A 1982 slasher movie that I didn’t have high expectations for, Girls Nite Out ended up being surprisingly enjoyable, despite not having any truly memorable set-pieces.
It’s a classic set-up, with the earliest scenes showing us a killer committing suicide. The two men responsible for digging his grave are killed by someone we don’t see. Is the killer less dead than anyone realised, or is there someone else with motivation to replicate his killing ways? This dark turn of events coincides with a scavenger hunt taking place throughout a local college campus, with plenty of young men and women heading away on their own, or in pairs, to potentially be picked off by a killer, who also manages to get their hands on a team mascot costume.
Seeing the artwork and imagery from this, you would be forgiven for thinking that this is a horror comedy. It isn’t, which is a slight disappointment, despite the enjoyable ridiculous killer “outfit”. All you have here is a very standard, unremarkable, slasher movie that only stands out in one way, a soundtrack surprisingly filled with some great pop tracks from yesteryear (“Summer In The City” being an eternal favourite of mine).
Director Robert Deubel doesn’t really have anything else of note in his filmography, there’s a TV movie and some shorts/episodic entertainment, so he seems to have been one of the many people who decided they could jump in on the slasher movie craze and make a winner. Despite the attempts of the four people who worked on this script (FOUR!!!!!), this is no winner.
It’s no failure either, somehow managing to be consistently entertaining enough throughout without an abundance of gratuitous nudity or decent gore. The pacing seems to be the biggest positive, although it does, like so many slashers, have that slight lull between the halfway point and the third act, after everyone has been introduced and a couple of kills have occurred but before the bodies start to pile up in time for the big finale.
The cast are fairly forgettable, with Hal Holbrook being the main “name” that genre fans will be happy to see. He is the local cop, and his character has a history tied to the killer (of course), but he’s not as involved with the main storyline as I would have liked, I am guessing for scheduling and budgetary reasons. Rutanya Alda, Suzanne Barnes, and Julie Montgomery are three of the main actresses featured, and James Carroll and David (son of Hal) Holbrook are two of the actors worth mentioning. Is anybody onscreen doing great work? Not really, but they’re doing okay with what they’re given, for the most part.
Here’s the thing, and it is arguably more important than my final numerical rating. I would watch this again, no problem. It has something, a certain likability, that allows it to edge ahead of so many other slasher movies from this time. That doesn’t mean the movie deserves to be nestled closer to the BIG names in this subgenre, but it is something I don’t often say about lesser slasher movies I watch for my own sense of attempted completism.
Will anyone else feel the same way? I don’t know, but I certainly recommend giving this one a watch anyway. Especially if you’re a fan of The Lovin’ Spoonful.
6/10
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