Girls Nite Out (1982)

We open at night in the Winston Hill Sanitarium for the Very, Very Nervous, where we spy a solitary nurse deeply involved in a paperback until her station phone rings. Now, when she answers to a silent line, the soundtrack clues us in that something sinister is afoot as the woman hangs up (-- well, that, or the organist got their finger stuck between two keys).

Then! When the phone rings again, this time it’s Dickie Kavanaugh’s room extension and -- Waitaminute. The criminally insane are given their own phones? Really? No. Really. Anyhoo, all the nurse hears over the line is some obscene breathing. But this proves enough to warrant further investigation and a bed check.

Upon entering the patient's room, the nurse finds it seemingly empty; but after several suspenseful turns, she opens the bathroom door just in time to see Kavanaugh jump off the toilet and hang himself. Whoa! And as the body violently spasms, the witness screams and then (presumably) runs for help. (Editor's note: We never see Kavanaugh’s face during this whole incident, which will prove significant as things unfold.)

Next, we abruptly switch locales to the gym at Dewitt College, where the Dewitt Bears men’s basketball team is on the verge of making the conference championship game. Down by one, with the ball, and only a few seconds left on the clock, the Dewitt coach calls for a timeout. Here, he immediately latches onto his star player, Pete "The Maniac" Kriesniac (McChesney), and rips into him, screaming to get his head in the game before it’s too late. He then calls the play, breaks the huddle, and sends his team back onto the court.

But before the whistle blows to resume play, Maniac’s best friend, Teddy Ratliff (Carrol), also gets in his face and begs him to stop moping and forget about Leslie for just seven seconds so they can win the damned game. Later, we will discover that this ‘Leslie’ is Leslie Peterson, Maniac’s newly minted ex-girlfriend, who just dumped him after a two-year relationship. For the record, this wasn’t his idea.

With that final pep-talk, as their cheerleaders get the home crowd warped into a frenzy and the Dewitt Bear mascot molests the opposing pep squad, the ball is put in play. Here, Teddy makes a perfect assist to Maniac, who sinks the winning basket just as time expires.

Pure bedlam ensues as the crowd storms the court, with hi-fives all around. On the sidelines, a jubilant Charlie Kaiser (Mints), the campus radio station’s head guru and the Bear’s play-by-play announcer, reminds everyone over the airwaves about the big Gamma Sorority Masquerade Party, set to follow the game that night, and the notorious All-Night Scavenger Hunt, an annual, all-campus event hosted by the WDBX station, which is set to commence the following evening.

In the locker room, as the team celebrates a victory, Benson (Dunn) sheds the mascot costume -- a dopey looking bear suit topped off with a blonde wig, googly eyes, and an exposed tongue wagging in the breeze -- and immediately starts putting the screws to the surly Mike Pryor (Holbrook).

But when this innocuous needling almost comes to blows, we quickly unravel all this animosity when we switch to the girl’s locker room, where, as the cheerleaders change clothes, Sheila Robinson (Taylor) confides in Lynn Connors (Montgomery) about how she’s been seeing Benson behind Surly Mike’s back. 

And in between bragging-up the *ahem* length of Benson’s sexual prowess, Sheila announces her plans to break up with Surly Mike as soon as she gets up enough courage, meaning we ain't calling him Surly Mike for nothing, folks.

Later, Lynne meets up with her boyfriend, Teddy, who’s hanging with Maniac outside the gym. This trio then runs into Dancer and Hagen (Christie, Salata), our comedy relief for the next hour and a half, who break out their shtick that will probably send the majority of audiences scrambling for their remotes or the nearest exit, depending on the venue. 

For those who stuck around, we also find the answer to this: When does comedy relief go from odious to malignant? When it’s done with a bad French accent. That’s when!

Thus, when Teddy asks these two morons if they're going to the Gamma party later, we, as the audience, can only hope they say no. But! Alas, Dancer and Hagen say they wouldn’t miss it, even for a chance to sniff Jerry Lewis’s jock-strap -- even though it pales, they say, when compared to the pending All-Night Scavenger Hunt.

Next, we cut away to a drunken man, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, digging a hole. A van pulls up, and the digger pauses to yell at the driver for being late before taking a massive plot dump: it seems the drunk and the driver are both gravediggers, and the current hole is for [quote/] that nut [/unquote] Kavanaugh.

You see, many years ago, Kavanaugh was a student at Dewitt, too, who apparently went nuts and brutally murdered his girlfriend, who just happened to be the daughter of the campus security chief. Thus, no one will miss this homicidal creep except for his (unidentified) sister, who apparently paid for this hasty burial. (A little sketchy on the elapsed time, here, movie.) And so, with all that out of the way, after unceremoniously dragging the bagged-up corpse out of the van sans coffin and roughly dumping it on the ground, the driver grabs a shovel to help dig to get this over with as fast as humanly possible. (Too late.)

But unbeknownst to either man, another figure has been watching from the shadows this whole time, who suddenly springs from the darkness, takes up another shovel, and then proceeds to pummel the other two men into a bloody pulp before pushing their lifeless bodies into the open grave. And once they’re buried, the unknown assailant steals their van. But once it pulls away, we track over to where Kavanaugh’s body should be, only to see an empty body bag.

Thus and so, basically, everyone we've met so far is either jilted or cheating on someone, we have a mad killer on the loose, a missing body, and a campus wide scavenger hunt pending, where plenty of potential victims will go poking into the darkest recesses of the college grounds in search of clues. Alone. Eee’yup. Smells like a guaranteed bloodbath to me, too...

You know, I really enjoyed the movie Scream (1996) when it first hit. Loved it, even. A rare instance where I watched the movie at the old Rivoli theater, then turned around and bought another ticket for the very next showing so I could watch it again immediately. I don’t know, Kevin Williamson’s loving homage-of-a-script to old Slasher movies and Craven’s masterful direction, riding the line between self-aware and self-parody, just pushed all the right nostalgia buttons for me.

Too young when the Stalk 'n' Slasher films first hit big in the late 1970s and then exploded in the early '80s, being the little horror-movie-phile that I was, egged on by the creepy yet tantalizing radio and TV-spots, I constantly pestered my older siblings for detailed plot accounts of the murder and mayhem in the films they'd managed to see, like Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and Happy Birthday to Me (1981). And then I finally saw one: somehow, Prom Night (1980) aired on NBC less than seven months after it opened theatrically, and it was all we talked about at school the next day -- and the day after that. Clearly, I was hooked.

The Grand Island Independent (June, 1980).

I also clearly remember when my entire 5th and 6th grade class -- all eleven of us from good old Holstein Public -- got invited to a birthday party, where the birthday boy's folks had one of those new fangled RCA laser disc players -- the old style, where the disc was as big as an old LP record that you had to flip to see the whole movie -- and had rented for us Star Wars (1977), Enter the Dragon (1973), and Friday the 13th.

Since I had already committed the plot and murders at Crystal Lake to memory (-- thanks, sis!), I spent the entire movie warning those with sensitive stomachs to turn away at the strategic moments. However, I refrained from revealing that final jump-scare -- and my god, that room exploded when the swampy effigy jumped out of the water!!!

As with all genres, the Stalk 'n' Slasher had its golden age before repetition and falling into formula eventually killed it off. Alas, by the time I was old enough to see these in the theater, the genre, for all intents and purposes, was as dead as its last victim.

Salvation came with home video and I went through a long phase of renting any movie that was even remotely related to the genre that I missed -- from The Unseen (1980) to Silent Madness (1984) to The Night Brings Charlie (1990). But any devotee of the Stalk 'n' Slashers could see the decline in quality as early as 1983, as everyone tried to cash in, production values went down, budgets shrank, and, at some point, it became more about the killing itself -- and finding newer and more inventive ways to off someone, than the reasons behind the killer's psychosis. 

Who cares what the motive was. Nine times out of ten, we were now rooting for the killer anyway as the loose conglomeration of people gathered, as written, tended to get on one's last nerve to somehow give the filmmakers an ersatz moral high ground as they were flayed apart. And there was also another not so subtle change concerning the victims.

Most people forget that when the genre began, the killers were equal opportunity assassins and just as many men were killed in these things as women. But for some reason, people only seem to remember the girls being stalked and slashed -- reinforced by critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who took these films behind the woodshed over their perceived misogyny and misanthropic ideals. And more often than not, whether they really were or not, they remember those female victims being topless.

