Hospital Massacre (1982)

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Divorcée Susan Jeremy goes to a local Los Angeles county hospital for a routine exam.After being told to go to several different clinical offices, finds herself stranded there while a maniac, dressed in a doctor's surgical mask and clothing, goes around killing all the staff associated with her. Could it possibly be the psycho Harold, who killed a friend of Susan's on Valentine's Day 19 years earlier.........Cannon horror movies. One could say that all movies distributed by this glorious company were 'horrors', but for me, they were the epitome of the eighties, and released some brilliantly bonkers movies throughout that decade.And here, it's bonkers business as usual, just not brilliantly bonkers.Firstly, you have to throw comprehension out of the window, followed closely by happenstance, and actuality.Then you have to believe that out of all of the hospitals that Susan goes to, the boy from the flashback sequence works there, and happens to be a doctor, and is working that particular day.It's a slasher movie, with the old 'when we were young, I dismissed a valentine card from the local weirdo, and he killed my friend' trope, and go from there.The acting is decidedly dodgy, there is a sub-plot involving her ex looking after her child that never gets elaborated, and everyone in the first ten minutes has such shifty eyes, you'd think that Davidson went to an opticians for the casting call.It's a poor movie for sure, but it's still fun in that dodgy Cannon way.The victims find themselves in the strangest of situations, and the killer even uses a bed sheet to chase someone down a corridor.Funny, but for all the wrong reasons.An essential bad movie.

As we've explored various times now in this review series, Slasher films jump at the chance to rehash similar environments in the attempt of besting their predecessors – or just simply the first to be in line for such an idea (let's think back in the late 70's and early 80's when the idea was still relatively fresh). It's a promising attribute to learn of a title that doesn't revisit the same old campground/college campus during spring or fall break/some unknown high school with a cast of rejects that get on your last nerve. Hospital Massacre, directed by "one-entry-in-the-vault-of-horror" Boaz Davidson, displays to the audience a different environment to catch our attention. The conclusion is predictable from start to finish and the ending wouldn't even a surprise a grade-schooler but with the original working title of "Be My Valentine, or Else…" let's see what this 1982 entry has to offer.The story takes place in 1961 - young Susan and her brother are playing with a toy train set. A neighborhood boy by the name of Harold leaves a Valentine's Day card on the doorstep for Susan and scurries off into the bushes. Peering into the window, he notices Susan laughing mockingly at the card, tossing it to the floor. Volatile from rejection, Harold breaks into the home and murders Susan's brother while she remains occupied in the kitchen. Her discovery upon returning is a ghastly one – her sibling is strung up viciously by the jaw, impaled on a hat hanger. Flash forward 19 years - Susan, now a divorced parent, schedules a routine examination at a Los Angeles county hospital. Susan arrives at her appointment only to discover that Dr. Jacobs, her physician, isn't there. A certified M.D. is appointed to carry out the examination on Susan and finds discrepancies concerning her anatomy – but what are they? Meanwhile, in the bowels of the complex, a murderous fiend disposes of Dr. Jacob's body. Donning a surgical mask and wielding lethal operating room instruments, the mad man has a particular victim in his sights - Susan. Will she survive this dreadful nightmare?As my review header indicates, this is your typical "heartbreak leads to murder" recipe; a film of standard fare with a hint of mystery. Luckily Hospital Massacre rushes right into the thick of it, wasting absolutely no time on yawn-inducing sub-plots and After School Special dopiness. If the massacring of dim-witted college frat boys and their incessant buffoonery is what you're after, look elsewhere! The majority of the story takes place within the hospital but that's another matter altogether.Most of the staff working at the establishment are made to look sketchy; throwing several diversions into the mix for confusion's sake. This methodical system of side-tracking the audience is far too strained in this film because it's obvious who the culprit will be. The ending is spelled out right from the beginning…a minimal amount of intelligence is required in order to pick up on this. Viewers, and even myself, may be fooled into believing that there's more to the story than what's touted, relenting themselves to the red herrings in a desperate plea for a plot twist. There are no twists in Hospital Massacre. You may be left thinking, "Surely things can't play out this predictably." Oh, but they do.The actress who portrayed the female lead, Barbi Benton, had a widely publicized relationship with Hugh Hefner from 1969 to 1976. This would be, and still remains, her most prominent career move in terms of celebrity status. Benton never plateaued beyond occasional TV appearances and Hospital Massacre was one of the few movies that she starred in. Others may not care too much for Barbi as an actress; her filmography and current occupation (it was reported in 2002 that she's now an Interior Decorator) could easily support their claim. On the contrary, I found her acting ability well beyond average for the role given to her. Her delivery was believable in a Slasher film - what more could you ask for?Other titles exist in the Slasher vault's repertoire that utilize a hospital setting. Certainly Hospital Massacre is not the first to dive into this region. A smattering of gore and an overly enthusiastic soundtrack play well with the environment – but throwing red herrings for the sake of doing so is like gift wrapping an item for someone else and upon them opening it, reacting in awe and amazement when the prize is retrieved. Shall the audience ignore all of these devices and the silly contraptions therein? The point I was trying to make earlier suggests that we should, indeed, go along for the ride. Hospital Massacre is a well done Slasher movie but not a film worthy to exist among my collection. For a routine flick of this caliber I'd say it's worth a look due to how rare it is. I had the pleasure of watching a VHS transfer of the film; complete with bad tracking and all!

