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Director Nicholas McCarthy Ties Up Loose Ends On ‘The Pact’
If you haven’t watched The Pact, you may want to skip this until you do. SPOILERS FOLLOW.
Otherwise: I disagreed with some of the more critical reviews out on The Pact. I found it, above all imperfections, to be an effective, well executed chiller. After its recent DVD release, however, several people I’d chatted with were expressing a similar point of view, and confusion. “It was creepy as F—, but what the hell was with the ending?” Usually I’m pretty good at figuring out these subtleties, but after some hard thought, I had to agree – while a couple of the shock sequences certainly took my breath away, the film left me with some questions that I couldn’t answer.
What was “the pact”?
What was with the blue eye/green eye – was there a meaning behind that?
Was Judas still alive?
I got in touch with the film’s director, Nicholas McCarthy, and asked him directly. It opened up a great conversation about the head-in-the-curtain hotel scene, some films that inspired these moments, and above all, some very honest and direct answers to the questions left behind.
BD: How is Judas still alive? Did he follow her to her new house?
McCarthy: I’m not sure which “new” house you’re describing? If you mean the one you’re seeing at the end of the movie, that’s Annie’s old house, now empty of furniture.
I got so much shit for that coda. The sequence is a dream – she falls asleep in the hotel, then we cut to her dream. I wanted to end with the idea that she’s haunted by what happened. Some people got it, lots didn’t, and it’s my one regret with the film. I actually explained some in the audio commentary that’s on the new DVD.
BD: There are references to Annie’s eyes: one being blue, one being green. What exactly was this saying?
McCarthy: The eyes thing was actually explained a little more in a cut piece of dialogue from the cousin character, where she remarks on Annie’s eyes being different colors – she said in the script, “Your mother didn’t have them, so your father must’ve.” I hope that explains it a little more…
BD: Usually you can associate the title to a meaning in the film, but I failed miserably. What was “the pact”?
McCarthy: It’s another thing that I kept hidden that some people instantly got, others were baffled by. The backstory. The mother hid the brother. She didn’t want anyone to know about him. The idea of “the pact” is related to that.
BD: What I liked most about The Pact was that I felt the creepiness for sure. The closet, everything – was effective. The hotel scene with the head hanging in the curtains was nightmarish and really grasped the stunning terror of the moment.
McCarthy: The hotel scene was inspired by a moment in a movie called ‘The Possession of Joel Delaney‘. It’s a fairly obscure, pre-‘Exorcist‘ 70s Hollywood possession movie with this one startling scene with a hanging severed head. Check it out if you haven’t seen it!
BD: I haven’t seen that – I will. In return I’ll offer up The Antichrist, a 70’s Italian Exorcist ripoff. The goat scene in that is over the top.
McCarthy: I’m a big fan of Exorcist knock offs in general. Beyond the Door I first saw here in LA in 35mm — that movie is insane. And I love The Antichrist! I actually just mentioned to a friend of mine this week and I had to see it again (!!).
I think it goes without saying that more movies should have goat rim jobs.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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