To All a Goodnight
1980 film by David Hess
To All a Goodnight is a 1980 American slasher film directed by David Hess in his directorial debut, and starring Jennifer Runyon and Forrest Swanson. Its plot follows a group of female finishing school students and their boyfriends being murdered during a Christmas party by a psychopath dressed as Santa Claus.
Filmed in late 1979 in Santa Barbara, California, To All a Goodnight was given a limited theatrical release in the United States by Intercontinental Releasing Corporation in January 1980. It is the second feature film in history to portray a murderous Santa Claus character as a villain, after the ...And All Through the House segment in the anthology film Tales from the Crypt (1972).
Plot
During Christmas vacation at the rural Calvin Finishing School For Girls, a student is killed when she is accidentally pushed over a balcony during a prank. Two years later, on the Friday before Christmas, the school is emptying out for the holiday; however, five students — Nancy, Melody, Leia, Trisha, and Sam — decide for various reasons to remain at the school, planning to have a weekend get-together with their respective boyfriends. That night, while the remaining girls have dinner, their classmate Cynthia and her boyfriend are murdered outside the school by an assailant with a hunting knife.
The others meanwhile coerce the innocent Nancy into giving their housemother, Mrs. Jensen, milk laced with sedatives to make her fall asleep. After she falls asleep, the girls go to a nearby airstrip to meet their boyfriends, T. J., Alex, Tom, and Blake, who have flown in on a private plane.
“To All a Goodnight” enters the record as 1980 film by David Hess. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Goodnight, film and David can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“To All a Goodnight” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Goodnight, film and David provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7810822. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 1979 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “To All a Goodnight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.