The ending of this film is very SLEEPAWAY CAMP-ish, but it’s not the same. Just know there is a very hard-to-understand twist that seems to make zero sense given the rest of the story and the dialog on one of Jim MacVey’s phone calls. I guess you can string this all together with some really convoluted explanation but for me, a few script fixes could have made this ending more of a “buyable” shocker than what we got. 

Overall improvements in the script and acting could have put this thing at a 4 or 5, but instead, we got a half-hearted 3 out of 7. For your Halloween-o-thon, adding this would be “just okay”. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CONCEPTS UNLIMITED AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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