Motel Hell (1980)

Touches You

Redundant and unnecessary.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

After an accident on the highway, a woman recuperating at a brother- and-sister owned roadside motel nearby finds that the strange number of nearby disappearances are travelers being killed and harvested for a popular meat forcing her to try to stop them.This is really one of the weirdest films from the time period. This comes from the apparent work of the majority of the film where the whole general concept is weird and it is full of this sort of style. There is really no way other to describe it as weird here due to the rather out-there elements featured here from the central storyline of a man and his portly sister putting a special ingredient into their meat and will stop at nothing to get it and keep others from finding out while using some pretty wild ways to keep others from doing so. The manners of going out hunting the pedestrians along the woods which ties into their harvesting methods showing them trapped in the gardening patch with their throats slit provide some laughs, and the way that they came about harvesting their ingredients is some dark black comedy. That is the main element present here as the black comedy more than horror dominates this one as well since there were some scenes that normally shouldn't be funny were twisted in such a way that the results are just out there enough to be funny, from trying to distract someone while a pair of fingers boils up to the top of a soup can and finding the horny couple in the hotel room. The only time it is even near horror is the end, which is some pretty intense stuff from the revolt and attempted training that ends with a great dueling chainsaw fight that is great to behold, mostly for the mask worn throughout that creates one of the defining images from the film. These here manage to work quite nicely here for this one although it does have a big problem here. The main issue for this one is that the film has so much black comedy and no real horror until the end that for those that don't like that style, this will be a really hard film to sit through. A couple of innovative scenes spread liberally through the film are nice, but beyond that, it really isn't that much of a horror film during many of it's supposed scares scenes. The fact that this one is that way for the majority of the film is the problem, tending to come off as camp rather than scary as its weirdness doesn't bother that much, but it is something for those not interested in that style to have to sit through. Even still, this one focuses on the killer more than the victims, another obstacle to overcome which becomes a style that some don't like this approach as there's little about him or his plans that are really interesting. These here are what really hold this one back.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, Full Nudity and some mild S&M scenes.

I caught maybe the last half hour of this movie one time on TNT when I was a teenager, and I remember it vividly. Finally, some 20 years later, I watch the whole thing. Meh. Honestly, it has some fantastic moments. That whole first sequence where the victims who are buried up to their necks in the garden is horrifying. And Rory Calhoun is a hoot throughout. A lot of the rest of it is pretty stupid, though. The leading lady, Nina Axelrod, is a complete blank. She just dumbly goes along with whatever's happening with little objection. The character who turns out to be the hero, played by Paul Linke, the one who has to save Axelrod at the end, is so unheroic he attempts to rape her earlier in the movie. The finale is particularly memorable, but it's moronic. Seriously, Linke has a shotgun and Calhoun has a chainsaw (not to mention he's infamously wearing a pig's head over his own - how the Hell's he seeing out of that thing?), and Linke rushes him. I think it's supposed to be kind of funny, but it's not.

A combination between a hillbilly and a slasher horror that normally should had been directed by Tobe Hooper but Universal found the script really bad so out goes Tobe who went on to direct The Funhouse (1981). To be honest there's really not that much to see about gory shots if we see what came out the same year, Friday The 13th (1980) but for so many it's the chainsaw and the pig head that makes this movie. It clocks in over 90 minutes and in fact there's a lot of talking going on. Sure, we do see the victims in the garden but nothing looks creepy or whatsoever. Maybe it's disturbing in some way but it's really low on the red stuff. The acting of course of Rory Calhoun as Vincent and and Nancy Parsons as Ida do deliver towards this horror.Maybe you can't take it all to seriously because there's also some black comedy to spot here and there and of course one full frontal and some tits here and there. Still up to today it's a much spoken flick due the pig head who also gave Fangoria some problems when they added that particular picture on their cover and is still one of the most searched issues of Fangoria.Just have a look now that it finally has it's Blu Ray release to see where the cult status came from, the chainsaw and the hog's head.Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 1/5

Here's a nice bit of early slasher fun with all the usual trimmings: psychotic hillbillies, bizarre murders, a clueless cop, a hot blonde, and…uhm…jerky? Farmer Vincent and his sister Ida run a motel on the outskirts of town famous for it's homemade meat fritters. What the unsuspecting townspeople don't know is that Vincent and Ida lure travelers and passersby into traps and they disappear as part of the "garden", where the victims are left to wait until good and ready to become Vincent's next batch of meat treats. One night, Vincent takes out a motorcycle carrying a man and his girlfriend; the man is relegated to the garden but Vincent takes a shine to the girl and, with the help of his sister, nurses her back to health. The girl, Terry, is frightened at first but begins to open up to the oddball backwoods duo. Problems arise when Vincent falls in love with Terry and hopes to introduce her to his secret meat recipes, while Ida stews in jealousy of Vincent's shifting affections. The only person who can save Terry from these maniacs is Sheriff Bruce Smith, Vincent's brother and an ignorant putz who probably shouldn't be left in charge of policing others. So yeah, I guess she's pretty much doomed to become one of Farmer Vincent's fritters.MOTEL HELL is a cheap little throwaway horror film from the early '80s. The story is simple yet strange, the characters are exaggerated, and the story is just what you'd expect. The whole plot of planting his victims in his garden and turning them into fritters is pretty cool, and the guttural noises screeched from the garden's inhabitants is probably the most stomach-churning aspect of the movie. Well, that's not entirely true. Ida (Nancy Parsons) freaks me out. I guess it's a combination of her deep-set eyes, childish pigtails, overalls, and that nasal squealing voice. Add to that the fact that her character is a simple-minded fool with no qualms against murder, and she just weirds me out from the first time we meet her. Farm Vincent on the other hand has the complete opposite effect. He reminds me way too much of Bob Barker. Seriously…he looks like him and sounds like him. Instead of promoting pet population control through spaying and neutering, he eats them. Rory Calhoun is way too charming to be an effective villain. Farmer Vincent shouldn't be murdering people and serving them in jerky form, he should be hosting his own children's show. It's all good until the final confrontation in which Vincent completely loses his mind (but his final lines in the film are probably the absolute best). Nina Axelrod is hot as victim Terry (but not much else…her character's not the sharpest knife in the shed), and Paul Linke is the embarrassment that is Sheriff Smith. You know everything you need to know about the Sheriff when we first meet him. He speeds up Vincent's motel with sirens blaring and lights flashing, lurches to a stop, and puts on his police-game face to…pop in and say hello. He's not smart and he's not tough; it's a miracle he's not dead in the first fifteen minutes.The movie's pretty predictable and follows a few of the usual horror movie conventions. If someone shows up and exhibits "negative behavior" (e.g. sexual deviance, drug use, etc.), chances are they're going to end up as part of Vincent's garden. What annoyed me was that the whole "Farmer Vincent's fritters" plot was put on the back-burner for the majority of the movie so it could focus on Terry's involvement. I wasn't interested in a love triangle, I wanted more cannibalism and horror! It's a fun movie regardless, even if it does wander off track. I'm sure any horror fan will find something they like about this movie, but I don't expect to find it on anyone's top-ten lists.