6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, Santa Claus is stirring, and he's not bringing gifts. Five young female boarders at the Calvin Finishing School have set their sights on a festive Christmas holiday romp. They have just drugged their housemother and smuggled their boyfriends into the house. But their fun-filled promiscuous frolic will soon turn into a blood-soaked nightmare when a sadistic maniac dressed as Santa Claus arrives to deliver some holiday cheer, or maybe that's FEAR. The insane Santa Claus starts slashing his way through the house, and the gory body count begins. So you better watch out, as this Santa knows if you ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!
Starring: Jennifer Runyon, Kiva Lawrence, West Buchanan, Sam Shamshak, Harry ReemsHorror | 100% |
Mystery | 8% |
Holiday | 1% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 1.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
David Hess lived a colorful life, working through music and movie worlds, enjoying a few near-misses during his career before achieving cult success with his starring turn as Krug in Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left.” Capable of communicating menace and managing no-budget demands in front of the camera, Hess was less successful behind the camera. 1980’s “To All a Goodnight” was his directorial debut, picking a cheapy slasher production to kick off his helming career, and while his history with the genre certainly aided the work, general filmmaking ineptitude ruins the fun at every turn of the feature. Painfully amateurish, tone-deaf, and screwy all-around, “To All a Goodnight” represents the lazier side of horror, where the people in charge stopped at the concept, not the execution, leaving behind a dull, doofy effort that’s full of mistakes and fails to chill.
The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) presentation revives a largely forgotten slasher effort for HD, submitting source material that's in surprisingly decent shape, only showing some mild speckling. Colors are appropriately refreshed and secure, allowing for seasonal lighting to make its intended impression, along with Santa's red costume. Skintones are natural, keeping pinkish. Grain is heavy throughout but never unwieldy, bringing out the feature's low-budget look. Detail is acceptable for this level of soft cinematography, providing a look at facial particulars and textures on costuming. Blacks aren't inherently strong to begin with, but delineation remains.
The 2.0 DTS-HD MA sound mix provides a comfortable listening experience for a picture that's limited in sonic scope. Dialogue exchanges are crisp but thin, hitting a few tinny highs as emotions are purged during the nightmare. Scoring contributions are comfortable, braided satisfactorily with dramatic efforts, adding appropriate mood with a heavier synth throb. Atmospherics are mild but welcome. If anything, the track manages to identify many of the mistakes made by the actors and crew, offering encouraging clarity.
There are strange details sprinkled around the film, including a cameo by porn star Harry Reems (billed as "Dan Stryker") as an airplane pilot. The reveal of the killer is also a bizarre choice that isn't entirely thought through, going more for shock value instead of logic. "To All a Goodnight" isn't even valuable as an offering of B-movie mockery, with the pace too slow and the characters too dim to have much fun pantsing it, leaving the final product a miserable mess frequently caught with its shoelaces tied together.
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