10 Horror Movies That Brutally Punish Survivors

9. Marti Gaines - Hell Night

Dawn Of The Dead 2004 Sarah Polley
Compass International Pictures

On face value, Linda Blair's Marti Gaines in Hell Night hasn't been through anything more traumatic than your average slasher movie. The thing is, it's the way that Blair sells her despair and distress at the movie's close that hammers how how damaged Marti is from here on out.

Tom DeSimone's 1981 picture is formulaic in terms of its plot, with a bunch of college kids having to spend the night in an old manor house as part of some fraternity ritual. While there, the group are hunted down by a deformed killer that ends up murdering everyone in sight bar Blair's Marti - with it also revealed how there had been two killers working in tandem throughout.

With her friends, love interest, and one of the killers all dead, Marti escapes through a maze, has to pry car keys from the hand of her dead beau, and is then attacked by the remaining murderer as she looks to drive to safety. After a scuffle, the nutjob killer ends up fatally impaled on a spike from the manor's gate.

As the sun starts to rise, the final image is of Marti walking towards the camera, as Linda Blair goes through a whole variety of emotions that hit home how impacted she is from this trauamtic experience.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Chatterer of stuff, writer of this, host of that, Wrexham AFC fan.