But it wasn’t the killings, or boobs (-- I had my brother’s porn stash for that), which fascinated me; sure, they were morbidly gruesome, but I was more interested in the warped motives, the bodies piling up everywhere, and, of course, sussing out suspects with all the false leads and red herrings. I always looked forward to the end, when the killer would reveal themselves and spill how they did it and spew why they did it. In the end, these motives seldom made sense, and it was always impossible how they pulled it off, but, again, I usually didn’t care. And the occasion where you actually pegged the killer? [/Chef’sKiss/]. Thus, I've always preferred the Whodunits over the Howtheydunits.

Alas, this formula eventually became predictable, then cliché, and the films stopped being suspenseful or scary and became outright laughable. I’ll admit, I was laughing right along with you all, gawking at the naked boobies and reveling in the gore. But I was yearning for the days of intricate plots, red herrings, and not so obvious killers and truly surprising revelations.

And then along came Scream, and, for a brief, glorious moment, I was eleven again and very happy. I say brief because the Stalk 'n' Slasher movie went through the same cycle and decline of quality as it did before -- only a lot faster this time, beginning almost immediately with the nigh incomprehensible I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) before devolving into the realm of Torture Porn with the likes of Saw (2004) and Hostile (2005), which I had little patience for. But as much as I loved Scream, I’m honestly pretty indifferent to the franchise it spawned. I’ve seen ‘em all, sure, but unlike its originator, couldn’t tell you what happened in any of its progeny or who the killer wound up being in any of them.

Now, by the time the grammatically challenged Girls Nite Out (alias The Scaremaker, 1983) hit theaters, the “rules” of the genre were already pretty much in full rigor mortis, which fans were already well aware of long before Scream finally codified them -- in fact, Evil Laugh (1986) kinda beat Williamson to the self-aware punch by nearly a decade. And while Girls Nite Out does effort to color outside those lines a bit, the results were … well, let's dig a little further before passing judgment. Shall we? Okay.

While growing up in Columbus, Ohio, longtime friends Tony Gurvis and Kevin Kurgis had a predilection for horror movies and would haunt local cinemas together and watch countless scary movies on TV. And as they watched, an idea of getting into show business took root early as they both agreed, with a lot of those films -- especially the cheap horror films, hell, even they could probably make something better than THAT.

“All my life I’ve been interested in [show business],” Kurgis told Mike Hughes (The Lansing State Journal, October 8, 1983). “I’m a TV-child, I guess.”

Kevin "I Don't Get Paid Unless You Get Paid" Kurgis (circa 2021).

And while they would attend separate colleges -- Kurgis went to Cooley Law School at Western Michigan, and Gurvis the University of Miami, Florida -- both would earn law degrees and would start a firm together back in Columbus, specializing in personal injury and foreclosures, but the itch to make a movie was still there. In fact, it was escalating.

According to Kurgis, throughout their college years, he and Gurvis hammered out several scripts together. There was an abortive first attempt at turning one of them into a feature that both are hesitant to talk about -- Kurgis claims he couldn’t even remember the name of the director they hired, which was sort of a clue as to how far the production actually got before things fell apart.

The Grand Island Independent (February, 1979). 

Then in 1978, two films hit, and hit big. First was Halloween (1978), a low-budget Horror film that reinvigorated the genre and, along with Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), gave birth to the Stalk ‘n’ Slasher movie, which was about to germinate with the release of Friday the 13th in 1980. And the second was National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), a big studio Boner-Comedy blockbuster that helped redefine a genre. And it was here where Kurgis and Gurvis got the notion to combine them into something called Blood Games.

Said Hughes, “They decided to set it on a campus, so it could be full of pretty faces and strange practical jokes. There would be a scavenger hunt, with a mysterious killer lurking about.” Added Kurgis, “It’s basically a fun night. Of course, there is some killing. There has to be some murders,” because that was an easy sell to potential distributors at the time.

Kurgis and Gurvis would co-write the script for Blood Games with Joe Bolster and Gil Spencer, who were attending nearby Denison University in Granville, Ohio. And since the film took place on a college campus, the attorneys first took their script to Denison’s professor of cinema, R. Elliot Stout. This was around March of 1980.

The goal was to win Stout over first, and then, with his help, secure permission to shoot at Denison over the upcoming summer break. Stout got on board quick, and while the campus administrators were a little apprehensive over all the sex, boozing, and violence in the script, they agreed to let them film there under two conditions: no full-frontal nudity, and they had to falsify the school and make no reference to it being good old Dennison U.

Thus, Denison became Dewitt College; and perhaps to ingratiate themselves even further, the lurid title on the proposed film was changed from Blood Games to the more palatable The Last Clue. And while Kurgis and Gurvis would serve as producers and handle the majority of the financing, saving thousands of dollars in legal fees by handling it themselves, they struck a deal with Concepts Unlimited to handle the production side of the film and make it a reality.

Concepts Unlimited was a commercial operation that was founded in 1964, which developed industrial shorts and multimedia ad campaigns for the likes of General Foods (Grape Nuts, Kool-Aid, Oscar-Mayer Hot Dogs) and Olivetti-Underwood typewriters. The company would expand their horizons a bit with the release of Rodeo (1969), a short documentary produced by Gaby Monet, who was one of the co-founders of Concepts Unlimited along with Richard Barclay.

Shot in four days during the 1968 National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City, the lyrical short was directed by Carroll Ballard. Ballard would cede the director’s chair to Robert Deubel but would serve as the cinematographer on their follow-up, Norman Rockwell's World ... An American Dream (1972), an autobiographical look at the beloved painter, which would win the Academy Award in 1973 for Best Live Action Short Subject. The same crew would also earn three Emmy Awards for their efforts on The American Woman: Portraits of Courage (1976).

Next, the plan was to expand that Rockwell documentary into a feature length movie called A Christmas Story, whose general conceit was to showcase several vignettes that would bring Rockwell’s most famous holiday paintings to life on screen. The project picked up some juice when the artist sadly passed away in 1978, which made it a perfect vehicle to commemorate his life and work, allowing them to strike a deal for a two-hour Made for TV-movie.

Rockwell's "Tired Salesgirl on Christmas Eve" (1947).

And the project was well into pre-production in January, 1979, shooting exteriors around Rockwell’s hometown of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, when they suddenly lost favor with the town fathers, who withdrew permission to shoot there. Said John Beacco Jr., chairman of the town’s Board of Selectmen (The Elmira Star-Gazette, January 11, 1979), “The only way to preserve Stockbridge’s bucolic flavor and pristine environment is to keep away filmmakers and others who seek to gain commercially at the expense of the town.”

The film was canceled outright shortly thereafter. But Monet, Barclay, Deubel and Concepts Unlimited would quickly regroup (-- by then, Ballard was long gone, shooting second unit on Star Wars). They just changed holidays and patched together another TV-Special, The Halloween that Almost Wasn’t (1979).

Here, upset by rumors that Halloween may be canceled because the wicked Witch (Mariette Hartley) refuses to fly over the moon to officially kick-off the holiday, Dracula (Judd Hirsch) summons all the sad-sack monsters (John Schuck as the Frankenstein’s monster, Henry Gibson as Igor) to his castle, where he tries to convince them and the Witch, who’s tired of the same old routine, to get their acts together and start scaring people again. Luckily, everything gets resolved in a disco dance-off because the 1970s and Halloween is saved.

The Halloween that Almost Wasn’t wasn’t … very good, especially if you’re not into kitsch and don’t like borscht in your candy corn. Harmless, worth a watch, but not much else. However, its completion and broadcast meant Concepts Unlimited was now ready to take the next step and tackle a feature film, which brings us back to Kurgis and Gurvis.

But as things started to take shape, like with Stockbridge, someone at Denison with a lot of pull got cold feet and pressured the then college president, Robert Good, to withdraw permission to shoot there, much to the consternation of their film professor. 

According to Neal Stamp and Penny Riseborough (The Denisonian, February 26, 1982), “Stout said he anticipated some resistance on the basis of the “R” rating the film would receive and the general violent character of the movie.” But they worked through this and agreements had been made to pay the college $21,000 to room and board cast and crew, and an extensive insurance policy of $1-million against any damages accrued was also negotiated.

The Grand Island Independent (March, 1981). 

Production was set to begin at the start of August, 1980, and be finished before the fall semester started. But by the end of June, they were no longer welcome at Denison. “No one to my knowledge objected to the amount of violence in the film,” Stout told the campus newspaper. And how he was “distressed that Denison had lost the excitement of having a professional film shot [there].”

However, this might’ve been a blessing in disguise as the production uprooted from Ohio and moved to the New York City area, where Concepts Unlimited was based, which would save the production money in transportation and lodging and allowed for a wider net in casting. And they would eventually secure permission to shoot on the campuses of The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and at Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey.

The Grand Island Independent (June, 1980).

