The Film (4/5)

   Hell Night is one of the last great slasher films to get a Blu-ray release. It is a film that I personally have wanted on the format since early in the Blu-ray’s life cycle. The old Anchor Bay DVD release looked quite nice for its time, but I just knew it could look better. Whatever issues held up the release of Hell Night to Blu, those have been resolved and now the film is free to see a collector's edition Blu-ray relase from Scream Factory.

    The film is as simple as slashers get. A group of pledges, including Linda Blair's Marti, get dropped off at "Garth Manor" where 12 years prior a man named Andrew Garth killed his entire family, and disappeared. The house has become the source of much local legend, mostly around Andrew still living in secret within the house's walls. Of course, these rumors are used to scare the pledges as the head of the frat tries to set up a series of scary practical jokes for the crew. Unfortunately, for all of them, however, there is some truth to the legend, and the group begins to get picked off one by one.

    Hell Night blends the college "campus slasher" genre with the creepy haunted house genre to pretty great success. The film is a load of fun with great pacing and atmospheric use of location by director Tom DeSimone. The cast seem to be play the film with a blend of serious and silly, allowing the film to be both scary, but with moments of humor that help play resolve some of the tension created by the closed quarters of Garth Mansion, and the pretty solid shocks of the film.  The violence in the film doesn't reach for the bloody extremes of some slasher classics, but there are some interesting kills throughout sure to keep fans of the genre mostly satisfied.

Audio/Video (3/5)

    One of the issues plaguing a release of Hell Night is finding decent material for the upgrade to Blu-ray. Unfortunately, Scream Factory was unable to locate a negative or even IP to source the film from. They did, however, a secured a pretty solid archival print. The film is presented in a 1080p AVC encoded 1:85:1 transfer. It look solid for the most part, but there are some scenes that are slightly faded, and of course, coming from a print source the film does have its share of speckling, scratches, and other assorted damage. This, though, is relatively minor and overall things look quite decent. Detail is improved from the Blu-ray, blacks are mostly solid, but occasional veer a little to the gray. That being said those looking to upgrade from a nearly 2 decade old DVD will certainly be satisfied with what is here.

   The audio is presented with a DTS-HD MA 2.0 master audio track in English with optional subs. Everything sounds quite alright here with dialogue and score coming through nicely, and I did not detect any real issues.

Extras (3/5)

   Scream Factory have put together quite a solid little extras package for Hell Night. This includes interviews with the cast and crew of the film including Linda Blair and Tom DeSimone. There are also TV spots and trailers.

Overall

    Hell Night is a solid mix of slasher and haunted house chiller, that I am happy to finally have on the Blu-ray format. The transfer itself is a mixed bag, but definitely an upgrade, and there is a small, but decent slate of extras. RECOMMENDED.