Although little Eddie Burber (Craig Bitterling) was told he was too young to participate in the Kentucky family’s haunted house, he dons a mask, slips in through the vents and does it anyway … and accidentally impales a pigtailed girl in the process. Oopsie! Time to flee the state!
A predictably even 20 years later, Eddie’s mother (a near-Xerox of Vicki Lawrence in full dress rehearsal for Mama’s Family) keels over and dies, making it time for a now full-grown Eddie (Ethan Adler) to return to his hometown of Regawas for Halloween — er, we mean HauntedWeen. (Apparently, Halloween already was taken as a night-he-came-home title.)
Eddie’s homecoming coincides with the financial foibles of Tophill State College fraternity Sigma Phi. As their leader, Kurt (Brien Blakely, Diary of a Serial Killer), explains, they face a revoked charter if they can’t pony up some $3,700 in unpaid dues ASAP. (It is worth noting that Kurt is the only one who looks like an actual member of the Greek community.) Fate — or perhaps all-too-convenient screenwriting — intervenes when the mysterious, mute Eddie shows up at the frat house’s door just long enough to deliver a key to the old Burber house in the hands of the cornpone-accented Hanks (Brad Hanks), who makes Gomer Pyle sound like a master of elocution. Hanks is also considered the frat’s resident “funny” guy. He is not funny, but he does make Jim Varney’s Ernest character look subtle in comparison.
Suddenly, the Sigma Phi bros have a can’t-miss plan: Revive the Burber family’s House of Horrors for one night and charge $5 admission! (Okay, so they’re not the brightest at math. Dudes, did you learn nothing from your $3-a-head beer blowout?) Andy Hardy-style, the guys and their gals in their ALF and Edie Brickell & New Bohemians T-shirts chug down some refreshing RC Cola and get to work. Even Kurt’s on-again/off-again girlfriend (Blake Pickett, The Erotic House of Wax) pitches in, despite them being squarely in the “off” position.
What these crazy co-eds somehow don’t know is that Eddie — whose face is not revealed until the final scene, for no logical purpose — also is working on his own room within the House of Horrors, which he will turn into his personal Grand Guignol stage. He paints “The Kill Room” on the wall and decorates the place with promo material purloined from the local video store, including posters for Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II, not to mention the coup de grâce of a Pumpkinhead cardboard standee. Look, no one ever accused of slashers of excelling in interior design.
No one ever accused Wm. Douglas Robertson of being a fine writer, director and/or producer, either. Just as his lone IMDb credit fails as a slasher, much less a feature film, words cannot quite convey the rotted fruit of the Sigma Phi labors. It’s as if the guys never had attended a haunted attraction, because each room the patrons walk through requires them to pause and watch a skit. The only stop that matters, of course, is Eddie’s Kill Room. Even with its noggin-bonked collegians tied up for mortal torture, customers assume it’s all part of the show; one braces-faced boy even goads, “Batter up, dude!” as Eddie swings a baseball bat at a Sigma Phi, causing an instant decapitation and a neck geyser of blood that looks like chocolate pudding.
Although utter trash, HauntedWeen makes for enjoyable viewing any time of year, because it is utter trash, shot on 16mm film for an estimated $65,000. Not only could that amount eliminate nearly 18 of the frat’s IOUs, but it represents a fraction of the sheer entertainment value silly-seeking viewers will gain. —Rod Lott