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This is the tale of The Movie Franchise That Ought To Have Been, as far as early 80's icons Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are concerned. Had Tom DeSimone's Hell Night taken off the way it clearly deserved, then Andrew Garth might have been afforded the anti-celebrity status afforded to other slasher figures.
The big surprise is that it isn't. Instead, Hell Night is a consistently engaging little stalker-slasher with likable characters, apt direction, grisly tableau and wonderfully creepy music. There's even a twist to the Garth legend which heroine Marty (Linda Blair of The Exorcist fame) discovers near the end. With a supporting cast that includes Vincent Van Patten and Peter Barton, the performances are competent, and the pacing is admirably tight.
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The setting is Garth Manor, a long-closed and locked up mansion guarded by an iron fence and a legend of what lies within. The predicament here is that the Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity is initiating two new pledges, as is an accompanying sorority, in sort of a co-ed hazing scenario. The task is, spend a night within the walls of this haunted estate. And let's not forget that Garth Manor is haunted; years before, the patriarch murdered his family and then killed himself, leaving his dangerously-unbalanced son Andrew alive to live alone in this dungeon-like fortress, but of course that story's got to be a bunch of "BS." And for a Greek initiation, spending a night here is not a bad deal; certainly better than drinking kerosene, having your ass beaten raw with a pledge paddle or being required to make love to a farm animal.
One small problem, though: the legend actually turns out to be true. Once the four pledges are locked inside the estate, the two guys pair off with the two girls while the initial, innocuous fun starts. The wise-assed Alpha Sigma Rho president Peter Bennett (Kevin Brophy) has a gaggle of mechanized pranks set up throughout the compound, designed to terrorize the pledges during the night. And they're briefly effective before Andrew Garth shows up and dispatches him and his accomplices. Then the villain's attention turns to pledges, who will eventually be rendered helpless. This is likely sounding fairly mundane and paint-by-numbers at this point.
Why didn't this 1981 winner catch on and sequelize? The answer is simple: the story is resolved here with no room for any follow-up. And purists would say that's for the best. I can't say that I really disagree. But had a Hell Night franchise been spawned, it would likely have given Michael, Jason and even Freddy a run for the money.