From there, once the cast was set, the cameras finally rolled. And they would continue rolling for the next 21-days with Deubel at the helm. Things went fairly smoothly, though there were a few onset clashes. Said Kurgis, “Deubel liked to improvise, but we couldn’t afford that.”

Kurgis and Gurvis had used their law background and family connections to raise the majority of the film’s budget from private investors. They would later admit that the film cost less than $1-million, but would never publicly admit to ‘how much less’ that actually was.

The Grand Island Independent (September, 1981).

And their reluctance to talk about the production over the ensuing forty years after its release will leave many mysteries about Girls Nite Out left unanswered. Like whose idea was it to make the killer a -- wait, we haven't really gotten to the killer in this thing yet, have we? Oh, man, just wait till you all see the killer in this thing. Trust me.

Until then, Fellow Programs, find yourselves a piece of paper and a pen, and then prepare to take studious notes to plug into a flow chart as things unfold from here. Again, trust me. You’ll need it to keep all the suspects, couples, and victims straight as we return to the Dewitt campus and our squishy whodunit of a Slasher film, where Lynn, Teddy and Maniac stop by the Student Union for some food after the big game. 

Here, Teddy places their order with the friendly Barney (Alda). And while we contemplate how Barney is kind of an odd name for a woman, she refuses to take his money, saying no charge; it’s on Jim MacVey (Holbrook), the campus security chief, whose daughter, you remember, was killed by Dickie Kavanaugh.

Now, the casting of Hal Holbrook was strategic two-fold. First, it added a solid name to the marquee to attract both investors and ticket buyers. Holbrook was a noted star of the stage, who had also starred in prestige films like The Great White Hope (1970), All the President’s Men (1976), where he played the eponymous “Deep Throat,” and Julia (1977); but he wasn’t above appearing in genre films, ranging from the under the influence Wild in the Streets (1968), to surviving in the backwoods while stalked by a mad killer in Rituals (1977), and opening the wrong crate in Creepshow (1982).

And secondly, Holbrook was a Denison alumnus, which they had hoped would help sway the college to let them film there, which worked up to a point. In fact, Kurgis and Gurvis first approached another famous member of the alumni for a role in the film: John Davidson, an actor, singer, and talk-show host -- and current co-host on That’s Incredible (1980-1984), who turned them down. Thus, they had to go with Plan B.

And as the legend goes, with nothing to lose, and with script in hand, they approached / ambushed Holbrook backstage at the Mershon Auditorium (Columbus, Ohio) after one of his performances of Mark Twain Tonight, his one man show on the life and times of Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain). This show was inspired by an honors course he’d taken on Clemens while at Denison, and Holbrook had been performing as Twain since 1954. It became a success on Broadway in 1966, and was revived in 1977.

Holbrook then took the show on the road, playing theaters and campuses around the country, which is how he serendipitous-ly wound up in Columbus for Kurgis and Gurvis to recruit. After a quick chat, they left the script and a phone number. And to their surprise, the actor called them back, saying, as they claimed, that “their script was light years ahead of The Fog (1980),” John Carpenter’s tale of vengeful pirate ghosts, which Holbrook had a part in as the repentant priest who knew the deadly secret of Antonio Bay.

It seems, as the legend continues, Holbrook was intrigued by the script but wasn’t sure where he would plug into it. No worries, said the duo, they would just overhaul the narrative and add a whole new character specifically written for him. Holbrook then agreed to give them three days of filming with one caveat: Holbrook wanted to get his son, David Holbrook, into the production, too.

According to Edwin Howard (The Memphis Press-Scimitar, December 1, 1982), “As an extra persuasion, Gurvis and Kurgis agreed to cast Holbrook’s son David in a small role, too. The young man had just reconciled with his father after leaving home 10-years before and riding the rails in the U.S. and Canada in the interim.” The younger Holbrook would play the role of Surly Mike Prior, who, from what we’ve seen thus far, is set up to be the main suspect or an obvious red herring. You be the judge!

Both Gurvis and Kurgis credited the early signing of Holbrook, which allowed them to raise the money to hire on Concepts Unlimited, as the main reason their movie ever got made. Said Kurgis, “Our big gamble was when we signed Holbrook first and didn’t have money to pay him yet.” But he also assured if all else failed, they would’ve paid him out of their own pockets for the time and effort.

Though Howard’s article claimed they hired Holbrook for three days of work, other sources claimed he was only around for one day to get all of his scenes completed. And honestly, even though he is in the movie quite a bit, and more than you’d think under the circumstances, I’m leaning toward the one and done. He literally phones-in 3/4ths of his performance on the phone.

Case in point, his first appearance is brief, sticking around long enough to acknowledge his presence before moving on. Then, from out of nowhere, Maniac is coaxed by Teddy into doing his Mrs. Bates impersonation for Lynn.

Hrrrrmmmnnn, you say. Reenacting the climactic reveal scene in Psycho (1960), where Lila Crane (Vera Miles) spins the chair and we realize Norman's mother is really a corpse, and that Norman (Anthony Perkins) was his homicidal mother's surrogate all along? Why, yes, Fellow Programs, that DOES qualify as ominous foreshadowing in this movie.

Later, Lynn changes into her costume for that masquerade party. Meanwhile, drunk already, Teddy and Maniac send her on alone but promise to catch up later. Thus, while making her way down a lonely path, the soundtrack (or finger) gets stuck in between the same two, dissonant piano keys again as a sentient POV-shot starts stalking Lynn!

But it's only Ralph (Didrichsen), the nerdy and repressed towel boy for the basketball team; and he just wanted to return a scarf Lynn had dropped. Together, they head into the party house and find things in full swing. Alas, Hagen and Dancer are there, too, playing strip poker with Jane (Summer) and Kathy (Glenn). When Teddy and Maniac finally show up, since Lynn seems to have disappeared in the interim, her alleged boyfriend starts hitting on anything with a skirt.

Meanwhile, Maniac spots Leslie (Robinson), tries to be friendly, in a 'hope for reconciliation' sense, but she only reinforces that it’s over between them, which frustrates him even further.

Back at the poker game, Hagen and Dancer are in the middle of telling a group of eager pledges about the legend of Dickie Kavanaugh. Seems our boy Kavanaugh was taken out into the woods for the Bear Ritual, a fraternity rite of passage (-- otherwise known as hazing). But when he came back from the woods, his mind stayed behind and he’s been loony-tunes ever since.

Here, in order to exposition the plot some more, one of the pledges calls bullshit on this version of the campus urban legend, saying, no, he heard what really happened was Kavanaugh got hung up on some cheerleader and, when she dumped him for some other guy, right in the middle of that year's Scavenger Hunt, the jilted lover killed her in a jealous rage.

Also of note, nerdy Ralph, feeling his beer, is currently on the dance floor, cupping a feel wherever he can, which nets him several rightful slaps to the face. (Hit him again!) And speaking of creeps, Teddy is putting the moves on Dawn Sorenson (Barnes) because Dawn’s actual boyfriend, Bud (Schultz), has passed out right next to her. But this doesn’t deter our boy Teddy, who will henceforth be referred to as Teddy the Creep.

Elsewhere in the party house, when Surly Mike catches Benson and Sheila making out, confirming his suspicions, he interrupts and the two make a scene after she tells him it's over between them. Here, Surly Mike really loses it, claiming that if he can’t have her no one will. And as his tantrum escalates, it brings the party to a screeching halt. Breaking the nervous silence, Surly Mike calls all the girls present "worthless whores," promises that he won’t forget this betrayal, and storms off.

With the party officially derailed by this buzz-killing melodrama, Lynn suddenly reappears and pulls Teddy the Creep off of Dawn, whom Teddy the Creep claims was just his cousin, and vacate the premises together.

And so, as the campus beds down for the night, at the radio station, groovy Charlie Kaiser signs off but reminds everyone to tune in tomorrow for the great Scavenger Hunt. Back at the dorms, after finishing his shower (-- a private shower in each dorm room? Wow, this is some ritzy college), there’s a persistent knock at Benson's door. When he opens it, he recognizes the visitor and smiles -- until he takes three knife blows to the chest.

And as Benson slumps to the floor, dead, the unseen killer gathers up the mascot costume and, in a raspy voice, says, "I need this more than you." That deed done, the killer then breaks into the empty radio station and copies the clues and answers for the big Scavenger Hunt.

Now, since we can all see where this is going, I think it's high time to check our notes / scorecard to get everyone up to speed on the myriad characters and suspects we’ve met so far to help us suss out who might be the killer:

Got all that? Great. Meanwhile, Lynn and Teddy the Creep are having a post-party talk in bed. Knowing full well that Dawn wasn’t his cousin, it seems Lynn’s “bend but don’t break” tolerance levels on her boyfriend’s wandering eye and philandering ways have finally reached their limits. To make it clear, Lynn isn't jealous over this behavior but insulted. 