When the Valentine's Day card he sends to pretty Susan Jeremy is greeted with laughter and derision, young Harold loses the plot and impales Susan's playmate on a hat-stand. Nineteen years later, a now fully grown Susan (played by Playboy playmate Barbi Benton) attends a hospital appointment only to find a still-rather-obsessed Harold waiting there to try and steal her heart once again—only this time, he intends to do it literally with a variety of nasty surgical implements!!Chock full of ridiculous red-herrings and annoying false scares, and displaying zero originality from start to finish, Boaz Davidson's Hospital Massacre is a derivative piece of slasher garbage that, at times, is so daft that it unintentionally borders on parody.In the prologue, Susan is seen brandishing a large knife, only to reveal that she is about to cut a cake; later, what looks like blood drips onto Susan's shoe but which turns out to be ketchup; an unscheduled lift stop on a deserted floor results in Susan being startled by men in masks, who are then revealed to be fumigating the level; and a human shape under a sheet turns out to be a mannequin: Hospital Massacre is absolutely littered with such dumb contrivances that really grate on the nerves.Also serving to irritate are Susan's inability to keep quiet when being stalked by the killer (she drops her lighter, knocks over reports, and clatters metal instruments at the most inopportune moments), the complete absence of any other people when the murderer strikes, the ridiculous manner in which the hospital staff treat their patients (can anyone say 'lawsuit'?), and the score, which mimics not only Harry Manfredini's music from Friday the 13th (which is understandable, I suppose), but also Jerry Goldsmith's choral chanting from The Omen (???!?!).On the plus side, there's the occasional spot of reasonable gore (including a severed head in a box, an axe in the head and a pointed thingy through the neck), an enjoyably exploitative moment where Miss Benton strips to her panties for an unnecessary all-over examination by a pervy doctor, and one incredible, must-be-seen-to-be-believed scene in which Susan runs into a room full of people covered from head-to-toe in plaster who all proceed to flail their limbs in an uncontrollable manner. Weird.

Forgive the pretentious summary, but i thought this film was effective precisely for all the elements other reviewers seemed to criticise. It IS fairly well shot (the dark bits are hard work) and the editing's sharp. With a big bombastic orchestral score and lots of OTT moments, this is a cheesy film with plenty of daft false scares and the like, but it's quite nightmarish too. The clichéd parts are tensely handled. Maybe I'm desensitized to bad cinema at the moment, having consumed plenty of terrible 80s slashers recently, but I thought this was pretty good. Little touches like the horrible old women sharing Barbi Benton's hospital ward, cackling like the witches from Macbeth, added to the absurd bad-dream quality. The murder scenes are well handled, violent and rough but not that splattery.This film has a similar feel to something like 'Don't Answer The Phone!' or 'The Centerfold Girls', serious in intent and not really 'camp' in any way. It's obviously 'bad cinema', but artfully done.