Before joining Alpha Sigma Rho, Jeff, Marti, Seth, and Denise must spend a night alone in Garth Manor. Twelve years ago Raymond Garth murdered his wife and three of his kids before committing suicide in front of his gork son Andrew. Of course no one ever saw Andrew again. Is he dead or alive? If you don’t know the answer to that one what the hell are you doing on this site?

Our foursome immediately pair off into two couples, the good couple, and the bad couple who are sure to die. We have Marti (Linda Blair) the smart girl who knows how to fix cars paired with Jeff, the nice rich guy. Then there’s Seth (Vincent Van Patten, son of Dick) the surfer dude, and Denise the slutty, drunken, drugged out English girl.

When our couples enter the manor Denise and Seth immediately go upstairs to have a lot of sex while Marti and Jeff get to know one another better on a purely intellectual level. Unbeknownst to any of them the house is wired for scares by Pete, the frat president, and his band of merry pranksters. Let me just say if these special effects were for real they would have Haunted House managers beating down their doors. Madness ensues when someone starts killing the guys outside then moving onto those inside.

The deaths are great in this movie. We’ve got a couple beheadings, a staking, and a 180 head twist to name a few. As far as I can tell the blood looks real, I can’t really say because the movie is so dark you’re sometimes wondering what the hell is going on.

I think Linda Blair is a decent actress but it sometimes feels like she’s just phoning this one in. She seems bored and slightly embarrassed. You can pass the time waiting for her breasts to pop out of her costume, although you’ll be waiting a long time. I need to mention the nudity or lack of it anyway. Now I don’t think nudity is always necessary in a horror movie but it’s the blatant lack of it when there obviously supposed to be some strikes me as odd. Let me explain. Seth and Denise are upstairs having sex yet they still have their underwear on. They even take a nap, wake up, and have more supposed sex while wearing underwear. This is doubly strange when you know that the guy directing was known as a porn director before he got this movie. Marti and Jeff start making out then when we see them again they are lying in bed spooning. Either nothing happened or he just lifted her skirt and went to town. This isn’t completely unrealistic to me only because if I was sleeping in a freakydeaky manor and was having sex I sure wouldn’t be removing much clothing. Quick getaway you know.

This movie gets placed in the “80’s horror-that’s-ripping-off-other-horror-category” quite frequently but somewhat unfairly. It was made in 1981 before the extremely godawful rip-offs occurred, somewhere around 1985 I think.
I consider this a fun scary movie that, while not the best, beats out many of the Friday the 13th sequels.

7 out of 10 surfer dudes who shake beer into their mugs like it was salt.