Blaming it all on the booze, Teddy the Creep, true to type, apologizes and promises to try and do better. (Don’t feel bad. I don’t believe him either.) 

Suddenly, they hear something creeping around outside the window; but when Teddy the Creep goes out and investigates, he only finds a spring-loaded cat soundbite. (Honest! We never see the cat.)

The next morning, MacVey finds Surly Mike stewing on a park bench. Apparently, MacVey heard about the disturbance at the party last night, and what he said. And not wanting history to repeat itself, he confronts Surly Mike on what his intentions on those threats are. When Surly Mike, being his surly self, tells him to mind his own business, MacVey (-- wisely or unwisely --) complies.

Later, while Lynn is busy with Sheila, Leslie, Jane, Kathy and Trish (Pitts) at the library to strategize for the Scavenger Hunt, Teddy the Creep sets up a rendezvous with Dawn later that night since his girlfriend will be occupied elsewhere. 

Also preparing for the evening's festivities, the killer has taped together four serrated steak knives into a deadly claw that they attach to the mascot costume. (I guess one should note that this film did beat Freddy Krueger to the punch on a choice of weapons by almost two years.)

Sufficiently armed, the killer then dons the rest of the mascot costume, which hides their face as they swipe the deadly claw in mock attack in front of a mirror, who then sets out to do their dastardly deeds -- but not before checking themselves out one last time in front of that mirror first. (Although this scene appears to be missing from the new Arrow Video Blu-ray.) Thus, with those googly eyes and exposed tongue, I would like to officially nominate this choice of wardrobe as the Stupidest Looking Screen Killer of All Time. DEBATE ME!

Thus and so, with the stage set, Groovy Charlie Kaiser takes to the airwaves, announcing the start of the great All-Night Scavenger Hunt, where, over the next six-hours, his listeners must find 36-items hidden all over the campus. 

To accomplish this, Kaiser will give out six cryptic clues per hour for what to find and where to possibly find it, with the winner getting an all expenses paid trip to a Caribbean resort. But after giving out the first clue of the night, the DJ realizes that someone’s been tampering with his notes.

Meanwhile, the game is afoot and the chase is on. And after narrowing down that first clue to two possible places, Jane and Kathy split-up to save time. 

Here, Jane thinks the clue leads to the campus squash court -- turns out, she was right, and finds the first item there. But while bending over to pick it up, not realizing the Killer Bear has snuck up behind her until it's too late, Jane screams as the killer -- forgive me -- bear hugs her, calls her a slew of nasty names, and then uses the deadly claw to rip her throat out!

Next, the second clue leads the team of Sheila, Leslie, and Trish into the campus boiler room, where they find the second item. (And, hey, waitaminute? Where’d Lynn go?! AHA!) 

Back at the radio station, Kaiser takes a phone call from the killer, who claims in the same raspy voice that Jane was only the first to go and to guess who will be second before hanging up. Writing it off as a crank caller, the DJ just shrugs and broadcasts the next clue.

Meantime, as the Scavenger Hunt continues, Dancer and Hagen are in their room, smoking reefer and making up lewd clues to their own sex scavenger hunt; and judging by the thickness of the haze, they’ve been at this for a while (-- eliminating them as suspects). 

Elsewhere, as Dawn relaxes in her bubble bath, the soundtrack settles on that single dissonant note again while someone sneaks up the stairs toward her bathroom. Lucky for her, it’s only Teddy the Creep, and they don’t intend to spend the evening in the bathroom talking -- if you know what I mean. And as a wise man once said, ‘I think you do.’

Circling back, since it’s been more than twenty-minutes since they split-up and Jane still hasn’t come back yet, Kathy decides to go and look for her. Entering the sports complex, she doesn't find her missing friend at the squash court but does hear some water running in the locker room. This sound leads her to the showers, where Jane’s savaged corpse is strung up like an obscene marionette. 

Here, Kathy screams and tries to run away, but runs right into the Killer Bear, who drags the girl into the darkness and her inevitable doom!

Back at the radio station, Kaiser announces that he’s gotten a lot of phone calls complaining over how the clues are too hard but makes no apologies. When the killer phones again, announcing Kathy was second with another victim due, Kaiser decides it’s time to call campus security and reports these disturbing calls. 

After taking the report, MacVey says to keep him posted if he gets any more. Kaiser then gives the next clue that, once again, has two possible answers; it's either on the beach by the campus pond, or hanging from a beech tree.

Sussing this out, Sheila tells the other two girls to go check out the beech trees by the cemetery while she checks out the pond. Once there, she spots the Killer Bear but makes the fatal mistake of assuming this is Benson tucked inside the suit, explaining why she invites the killer into the boathouse for a “quickie.” But as the girl strips down, Sheila gets a little indignant when her lover stubbornly refuses to come inside the door -- when she really should’ve been watching for the window. 

Thus, before she can really lose her temper, the killer finally pounces, breaking through the glass behind her, calling Sheila a whore while savaging the girl’s throat with the claw-knives (-- pushing Surly Mike from suspect to prime suspect).

After this kill, whoever that is inside the costume circumnavigates Kaiser and calls MacVey directly, saying his daughter, Patty -- the one Dickie killed, remember? -- wasn’t a nice girl and deserved to die. When MacVey demands to know whom he’s speaking to, the killer says it’s obvious; he’s Dickie Kavanaugh!

Saying that’s impossible since he’s still locked up, the killer laughs and hangs up. With that, MacVey immediately calls the sanitarium, demanding to speak to whoever’s in charge. And as he rips into them for letting a dangerous lunatic like Kavanaugh escape to make threatening crank calls and who knows what else, the doctor finally interrupts him long enough to inform of Kavanaugh's recent suicide. So it couldn’t have been him.

Asked if he’s sure his daughter’s killer is dead, the doctor scoff's and guarantees it. In fact, Kavanaugh's sister already came and picked up the body to be buried. And this unknown sister, as we’ve already noted, who might turn out to be any of the girls still left alive -- and my money’s on freaky Trish -- nudges them all up the suspect list. But my money’s still on Surly Mike.

Meanwhile, Trish and Leslie find the latest item in the beech trees before tuning in for the next clue: something to do with “bats in the belfry.” Again, this riddle has two possible answers; either the baseball field or the attic of the college chapel. Splitting up, Trish heads for the diamond while Leslie heads toward the chapel, where she stumbles around in the dark until the lights mysteriously turn on. 

Here, she spots the Killer Bear, assumes it's Benson, too, and, well, turns out that legend about the size of Benson’s *ahem* ‘savage lance of manhood’ was so great that Leslie isn’t too alarmed when the raspy voice promises her a good time tonight. In fact, color her intrigued.

But her convictions quickly change as, in lieu of foreplay, the Killer presents the deadly claw, thrusting it right into the camera, which could’ve been a nice 3D effect -- in a Doctor Tongue sense (-- which will make a lot more sense if you’ve actually seen Doctor Tongue’s 3D House of Stewardesses), but the cameraman was having a little trouble just keeping everything in focus, here, as we cut away before Leslie can even scream. (And, hey. Anybody got eyes on Maniac?)

Elsewhere, after Teddy the Creep and Dawn finish doing the bonka-bonka-conka, they agree that it would be better, for both of them, if they just considered this bonka-bonka-conkaning a one-night stand and leave it at that. Then, as Teddy the Creep gathers his clothes and leaves, we can eliminate the both of them as suspects; and Lynn, too, as she walks into the chapel just as the Killer Bear runs out, leaving her unmolested for … reasons.

Now, when Lynn says “Hi” to "Benson" as the Killer bolts past, one has to ask this question: Did Benson spend a lot of time in that bear suit walking around campus or what?!

Back at the radio station, Kaiser gets another call from the killer, who says, “The twins are together again.” And are you thinking what I'm thinking? Yeah. Kavanaugh had a twin sister, pushing this unknown sibling up to our new Prime Suspect. Sorry, Surly Mike.

Now, when Lynn finds Leslie’s ravaged body, after a general freak out, she reports this to MacVey, who realizes all those calls weren’t a prank. He then phones the radio station and orders Kaiser to pull the plug on the Scavenger Hunt immediately, and to broadcast a general announcement to have everyone return to their rooms in a nice orderly fashion, for their own safety, as soon as possible: 

"Attention, students. Attention. There is a psycho-killer running loose on the campus. Do not panic. Repeat. Do not panic..."

When the police arrive and start taping-off and processing the crime scene at the chapel, word comes that more dead bodies are showing up all-over campus. This news so upsets the Dean that he turns the whole mess over to MacVey to sort out.

