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Dis­cov­er the cult 80s slash­er that pre-empt­ed Fred­dy Krueger

17 May 2022

Words by Anton Bitel

Close-up of a woman with dark hair screaming, her mouth wide open.
Close-up of a woman with dark hair screaming, her mouth wide open.
The likes of A Night­mare on Elm Street and Scream owe some­thing to Robert Deubel’s co-ed carve up Girls Nite Out.

You know it’s not enough that the school tries to screw you. Every­body else has to screw around with every­body else. Some­times I think Lynn is the only loy­al per­son left.”

This is some way into Robert Deubel’s Girls Nite Out, and the speak­er is Ted­dy Ratliff (James Car­roll), a charm­ing bas­ket­ball jock at Dewitt Uni­ver­si­ty. Bar­ney (Tutanya Alda), the old­er woman who runs the cam­pus din­er, agrees that Teddy’s girl­friend Lynn Con­nors (Julia Mont­gomery) is a real­ly nice girl, and there’s not too many around anymore.”

Indeed, this insti­tu­tion in West­ville, Ohio is full of randy co-eds keen to play the field, and for all of Teddy’s moral pos­tur­ing, his eye too has recent­ly been wan­der­ing from his beloved, lov­ing Lynn to Dawn (Suzanne Barnes), who is her­self oth­er­wise attached but not unin­ter­est­ed. This is one of the inno­va­tions of Deubel’s slash­er. For while by 1982 the sub­genre already had a well-estab­lished con­ven­tion where­by a killer’s vic­tims were typ­i­cal­ly being pun­ished for their entry into the world of adult­hood, here it is not loss of vir­gin­i­ty that guar­an­tees their expe­dit­ed mor­tal­i­ty, but erot­ic betray­al – and there is no short­age of those betrayed.

When we first see Teddy’s bas­ket­ball team the Bears in action near the film’s begin­ning, the game of his friend Pete Kriza­ni­ac (Mart McCh­es­ney) is off, because he has just been dumped by his long-term girl­friend Leslie Peter­son (Lois Rob­bins). I nev­er could com­pete with Jack Daniels, bas­ket­ball and Ted­dy Ratliff,” Leslie tells Pete lat­er at the post-game cel­e­bra­tion par­ty, hint­ing that Pete’s friend­ship with his team­mate might be more than mere­ly homosocial.

At the same par­ty, Mike Pry­or (David Hol­brook) gets increas­ing­ly riled as his girl­friend Sheila Robin­son (Lau­ren-Marie Tay­lor) bare­ly con­ceals her attrac­tion to Michael Ben­son (Matthew Dunn). Mike even­tu­al­ly storms off in a rage, declar­ing all at the par­ty whores’. Lynn is advised by Sheila to try out oth­er part­ners her­self, on the grounds that Ted­dy is no doubt doing the same – and Ted­dy indeed has a sub­se­quent fling with Dawn, lead­ing Dawn’s boyfriend Bud Rem­ing­ton (Tony Schultz) to kick her out in anger. Evi­dent­ly Dewitt’s cam­pus is a place where these young peo­ple are learn­ing not just their course­work, but also cru­el lessons in love’s merry-go-round.

There is also a venge­ful killer on the loose, who dons the bear cos­tume of the bas­ket­ball team’s mas­cot for a dis­guise, starts tak­ing out mem­bers of the stu­dent body one by one as they par­tic­i­pate in the annu­al scav­enger hunt, and leaves cryp­tic, taunt­ing mes­sages for cam­pus DJ Char­lie Kaiser (Lar­ry Mintz) and for the secu­ri­ty guard Jim Mac’ MacVey (Hal Hol­brook, in one scene appear­ing with his actu­al son David) about these murders.

The killers weapon of choice anticipates by two years Freddy Kruegers bladed glove in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The most obvi­ous can­di­date for killer would be Dick­ie Cavanaugh, who years ago had mur­dered his then girl­friend – and Mac’s daugh­ter – Pat­ty dur­ing a sim­i­lar scav­enger hunt at Dewitt. The prob­lem, though, is that Girls Nite Out begins with Dick­ie found hang­ing in his room at the West­on Hill San­i­tar­i­um, so unless he has mirac­u­lous­ly come back from the dead, some­one else must be respon­si­ble. Amid all the jeal­ousy, indig­na­tion and vin­dic­tive­ness on cam­pus, it could just be just about anyone.

The killer’s weapon of choice, a set of four knives strapped to the bear costume’s hand to form claws, antic­i­pates by two year’s Fred­dy Krueger’s blad­ed glove in Wes Craven’s A Night­mare on Elm Street, while a cer­tain self-con­scious­ness about hor­ror tropes looks for­ward to the post­mod­ernism of Wes Craven’s New Night­mare and Scream by over a decade. Pete Kriza­ni­ac goes by the rhyming nick­name Mani­ac’, evok­ing the title of William Lustig’s 1980 slash­er, and in Barney’s din­er, in the scene where we first learn of this nick­name, Pete also express­ly does an impres­sion of the late Mrs Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s moth­er-lov­ing ur-slash­er Psycho.

Ted­dy too con­jures the most famous scene from Psy­cho, as well as the Ital­ian gial­li that inter­vened between Hitchcock’s film and the slash­er, by approach­ing a naked Dawn in the bath while him­self wear­ing black gloves. In one fur­ther nod to the evo­lu­tion of the sub­genre, the killer will both make weird phone calls and leave a victim’s corpse in an attic, just like Bob Clark’s sem­i­nal ear­ly slash­er Black Christ­mas. Girls Nite Out cer­tain­ly knows its place in the hor­ror tra­di­tion, and show­cas­es that his­to­ry while ring­ing its own small changes.

First released to region­al US cin­e­mas in late 1982 under the title The Scare­mak­er as a dou­ble fea­ture with Jef­frey Bloom’s Blood Beach, and then re-released as Girls Nite Out in late 1983 with Juan Piquer Simón’s Pieces, Deubel’s debut fea­ture ini­tial­ly made less of an impres­sion than the more extrav­a­gant films with which it was paired. Yet it is respect­ful of slash­er his­to­ry, offer­ing an ensem­ble of char­ac­ters too mess­i­ly com­pli­cat­ed to be mere car­i­ca­tures, and it locates its mad­den­ing trau­ma – unusu­al­ly for the genre – in the ama­to­ry infi­deli­ties of its play­ers’. The final twist makes it less a descen­dant of, than a com­ple­men­tary twin to, Psy­cho, as once again a genetic/​generic tra­di­tion is pre­served by a mur­der­ous maniac.

Girls Nite Out is released on Blu-ray via Arrow Films on 16 May.

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