To All a Goodnight (1980)
(In French, On Cable TV, December 2020) As a representative example of the golden age of slashers and an explanation as to why the subgenre crashed and burnt two years later, To All a Goodnight makes for an eloquent demonstration. Classic to the point of feeling like a grotesque carnival of clichés, it sees a group of girls isolated in a boarding school during the Christmas Break, having sex with their sneaky boyfriends and being brutally murdered (along with said boyfriends) by someone in a Santa suit. If you’re looking for the most average slasher, it’s hard to do better: the film is cleanly structured as a slasher with regularly scheduled kills no matter if they make sense or not; a whodunit that’s not really surprising (although there’s an additional fillip that presages many such twists in future films); and matter-of-fact direction by David Hess. Everything that one can hate about slashers, from rampant misogyny to cheap narrative to terrible dialogue to excessive levels of violence, can be found here – conversely, fans of the form may find just enough here to make them happy for an evening. To All a Goodnight (good title, though!) is not the best, not the worst, but as a mediocre example of 1980s slashers, it’s exactly what it tries to be.