In small-town Ohio, the students of DeWitt University are preparing for an all-night, campus-wide scavenger hunt. Gamma House is hosting a Golden Oldies costume party to get everyone in the mood for a good time, but what no one knows is a killer is on the loose. The legend goes that several years ago, a young pledge, Dickie Cavanaugh freaked out during an initiation ritual and killed a cheerleader before being locked away in an asylum. Now, it appears Dickie may be back dressed as the basketball team’s grizzly bear mascot. After each murder, the killer calls the campus DJ to confess and these calls are recorded and sent to Mac, the vigilant campus cop. Who is the party crasher wearing the bear suit and who will survive this night?

Girls Nite Out (aka The Scaremaker) was released during the Golden Age of Slasher Films (1978 – 1984) and includes all the familiar tropes of the subgenre. We get a campus setting, a costume party, an escaped mental patient, the legend of a student who freaked out and killed someone, an unseen masked killer, threatening anonymous phone calls, an older security guard at his wits end, a rock n’ roll soundtrack and a handful of stylish – albeit restrained – murder set pieces. The killer’s wardrobe is an original yet particularly goofy-looking outfit with the menacing addition of razor-sharp knives inserted as claws.

I love a good ‘80s slasher flick and if it’s one that doesn’t appear on everybody’s Top 10 list, I am happy to try something different. Shot in 1982 as The Scaremaker, the film failed to get a wide release until 1984, following a name change to Girls Nite Out. I first saw it on VHS and although the ladies on the cover art do not appear in the movie, there are a number of familiar genre faces present. Hal Holbrook (Creepshow, The Fog) is the real coup, playing Mac, the campus cop. He is in a series of scenes filmed away from the supporting cast over a couple of days. He does appear briefly at a crime scene with some other actors. Hal is featured in a scene opposite his son David Holbrook (Creepshow 2, Vampire’s Kiss), but it is filmed in such a way that they never appear in the frame at the same time, as they were likely shot on different days and cut together.

Other familiar faces include Julie Montgomery (The Kindred, Revenge of the Nerds) as our heroine Lynn Connors; Lauren-Marie Taylor (Friday the 13th Part 2) as Sheila; Carrick Glenn (The Burning) as Kathy; James Carroll (He Knows You’re Alone) as Teddy Ratliff; Susan Barnes (The Children) as Dawn and the always-welcome Rutanya Alda (Amityville 2: The Possession, Vigilante) as Barney, the cafeteria lady. Rounding out the supporting cast is a group of thirty-somethings playing teenagers, which is comically distracting.

Written by Gil Spencer Jr., Kevin Kurgis, Joe Bolster and Anthony N. Gurvis – yes, it took four writers to come up with this one – and while capably directed by Robert Duebel (The American Woman: Portraits of Courage), the film spends way too much time setting up red herrings with incidental characters and relationship drama that ultimately goes nowhere. Likely pitched as a cross between Friday the 13th and Animal House, there is a generous level of soap opera melodrama tossed in for good measure. Things pick up with the introduction of the scavenger hunt roughly forty minutes in, where the kids split up and get stalked.

As is often the case with slashers, the best part is the killer and despite much of the bloodshed occurring offscreen, the whole bear suit angle is a winner. This isn’t a scary grizzly bear but rather a cartoonish friendly-looking guy with googly eyes, curly hair and a wagging tongue. He is totally disarming right until he grabs you with his Wolverine/Freddy Krueger claws and calls you a slut or a whore while ripping you apart!

Girls Nite Out is a mixed bag that sadly misses the mark more often than not. It’s nice to see Hal Holbrook paying his rent with this one, but he is clearly uninterested in the material. One surprising aspect is the pop music soundtrack of golden oldies, with a generous serving of The Lovin’ Spoonful. The killer reveal is well done and the twist works to some extent, but the picture ends rather abruptly. There’s a reason this one doesn’t end up on many “Best of” lists, but it has its moments and is worth checking out, especially to fans of campus slashers.