Brutal Efficiency: To All A Goodnight (1980)
My dearest readers, one cannot deny that the holidays are most unavoidably upon us. Painful though it may be, it is time for me to concede that the pumpkins on our porch sailed past ripeness some time ago and that we must clear our multitude of tributes to Samhain to make way for the coming of Krampus. I hope that the brief respite that children have been provided between holiday monsters has been pleasant.
Romance abounds
To fully embrace this shift in the seasons, I decided to take in a viewing of David Hess’ Christmas-themed contribution to the genre that launched his acting career. To All a Goodnight features a group of young ladies lounging about their collegiate abode for the holidays in the hopes of entertaining a gentleman or two. Their liaisons are breezy and their choices of romantic partners range from milk-sipping virgins to on-duty police officers. In some instances, their indiscriminate coupling truly seems to embrace the spirit of giving.
Yet all their holiday reverie is rudely interrupted by a faceless killer who dons Saint Nicholas’ signature accoutrement (a bold new direction for Christmas slashers, similarly adopted in Christmas Evil the very same year). The girls themselves are a bit interchangeable and many of their deaths are emotionally unremarkable. There are, however, some thriving personalities among the adult side characters, which include a slow witted- gardener who wanders around the house interior with a pair of shears at groin level and a sassy property owner who has simply seen it all.
Streamlined and prescient
Anyone familiar with The Last House on the Left (1972) knows that it is a film that relishes in innards. And so it is strange to see that Mr. Hess, the man who presided over many of that film’s most disturbing scenes, puts on such a bloodless display while behind the camera. For the most part, the violence in To All a Goodnight is mild and brief. While lacking in the sort of gut groping brutality that defined his on-screen debut, To All A Goodnight is absolutely ruthless in its visual efficiency. A single static shot features gloved hands, a knife, a list of potential victims and a framed photo of a girl who died during a miscalculated collegiate prank. In but a few brief seconds on screen, Mr. Hess has summarized not only his own narrative but those of countless slashers to come in the following decade.
It is an impressive moment of graphic clarity for a man whose directorial contributions were limited to a single effort.
To All a Goodnight runs 87 minutes and is rated R.
