Tom DeSimone | Scott's Film Reviews-1,534 Reviews posted!!! RECENTLY LAUNCHED-MY TOP 250 FAVORITE FILMS AND TOP 40 HORROR FILMS!!!

Reform School Girls-1986

Director Tom DeSimone

Starring Linda Carol, Wendy O. Williams, Pat Ast

Top 250 Films #175

Scott’s Review #348

Reviewed January 9, 2016

Grade: A

Let’s be honest here- Reform School Girls (1986) is neither a work of cinematic art nor a particularly well-acted film.

From a critic’s perspective, it is riddled with stereotypes and objectifies women.

Still, it’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures, with an offbeat charm that makes me want to watch the film over and over again. I never tire of it. I also don’t think it should be reviled, but rather, revered.

There is a perverse magnificence to the film and some similarities to another cult gem- Russ Myers’s Faster Pussycat, Kill!… Kill! (1965)

Critics be damned- not every film needs to be high art!

One of my absolute favorite cult actresses, Pat Ast, famous for another cult gem, 1972’s Heat, stars in Reform School Girls as a vicious correctional officer.

Alongside punk rocker-turned-actress Wendy O. Williams, they make the film a guilty masterpiece, as both women bring their share of odd energy and humor to the flick.

Sybil Danning co-stars as the corrupt Warden Sutter.

The plot of the film is pretty straightforward, and it screams late-night fun.

A virginal teenage girl named Jenny is sent to a reform school run by the sinister warden and her sadistic and abusive henchwoman, Edna (Ast).

While there, Jenny is intimidated by Charlie (Williams), who rules the roost via bullying and threats. Jenny is accompanied by several other terrified girls, who are stripped and degraded by Edna.

This leads to an attempted escape and protest scene by the girls and others as they try to remove themselves from their tormentors.

Reform School Girls is simply great fun.

The poor acting is actually a strength of the film, as one scantily clad female after another prances around the reform school.

Wendy O. Williams regularly wears skimpy panties, a bra, and heels, and is laughable playing a teenager since the actress was pushing forty years old.

The film’s climax is fantastic, as a chase culminates at an enormous tower on the prison grounds, resulting in the dramatic deaths of Charlie and Edna.

Edna’s charred remains are met by an uproar of cheers by the inmates- I half expected them to burst into a chorus of “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead”.

Reform School Girls (1986) is a perfect cult classic for a late Saturday night.

Hell Night-1981

Starring Linda Blair, Peter Barton, Vincent Van Patten

Director Tom DeSimone

Scott’s Review #1,476

Reviewed April 6, 2025

Grade: B

Hell Night (1981) is a slasher/horror film that provides fun late-night entertainment. A creepy, deserted estate where a mass murder event happened amid a night of fraternity hazing offers the appropriate setting for a night of horror.

When four college pledges led by Marti (Linda Blair) are tasked with staying overnight after a costume party as a test of loyalty, what could go wrong?

Director Tom DeSimone knows what ingredients to pepper his film with for the most compelling and effectual result, essentially borrowing from other films. A dark, overnight, attempted pranks, ghosts, screams, good-looking young people, and lots of booze and drug paraphernalia.

He incorporates the standard slasher backstory of a year-old event and a vicious killer still on the loose. This gimmick resembles Friday the 13th (1980) or Halloween (1978).

Folklore tells us that Garth Manor is an abandoned mansion once owned by Raymond Garth, who murdered his wife and three deformed children, Morris, Margaret, and Suzanne.

Garth then hanged himself. While he had a fourth deformed child, Andrew, his body was never found, nor was the body of Morris.

Folklore states that Morris and Andrew still lurk within the mansion, hungrily waiting for prey.

This immediately makes the pledges frightened and happy to get through the six-hour overnight alive. It also builds interest for the audience.

What makes Hell Night particularly unique is its subplot involving social classes. Marti is an intelligent girl from a blue-collar/working-class family who is obviously attending university on a scholarship. At the same time, her love interest, Jeff (Peter Barton), comes from an affluent family.

This makes the audience invest in these characters as they bond with each other. We root for them to find some romance before they are potentially chopped to bits by a maniac.

The other central characters are Denise (Suki Goodwin), a promiscuous party girl from England, and Seth (Vincent Van Patten), a surfer from Southern California. These characters are the film’s comic relief and, indeed, the ones that will ‘get it’.

Van Patten is nice to look at as he frequently parades shirtless, while Denise often forgets his name.

Other stock characters are Peter, May, and Scott, who are responsible for ensuring the pledges don’t escape from the manor and scaring the wits out of them.

Naturally, the fun for the audience lies in knowing that most of the characters will be unceremoniously offed one by one, except for Marti, the film’s hero.

With pleasure, there is a decapitation, a body strung up on the roof, and a horrid scene where a character is hurled out the window.

Reminiscent of Black Christmas (1974), a film that heavily influenced 1980s slasher films, the police are ineffectual and dizzy, believing the pledges’ pleas for help are only part of a fraternity prank and nothing to investigate.

A macabre and terrific scene in which one of the pledges is arranged at a dining room table with the decaying corpses of the Garth family reminds me of Happy Birthday to Me (1981) or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

Blair is effective as the ‘final girl’ because she’s smart, sensible, and relatable. With a girl-next-door veneer, she is easy to root for to conquer the fiendish killer (s).

I wanted more explanation of the killers’ motivations. Yes, they were assumed to be abused and mistreated, but why kill helpless college kids? I guess they’d kill anyone who entered the estate, but how would they survive and get food?

There’s also no nudity (male or female) or excessive blood, which gives a softer, tamer feel.

Borrowing heavily from other genre films, Hell Night (1981) is a worthy entry in the slasher genre, mostly because it incorporates an intelligent ‘final girl’ and a bit about social class.