This film is everything most slashers are - i.e. redundant, pointless, silly and all the rest of it. However, unlike the majority of the sub-genre; this one isn't all that bad. The plot is hardly original in it's fusion of the haunted house tradition and eighties slasher trash, but at least it gives the film a slight edge over it's less imaginative counterparts. The plot sees a group of four high school 'kids' having to spend a night in a creepy old house as an initiation ceremony for the fraternity they want to join. However, this isn't just a creepy old house and by way of a super-camp story telling sequence, we learn that the master of the house killed himself, his wife and three of his four horribly deformed children. This, of course, means that one survived; and that one, is course, rumoured to still be hanging around the creepy old house. That is, of course, a rumour that turns out be true! What then follows is the usual slasher sort of stuff, with the kids inside getting sliced and diced along with the ones outside, who were just trying to make their new frat-mate's stay a little scarier.
Linda Blair, now all grown up since her role in The Exorcist, takes the lead role and does pretty much what you would expect the heroine to do. There's some nice murder sequences in this film, but the gore is never over the top. I actually like over the top gore, but despite not having much of it, it never really harms this film. The murders are stylishly shot, and the way it portrays them allows it to be shocking without the need for a lot of bloodshed. In a sub-genre that is primarily concerned with bloodletting; this is actually quite admirable. The sets are one of the best things about this film. The Gothic mansion gives it that great atmosphere that is usually reserved for haunted house movies. The movie doesn't always make best use of it's settings, however, with too many scenes being restricted to close-up's when a shot that takes in more of the surrounding area would have been better. The fact that the killer is deformed gives it a bit of an edge over the likes of Halloween because aside from there being a killer, you also want to see him to find out how badly deformed he is. It is a disappointment when he's finally revealed...but the wait holds some suspense. On the whole, this isn't all that good; but it's not bad either. Slasher fans will find something to like.