The following morning, the police begin interviewing suspects and possible witnesses. First up is Lynn, since she found the body. Saying the only reason she was in the chapel in the first place was because of the Scavenger Hunt, the girl then remembers running into Benson, who was coming out of the building right before she found what was left of Leslie. 

And so, as the detectives head off to find Benson, MacVey calls up Kaiser to hash over his brief conversations with the killer on the phone. But Kaiser can do that one better, saying he’s got them all on tape. MacVey gets a little indignant that this wasn’t brought to his attention sooner, but tamps it down and asks if he can have them as soon as possible.

Next, since one of the victims was his ex-girlfriend, when Maniac is interrogated we realize he was conspicuously absent the entire night. So do the cops. But Maniac swears he has an alibi, having spent the night at the Midtown motel with a prostitute. And last, but not least, is Surly Mike, who gets raked over the coals due to his vitriolic outburst at the party. He seems sincere with his denials; and frankly, he's just too obvious so we’re not going out on much of a limb by eliminating him as a suspect. And this suspect list gets even shorter still when word comes that they've found Benson's body.

In the meantime, Dawn’s boyfriend finds out about her tryst with Teddy the Creep and kicks her out of his house. Here, Dawn just can't believe that Bud would get so upset over her screwing another guy. I mean, all she did was have sex with someone else, in his bed, in his house! Geez! Have a cow.

Back at campus security HQ, MacVey plays the tapes while perusing through his daughter's diary and some old newspaper clippings about her murder, where he spies a picture of Kavanaugh -- and dang it, if he suddenly doesn’t remind him of someone else. And when the tape plays the last message, about the twins being back together, the quarter finally drops for MacVey. 

Grabbing a pen, he starts scribbling a long, curly hairdo onto the photo of Dickie. Then he stops short, remembering who the sister is -- Dickie's twin, Katie Kavanaugh -- and he’s just realized who that really is!

Now, at this point, there aren’t that many girls left alive and only one of them is old enough to be the killer's twin sister. So, it’s obvious who MacVey has pegged. I realized it, too, and frankly, I feel the movie is getting off rather cheaply with this ancillary character being the Killer all along and will call shenanigans on the whole flam-damned thing! 

So who is it? Well, we’re gonna find out as night falls and Dawn makes her way home. A twig snaps, some leaves rustle, and the girl slowly realizes she’s being followed. Running to the deserted Student Union, she finds a phone and calls Teddy the Creep, who is currently busy comforting Lynn in her hour of need over a frozen dinner. (Chicken, I think.) When he answers the phone, in between the frantic sobs, Teddy the Creep figures out the killer is after Dawn -- then the sobs abruptly stop, and a familiar raspy voice comes on the line and says, "If you want her, come and get her." 

Leaving the distraught Lynn behind, Teddy the Creep enters the darkened Student Union and makes his way to the cafeteria. (Have you figured it out yet?) He finds Dawn on the floor, wounded and bleeding, but still alive.  

But as he moves to help her, Dawn's warning that the killer is right behind him comes too late. For! From out of the darkness, Barney attacks him with a butcher knife and stabs him repeatedly.

Wait. Barney? Barney who? Come, now. You all remember Barney, right? The weirdly named lunch counter lady we met way, way, way back at the beginning of the movie? Yeah. Me neither. Like I said, SHENANIGANS!

Now, before she can deal the mortal blow, alerted by Lynn, MacVey shows up, who calls out to Barney, calling her Katie. With that, the Killer pauses. Here, MacVey presses fruther, tries to reason with her, but Katie isn’t really here right now.

Talking with Dickie’s voice -- think Norman / Norma Bates here, and it is kinda creepy -- Katie / Dickie confesses to killing his daughter and all the others because of their philandering ways. When MacVey keeps trying to convince her that Dickie is dead, Katie suddenly reasserts herself and scoffs that her brother isn’t dead.

In fact, she claims, "He's here." Katie then moves over to the walk-in freezer and opens it -- revealing the frozen corpse of her twin brother sitting in a chair. 

Slowly, the camera zooms in and we see the corpse is wearing the bear's deadly claw. And this slow zoom continues on the frozen face until the frame freezes for ... The End.

The exact time-frame for when Girls Nite Out was filmed is a bit fuzzy. The general consensus was it was shot over three weeks in early 1982, possibly over Spring Break. Other recollections put filming around Thanksgiving in late 1981. Whenever they filmed it, the trees were bare and it was very cold judging by the visible breath in nearly every outdoor scene, day or night. Either way, it wasn’t filmed over the summer, which forced the production to shoot mainly on the weekends and at night around the campus to get access and keep disruptions to a minimum.

On The Hysteria Continues podcast (E.57, April 21, 2013), they interviewed Rutanya Alda, who played the killer (-- and more on this plot twist in a second), and she claimed the whole film was shot in just three days. Now, my guess is that Alda, the second biggest name on the cast list, like Holbrook, was either only hired for three days of work to help keep costs down or she was brought in for the last three days of shooting to get all her scenes in the cafeteria over a long weekend.

Alda had appeared in one of my favorite Philip Marlowe adaptations, The Long Goodbye (1973), Brian De Palma’s other film about lethal telekinesis, The Fury (1978), and The Deer Hunter (1978), which kinda ran away with the 1979 Academy Awards. She had also appeared in the proto-Slashers When a Stranger Calls (1979) and Christmas Evil (1980). And the actor was also just coming off appearing in the controversial Mommie Dearest (1981) and Amityville II: The Possession (1982), giving her a bit of street-cred, horror film wise, and a 'good get' for the film.

In the interview, Alda claimed filming was going on around the clock in that three-day push she was involved in. One take, two at the most if you were lucky, and you tried to grab some sack time whenever and wherever possible in that whirlwind 72-hour period. Basically, you slept wherever you fell.

From the moment she was recruited, before she even got a chance to read the script, Alda knew she was playing the triptych killer, Barney / Sadie / Dickie. “Nobody ever thinks they’re a bad person,” said Alda. “Even the bad person doesn’t think they’re the bad guy or ‘I’m a bad person.’ They think they’re fine. Then they do these horrible things. That to me is interesting.” Thus, she played Sadie very sincerely, with the goal to make things “right” in her mind. Though I’m not sure how she was supposed to pull this off given the amount of screen time for the character. No. The time spent in the Bear costume does NOT count. That wasn’t even her!

To her credit, Alda leaves quite the impression during the climax, her third appearance in the whole film, which pushed her total screen time to about, oh, five minutes. Her confrontation with Holbrook works, and the final reveal of Dickie’s frozen corpse is genuinely creepy. “That was the only thing that wasn’t done that three-day weekend,” said Alda, who doubled for her “twin brother” in the freezer. “That was done later because they had to have the wig and special makeup done. Everything else was that first weekend.”

Alda’s husband and fellow actor, Richard Bright, also shows up in the film as Detective Greenspan. Also, somewhat sadly, Alda claimed she was never paid for her work and was still owed $5,000. But she didn’t have a contract, and agreed to show up for the flat fee. She doesn’t comment on whether they agreed upon a deferral with payment coming later from the profits of the film’s eventual release, but that’s a whole ‘nother horror story altogether.

See, when the slap ’n’ dashed film was finally completed, the production turned to Sam Sherman and his Independent-International Pictures for possible distribution. Sherman had founded Independent-International with Al Adamson back in 1968. Tired of getting screwed over by other distributors, DIY filmmakers Sherman and Adamson decided to cut out the middleman, formed their own company, and kicked it off with the production and distribution of the ultimate Outlaw Biker movie from hell, Satan’s Sadists (1969).

More films like Brain of Blood (1971), Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), and The Naughty Stewardesses (1973) followed. Sherman would also pick-up and repackage foreign films like Eddie Romero’s The Ravagers (1965), Alfred Voher’s kooky Edgar Wallace krimis Creature with the Blue Hand (alias Die blaue Hand, 1967) and Gorilla Gang (alias Der Gorilla von Soho, 1968), and some violent gialli like Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark (alias Tutti i colori del buio, 1972) and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (alias Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota, 1974). They also handled some softcore skin-flicks, too, like Joe Sarno’s Inga (alias Jag - en oskuld, 1968), Allan Silliphant’s The Stewardesses (1969), which might’ve been the first ever X-rated 3D film, and Jerry Gross’ Female Animal (1970).

But by the 1980s, things were starting to slow down a bit for Independent-International. Grindhouses were either closing or being gentrified, and drive-ins were being sold off, flattened, and turned into shopping centers and strip-malls, leaving them less and less to distribute to. In his autobiography, When Dracula Met Frankenstein (2021), Sherman had this to say about his involvement with Girls Nite Out: “These two producers didn’t know much about the industry, or what would happen in the distribution of films. But they had made this picture on what seemed to be a reasonable budget, and what appealed to me about it was that Hal Holbrook was in the movie. I always like good, solid stage and film actors, and him being in this one greatly impressed me.”

Still, though he liked the film well enough, as Michael Gingold pointed out in his essay, Can You Bear It? The Story of Girls Nite Out, which is included with the Arrow Video disc, “Sherman believed their movie could use some tweaking, starting with the title; he chucked The Final Clue and rechristened it as The Scaremaker.” Also, since the first murder didn’t occur until after nearly forty minutes of the film had expired, which was nothing but misfiring collegiate hijinx, Sherman suggested some additional horror content be added to the first reel.

Said Sherman, “I don’t remember if I had anything to do with the writing and planning of these scenes, but they were filmed at night in Central Park.” The scene in question was the burial of Dickie Kavanaugh’s body by the two gravediggers, who are then killed and the body stolen. And so, if we put our deducting caps on, I’m betting the whole prelude at the asylum was also added on later, which means the final reveal of Kavanaugh’s frozen corpse was also a rewrite and reshoot, which jives with Alda’s recollections of coming back to film it.

Anyhoo, odds are good they had no permission or permits to shoot this scene or dig a hole in Central Park. Sherman tells a story of visiting the shoot, wandering off into the dark, and inadvertently finding a real dead body without even realizing it! (Sorry, for the whole story you’ll have to buy Sherman’s book.)

Now, the reason Sherman insisted on the name change to The Scaremaker was because he and the production team didn’t think it would be prudent to sell it as a Slasher movie. This was due to the intensive backlash on the subgenre, which was only picking up more steam as critics wailed and refused to review them anymore and the MPAA censors started cracking down on all the sex and gore.

The Clarksdale Press-Register (December 2, 1982).

But Sherman had a plan to buffer his risk. Before fully committing to the film’s distribution, he arranged for a limited screening to test the waters. Said Howard, “The 35 Mid-South engagements of The Scaremaker, booked through Clark Releasing, a major Southern distributor of drive-in films, are crucial to the film’s future. If audiences in the Mid-South -- particularly teenagers -- turn out for the film, the producers will be able to strike more prints of the picture and go for national distribution -- and the big money.”

Thus, The Scaremaker would make its official debut on Friday, December 3, 1982, at several engagements in Memphis and Jackson (Tennessee), Little Rock, Blytheville and Jonesboro (Arkansas), and Clarksdale (Mississippi). In the lead up to the release, Kurgis and Gurvis did some barnstorming around Memphis and Little Rock, appearing on local radio and TV-talk shows to drum up support, really playing up the Hollywood outsider angle.

The Memphis Press-Scimitar (December 4, 1982). 

Howard would initially champion their cause, saying, “The disappointed filmgoer’s agonized boast -- ‘Even I could make a movie better than that!’ -- may no longer be idle. The more obvious and amateurish films become -- and in the past two or three years, horror films have become the most obvious and amateurish -- the better the chance of nonprofessional, or at least fledgling, non-Hollywood filmmakers to break into the market. Making a movie as good as Halloween or Friday the 13th and their innumerable sequels and rip-offs may not be much of an accomplishment, but if Gurvis and Kurgis have pulled it off, The Scaremaker may also make their fortunes.”

But his tone of rooting for the little guy changed drastically after seeing the film. Said Howard (The Memphis Scimitar-Press, December 4, 1982), “Hollywood has nothing on Ohio when it comes to making cheap horror movies for the high school crowd. In The Scaremaker, Columbus attorneys Tony Gurvis and Kevin Kurgis prove they can produce cinematic schlock with the worst of them. The Scaremaker is clearly drive-in fare, but one of the melancholy aspects of winter is that the weather frequently drives drive-in fare indoors, where grown-up moviegoers may be taken unaware. That’s the only really scary thing about The Scaremaker.”

The Tampa Bay Times (February 25, 1983). 

The film would also receive a dishonorable mention in Howard’s Ten Worst films of ‘82. Other reviewers were slightly kinder, perhaps softened a bit by being chosen for this special premiere, but not THAT much kinder. Still, though the box-office response was tepid, meaning no national release, Sherman pushed forward with a plan to release the film regionally, opening it all over Florida in February, 1983, where it subsequently died and went no further. “It didn’t do any business,” said Sherman. “And I guess the producers put the responsibility on my head and my company’s head, for not making it commercial. But, you know, you can’t always make miracles in this industry.”

Both Kurgis and Gurvis felt that Sherman hadn’t sold the film properly and, in hindsight, determined that title change and subsequent marketing campaign -- which sold it as a ghost story or a zombie movie -- had been a strategic blunder. And so, they parted ways with Sherman and took the picture back.

“It’s not a bad [movie],” Kurgis insisted to Hughes in October, 1983. “And I’m a firm believer that if you have an average picture, you can always make money on it.”

Thus, Kurgis and Gurvis would regroup, again, rebrand the film, again, as Girls Nite Out, and would try to release it again, again -- this time on their own. The duo would form Aries International Releasing Corp. in August, 1983, to distribute their film themselves, beginning with a big push in Michigan that October. From there, the film would eventually creep around most of the country, with an ever-evolving poster and ad campaign -- and all of them, quite inexplicably, rather deviantly sexual in their connotations.

It started out innocently enough with a trade ad that promised "It began as a game. It ended like a nightmare!" Pretty good, if you ask me. But they decided to punch it up even further with the screaming “Never has TERROR been so real!” tagline over a trio of girls desperately trying to get away from something. “The party was great. They all went in, only a few got out!” Then, well, things got a little weird, and desperate. 

“You know what really turns me on?” asked the second campaign, plastered over a nonplussed woman covering herself in a sheet. “I love to be scared! All of these weird and kinky things have really got my motor running!” Uhm, what?! This woman also shows up in the new trailer, spouting the same nonsense about her kink.

The Detroit Free Press (October 7, 1983).

This campaign was then modified further with the image of Laura Summer (Jane) strung up in the shower (-- with the damage to her throat air-brushed out in some papers but not in others). They also added a snipe, which warned the boys, “Don’t bring your girlfriend to this film. She may never go out again,” leaving it up to potential audiences to discern if this was a horror film or a bondage loop. 

Still, they kept on trying, with evidence showing the film was still in circulation as late as 1985. But no matter what they tried, the film never could find any real traction -- allegedly.

The New York Daily News (June 15, 1984).

See. With this type of regional film, it’s hard to judge how much money it actually brought in. Evidence shows it played in territories all throughout the south and the midwest from 1983 through 1985, as well as California, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York. The film reportedly brought in $175,000 the first week it played in New York City in June, 1983, alone.

And as of July, 1984, Variety’s weekly survey of 1,800 screens showed Girls Nite Out coming in at number 14 in the Top 20 films of that month, right in between Streets of Fire (1984) and Splash (1984), which tells me the film had some legs and probably pulled in ah-lot more money than we all thought. (Source: The Santa Maria Times, July 4, 1984. And pay Alda, you cowards!)

 The Santa Maria Times (July 4, 1984).

Still, reviews were sporadic and mixed, with the general consensus being if you had to watch one of these damnable “ketchup and cleaver” flicks, you might as well make it this one. Said Hughes (Gannett News Service, March 29, 1984), “Girls Nite Out is the sort of movie that inspires one quick view: It could’ve been much worse. That may not be a hardy endorsement, but it will have to do. By horror standards, it’s almost adequate. Where they failed -- thoroughly -- was in their frequent passes at campus humor.” On that point we can definitely agree.

“Girls Nite Out, the latest mad-killer on campus horror flick, has all the predictable ingredients,” said Scott Cain (The Atlanta Journal, December 6, 1983). “Several murders are committed before authorities realize that mischief is afoot. Nearly everything takes place at night. Electrical illumination is an unused convenience … There must be 50-supporting roles and, as a consequence, none of the characters has much chance to make a favorable impression.” And John Douglas agreed (The Grand Rapids Press), saying, “It doesn’t matter who’s alive or dead. None of the characters is anything more than a puppet.”

The Albuquerque Journal, with the gore intact. (October 28, 1983).

When the casting call first went out for Blood Games / The Final Clue, the production was overwhelmed by over 500 potential head-shots for casting director Marcia Shulman to sort through. “It’s really kind of sad,” Kurgis told Hughes. “Some of them have been looking for jobs for years.” And while finding an unsuspected level of talent, the production kinda leaned into those who already had some experience with the genre.

James Carroll (Teddy the Creep) had appeared briefly in He Knows You’re Alone (1980), an unheralded Slasher that is nearly undone by its final twist. Carrick Glenn (Kathy) died rather gruesomely in The Burning (1981), as did Lauren-Marie Taylor (Sheila) in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). And Suzanne Barnes (Dawn) was a victim of The Children (1980), when she wasn’t modeling for Pearl Drops tooth polish.

 Carrick Glenn in The Burning.

Lauren-Marie Taylor in Friday the 13th Part 2.

Suzanne Barnes.

Making her screen debut was Laura Summer. And while you might not recognize her face, odds are good you might recognize the voice as Summer went on to a prolific career in animation, voicing Janine Melnitz in The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1987), Mimi in Hello Kitty (1993), and Patamon in Digimon (1999-2001).

Also, Larry Mintz (DJ Charlie Kaiser) had a firmly established career behind the scenes in TV, working as a writer or story consultant on a ton of episodes of Sanford and Son (1972-1978), What’s Happening (1976-1979) and Mork and Mindy (1978-1982), and would later write and produce episodes of Family Matters (1989-1998), Step by Step (1991-1998) and Married with Children (1987-1997).

I remember working at my college radio station back in the 1990s (KFKX! 97.3 on your FM dial!). With a half-watt transmitter, you had no listeners but it was fun, you could say “booger” without getting into any trouble, and they had a killer collection of vinyl LPs that were being ignored as the digital revolution hit. (And, no, you cannot look through my LPs to see how many I eventually liberated before graduating out.)

I bring this up because I got the biggest kick out of how the ENTIRE campus diligently tuned in and only listened to Kaiser’s show -- that had a golden oldies format; the same five golden oldies by The Lovin’ Spoonful, the Ohio Express, and Tommy James and the Shondells, which are heard over and over and over again. I don’t think anyone, besides the communication majors, even realized we had a campus radio station at my college.

The Macon Telegraph (December 12, 1983).

But it was these groovy tunes that formed the backbone of Girls Nite Out’s soundtrack as no composer or music supervisor is listed in the credits. Thus, what music there is was canned and culled from the archives of FV Sound Ltd. by producer Barclay, who did a pretty good job patching in the disparate pieces into a cohesive whole.

Now, aside from Holbrook and Alda, the most familiar face in the cast was probably Julia Montgomery as Lynn, the Final Girl Who Wasn’t. 

One Life to Live (circa 1977).

The blonde and blue-eyed Montgomery was born in New Jersey and worked as a model and did a few commercials before landing the role of Samantha Vernon on the soap opera One Life to Live in 1976, where her brother Brad Vernon was played by Jameson Parker. At the time, soaps were seen as a last resort for aging actors -- like Farley Granger, who played her father, and a jumping off point for younger actors; something you had to do, according to an interview with Montgomery on the Arrow Video disc, before moving on to bigger and better things.

And so, Montgomery left the show in 1980 and would appear in a TV-movie, Senior Trip (1981), before signing on to do Girls Nite Out. Then, 1984 would be a big year for the actor, landing roles in the Boner Comedies Up the Creek (1984) and Revenge of the Nerds (1984), which we can’t really talk about without bringing up the huge elephant in the room.

In Revenge of the Nerds, Montgomery played head cheerleader Betty Childs, who winds up marrying the man who stalked her, exploited her naked image without permission, and who kinda-sorta raped her, because the non-consensual sex was that good and the script said so, leaving an indelible stain on a movie I otherwise dearly loved. 

Thus, making her Betty Childs-Skolnick in Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992), and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994). Montgomery would also join a team of scientists fighting a rash of goo-monsters in The Kindred (1987) and gets caught up in some vengeful vengeance as a Female Rambo in Savage Justice (1988).

Montgomery and all the other actors interviewed all have fond memories of making Girls Nite Out, echoing Alda in that it was a fast shoot but a ton of fun between takes. But while waiting, there really wasn’t anywhere to go.

Unable to afford lodgings, the cast and crew were bussed from New York to the locations on a daily basis, giving the whole thing a summer camp vibe according to Montgomery. And over those three weeks, it was a giant party, where a few romances ended but a few more started. Taylor would wind up marrying co-star John Didrichsen (Ralph). They’re still together at the time of this writing.

According to those cast interviews, the script was very fluid and in a constant state of flux. The majority of them weren’t even given a full script, just the single pages concerning their parts, leaving them to try and piece together the overall plot during all the hurrying up and waiting. A lot of the comedy was improvised by Paul Christie and Greg Salata on the spot. Christie stated they were basically given the barest bones of a premise right before the cameras rolled.

As to who wore the bear suit doing all the killing? Magic 8-Ball says, Answer unclear. Ask again later. Yeah, no one could remember who wore the mascot suit for sure. In her interview, Summer recalled it was one of the producers who wore the suit when she got killed, meaning either Barclay, Kurgis, Gurvis or associate producer Arthur Ginsberg. Apparently, everyone did their own stunts in the film, too, as the film lists no stunt coordinator or stunt persons in the credits, so that rules them out.

No, the only real stunt in the film was the stunt-casting of Al McGuire for the Dewitt basketball coach. See, McGuire was a coach in real life, who led an upstart Marquette squad to an upset win over North Carolina for the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship in 1977.

McQuire would retire from coaching not long after and took up broadcasting, which led to the infamous “Pine Bluff Incident,” where, while calling a game between the Arkansas Razorbacks and a Michael Jordan led North Carolina Tar Heels, as time expired, North Carolina threw up a desperation shot to win the game. Caught up in the excitement, McGuire prematurely and quite inexplicably shouted “It’s good” over the airwaves as the shot banged off the rim, ending the game. McQuire was so embarrassed by this gaffe that he sat silent as bedlam over the upset erupted all around him.

Meanwhile, providing the film’s minimal gore and special makeup effects was Tom Brumberger. Brumberger began in the business working for the incomparable Barry Mahon, a World War II flying ace and a stalwart in Florida’s exploitation scene -- Pagan Island (1961), Nudes Inc. (1964), and The Beast that Killed Woman (1964), where a gorilla rampages through a nudist camp.

But by the 1970s, Mahon, perhaps taking a page from the K. Gordon Murray playbook, shifted gears from adult exploitation to kiddie matinee exploitation, churning out things like The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969) and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972).

It was around this time when Brumberger signed on, working on things like Thumbelina (1970) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1970). But he soon moved on to things slightly more gruesome in Oliver Stone’s Seizure (1974), Robert Warmflash’s tale of revenge Death Promise (1977), the psychological thriller Alone in the Dark (1980), where several escaped psychopaths lay siege on their psychiatrist’s house, and then provided the burnt corpses in Joseph Ellison’s notorious Don’t Go In the House (1979), where a psycho works through his mommy issues with a flamethrower on a series of prostitutes.

The only extensive prosthetics I can recall in the film was Jane’s slashed neck piece worn by Summer, who recalled the casting and application process. She also recalled being left secured to the wall, forgotten, while everyone else scurried-off to get the next scene. Beyond that, it was mostly just slathered blood and not much else. Pretty blunt and straight-forward -- though I did like the Angel in the Wreckage bit of finding Leslie’s corpse done up as the Holy Virgin in the chapel. Nice touch, Katie.

Other notes on the production crew, well, I will give props to cinematographer Joe Rivers and his single camera, who shot everything night for night, that things were lit well enough that you could make out what was happening as everyone stumbled around in the dark. However, this does make Girls Nite Out another film cursed by the generational VHS murk that’s begging for rediscovery and reevaluation thanks to the recent digital upgrade.

As for Deubel’s direction? It's fine, with several interesting set-ups to try and juice things up a bit. According to the cast he ran a tight ship and kept things moving quickly as humanly possible as time and money evaporated around him. According to Taylor, his biggest direction to the cast was to “talk with your eyes” because they were the window to the soul. And if we’re being honest, the cast bails him out with nearly every scene.

However, the film itself is a masterclass in economic and piecemeal filmmaking. There are at least a dozen scenes where characters interact with each other and it becomes obvious they were never in the same room together. The scenes between MacVey and Surly Mike are the best example of this; as well as the police interrogating the suspects and witnesses; and I’d put money on each side of the conversation in the final confrontation between MacVey and Katie being filmed weeks apart.

But credit to Deubel and his editor, Arthur Ginsberg, who cut both halves of these conversations and confrontations together rather seamlessly. It’s just when you realize if there are never any moments of the two people having those conversations or confrontations being in the same shot, odds are pretty good they were shot separately and at different times -- and in some instances, probably not even in the same location! Ah, the magic of movies!

Thus, with a game cast, a capable director, and an experienced, award winning crew, the majority of Girls Nite Out’s sins can be blamed on the mercurial script that can’t quite decide if it's a horror film or a frat comedy -- and therefore failed to find any symbiosis between the two, resulting in a cinematic homunculus.

As I mentioned earlier, Kurgis and Gurvis were assisted on the script by Gil Spencer Jr. and Joe Bolster. Bolster had been working as a stand-up comedian out of New York since 1977, who would go on to win The Big Laff Off in 1982. The Big Laff Off (alias The New York Big Laff Off) was a Showtime series where five comedians would compete per season to be crowned the king of comedy. Other notable contestants over the years included Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Harry Anderson, Larry Miller and Dana Carvey.

 Joe Bolster (circa 1982).

Bolster would also have appearances on The Tonight Show, Late Night with David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, and would appear on Evening at the Improv and HBO’s One Night Stand. Several of his routines are up on YouTube for those curious. One of his best bits is about being on an airplane and making crank-calls from First Class to Coach, pretending to be the pilot who suddenly forgot how to fly.

Gil Spencer Jr., meanwhile, was the son of Gil Spencer Sr., a Pulitzer Prize winning news editor who worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, the Denver Post, and the New York Daily News. The younger Spencer was also a reporter, whose career is hard to trace online since he shares the same name as his dad, who was apparently a legend in the business. One account says Spencer was a sports reporter at the time of Girls Nite Out’s production. But like everything else, how Bolster and Spencer officially got involved in that production is rather occluded.

But, we can judge their end results. On the positive side, I will say the film successfully captured the vibe of a small college campus community. (Again, most of that credit goes to the cast.) Beyond that, the movie leaves a lot more questions than answers.

I did find it interesting that aside from Teddy the Creep, the women of Dewitt were way more sexually aggressive than the men in the film. And weirdly enough, despite the progressive attitudes, the film is rather chaste as everyone keeps their clothes on despite all the bed-hopping.

Montgomery claimed there was a lot of ‘filling in’ by the actors -- especially on the female characters, who appeared rather superfluous in the script, which was pretty sketchy on the details. They had to. Otherwise, they’re just there to get screwed or be killed or both. To their credit, the ensemble of ladies do yeoman's work to flesh themselves out and bring these characters to life.

Unfortunately, this also feeds into the film’s misogynistic streak. There is a strong sense of skeevy wish-fulfillment coming off of Teddy the Creep, whose girlfriend doesn’t seem to mind that he sleeps around. A lot. It also doesn’t help that after Benson is dispatched, the killer focuses solely on the girls he perceives as having loose morals -- basically, stay monogamous or you're dead meat. All rather rote. Yes, all of those horrible slut-shaming slurs screamed by the killer were made by a woman, but is that really an excuse?

Meanwhile, the humor elements are a flatline. And the only thing the film has going for it on that front is the unintentional humor of its masked killer, ensconced inside that doofy bear costume. It’s like one of the Banana Splits or the Showbiz Pizza Bear have gone homicidal. But even that wears off quick. Yes, the wardrobe is a unique choice, and the chosen weapon of the steak knife gauntlet presciently predicts the likes of Freddy Krueger, but the kills in the film are pretty lackluster. And with all that slashing and loss of blood, that costume should’ve been saturated with gore by the third act. And yet, it's spotless for the denouement.

And so, as everything fizzled, there was nothing to counterbalance it, leaving us with a lot of tedium -- unless you wanted to count trying to resolve the mystery of who was doing the killing all along. Pfffft. Yeah, good luck with that!

To be fair, in hindsight, there were several clues that pointed a finger at Barney. And so, after the initial call of bullshit over an ancillary character being the killer all along, on second viewing, one can see how the film foreshadows the split-personality and familial twist on the killer. But this is done by wrapping the mystery inside a piece of soiled toilet paper that’s been tucked inside an empty beer can that’s easily missed at first glance; but on the second, we see such a lack of subtlety, one can only sadly shake your head at how embarrassingly obvious as to where this was all going from the jump and who the killer really was all along. But that’s not the problem. No, the problem is who all of that leads to.

We see a photo of Dickie that, with a freeze-frame assist, was obviously Barney in drag -- if you even remember Barney at that point. There’s also a throwaway scene where Barney urges Teddy the Creep, after he shacked up with Dawn, to settle down and stick with that nice girl Lynn. (This is why Lynn survives.) Again, Teddy is part of the problem. But in her psychosis, a cheating woman broke her brother’s heart, which led to his undoing and eventual suicide, which triggered this killing spree. Ergo, the woman in the equation must be punished.

But this still doesn’t explain how Barney got from the graveyard, where she killed and buried two guys, stole and stashed a body, and then returned to the cafeteria in the five minutes it took for Teddy the Creep, Lynn and Maniac to walk over from the gym -- let alone have time to kill Jane and Kathy in the gym, circle back to the cafeteria to rendezvous with Teddy the Creep, before heading to the beach house to kill Sheila. SHENANIGANS!

Now, there’s a moment during the climax where things get interesting, when Barney is oscillating between the personalities of Katie and Dickie (-- Alda is so good here). As she raves, I’m not so sure if Dickie really killed MacVey’s daughter or if Katie did. Did she do it back then to protect her brother or avenge his perceived betrayal? Did her brother then cover for her? Interesting notions that the film summarily ignores.

I honestly think the script really painted itself into a corner by making the killer Dickie’s twin, which leads to a quick process of elimination, age-wise. Odds are good the audiences would be thinking of identical twins and not fraternal twins. Identical twins of different gender are extremely rare, adding even more frustration to the big reveal. Thus, the film probably would’ve been better served if it was Kavanaugh’s little sister or brother, meaning it still could've been damned near anybody we’ve met so far that was still kicking. But, nope. It’s Katie, had to be, even though she only had one notable appearance way back at the beginning of the movie, and that throwaway scene with Teddy the Creep, before showing up at the end, knife in hand.

I don’t mean to keep harping on this, as I pointed out earlier, inexplicable reveals are a genre trope etched in bedrock, but the killer’s identity is one of the reasons I find this film so frustrating. There’s a lot of potential here that gets squandered. I get it. I missed it the first time through. But the call of bullshit on the killer’s identity still stands because Barney barely makes a blip on the film’s radar. Thus, while the central mystery of Girls Nite Out is fairly intricate, its resolution is, let's face it, a cheat. And this out of nowhere reveal is then compounded because the filmmakers don't overcompensate for this with any gore, bizarre killings, or naughty bits, which leaves you with … what exactly?

The Idaho Statesman (April 20, 1984).

Now, one only has to briefly peruse the IMDB to see that Kurgis and Gurvis' potential film career was stillborn after The Scaremaker / Girls Nite Out played out the string. With a film that just couldn’t seem to get out of its own way, the production also ran into a bit of bad timing.

The bubble had kind of burst on teenage-targeted horror films by 1983. According to Variety, the amount of money the genre took in that year ($107-million) was less than half of what was brought in the year before ($227-million). On the Girls Nite Out commentary track, Amanda Reyes points out that film production was down across all genres in 1983, which saw a “cleaning out the cupboard” as films like Scalps (1983) and The Prey (1984) finally saw a release after collecting dust on a shelf for several years, which did little to help the genre recover. In fact, the only ones still making money were the big studio franchise films like Friday the 13th and Halloween, which were about to be joined by A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

Alas, no matter how much money it actually made, there would be no franchise for Girls Nite Out, which, despite its perplexing production history, when the smoke cleared, was a competent if uninspired Stalk ‘n’ Slasher. (I still hold out hope for an action figure of the killer in that bear suit.) I like this movie, but I want to like this movie more than I do. Honest. It reminds me a lot of Killer Party (1986), another sandbagger of a horror film that is saved by the cast while nothing really happens until the last 20-minutes. But, oh, those last 20-minutes are so ah-mazing.

And to its credit, Girls Nite Out does get better on repeat viewings. And while I still have a beef on the resolution, watching Alda go all creepy schizoid at the end pretty much makes up for everything else. 

Originally posted on February 17, 2002, at 3B Theater.

Girls Nite Out (1982) Concepts Unlimited :: Independent-International Pictures / EP: Richard Barclay, Kevin Kurgis / P: Anthony N. Gurvis / AP: Arthur Ginsberg / D: Robert Deubel / W: Gil Spencer Jr., Kevin Kurgis, Joe Bolster, Anthony N. Gurvis / C: Joe Rivers / E: Arthur Ginsberg / S: Julia Montgomery, James Carroll, Suzanne Barnes, Lauren-Marie Taylor, David Holbrook, Laura Summer, Mart McChesney, Carrick Glenn, John Didrichsen, Lois Robbins, Matthew Dunn, Susan Pitts, Paul Christie, Greg Salata, Tony Shultz, Larry Mintz, Rutanya Alda, Hal Hoolbrook