MOTEL HELL (1980)

 

DIRECTED by Kevin Connor

SCREENPLAY by Robert Jaffe &  Steven-Charles Jaffe

STARRING - Rory Calhoun as Vincent Smith

Paul Linke as Sheriff Bruce Smith

Nancy Parsons as Ida Smith

Nina Axelrod as Terry

Wolfman Jack as Reverend Billy

Elaine Joyce as Edith Olson

PLOT - A young female motorcycle passenger - Terry - is injured when her boyfriend's bike is sabotaged and crashes.

She awakes in a small roadside motel (The Motel Hello) where the seemingly friendly owners take her in. 

The motel is run by a brother and sister -Vincent and Ida. Vincent also runs a meat producing business from the site...

But - there's a hideous secret that the motel and it's owners harbour that's hidden in plain site - just what exactly is the secret ingredient that Vincent is putting into his variety of tasty smoked meat products, and why are so many motorists and hikers going missing in the area ?...

PERFORMANCES - The main character in this movie is actually the main villain - none other than Vincent (Rory Calhoun) - this is due in part to the way the script (more or less) tells the story from his point of view, but also because the main heroine - Terry (Nina Axelrod) is such a bizarrely presented character in her own right (more on that later).

Vincent initially comes over as being kind and sweet matured (although we - the audience - know he isn't as we see him set a road trap for an unsuspecting victim in the opening scene). Vincent is every inch the kindly, elder, god-fearing man when he takes in the injured Terry (even though he caused her to be injured in the first place). We know he's a total wrong 'un but we don't know why he appears to genuinely want to save Terry when we've just seen him abduct her boyfriend - it turns out that old Vince has a bit of a thing for Terry and has seemingly fallen head over heels in love with her.

In a bizarre twist Terry also feels the same and quickly becomes engaged to be married to the old boy (can we say Stockholm Syndrome? Possibly...). It's this romance subplot that makes Terry such a strange character - one minute she's mourning her boyfriend (who she believes to be dead), the next she's seducing a man old enough to be her father. To be fair it makes Terry come over as being more than a tad dumb (after all there's enough times Vincent let's his mask slip to show the real monster he is).

Anyway, needless to say Terry eventually finds out the truth about Vincent's family business and it's not long before she's running from the chainsaw welding, pig mask wearing Vincent who now wants to carve her up after being jilted at the altar.

I quite like this dynamic, it's a unique take on the traditional trope of "slasher villain and final girl". Axelrod isn't a great actress but she embodies this role nicely, Calhoun is very charismatic as Vincent and is effectively psychotic when ol' Vince loses the plot.

The other two main characters are Ida (Nancy Parsons) and Bruce (Paul Linke). These two are Vincent's siblings. Ida seems to be just as unhinged as Vincent (if not more so in her own way) and seems to have an affection for Vincent which goes beyond normal brother and sisterly love. She's DEFINITELY jealous of Terry and acts more like a jilted lover than a sister when Vince announces his intentions to wed Terry.

The other sibling is Bruce who also happens to be the local Sheriff. At first you think he's going to be in on Vincent and Ida's murder spree, and he definitely acts a bit creepily towards Terry to begin with. However as the story progresses you come to realise that any perceived weirdness on Bruce's part is down to the fact that he's not particularly great with social skills. 

In fact he turns out to be a pretty nice chap (and he's completely clueless about what his brother and sister are up to), he's a bit clumsy and accident prone but he eventually turns out to be the closest thing to a main male hero that we get in this film. Another nice inversion of expectation in this film and Linke sells the "accidental hero" vibe pretty well.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Apart from a few clumsy seduction scenes between Terry and Vincent and Bruce and Terry there's not much that's explicit sexually in this movie.

As for the violence - the main horror of this film comes from what Vincent and Ida do to thier victims. Basically they first cause them to crash whatever vehicle they're driving. The survivors are then pulled out of the wrecks and then taken to Vince's secret "vegetable patch" where the poor unfortunates are buried up to thier necks and their lips are then stitched up to stop them from yelling for help.

These human "meat plants" are then tortured in a variety of different ways until they're"ripe", whereby Vincent then proceeds to murder them savagely with his chainsaw.

Eventually the "meat plants" manage to free themselves and the now zombie-like humans take thier bloody revenge on Ida. Meanwhile Bruce manages to take down Vincent in a battle to the death with chainsaws. Yep, it's really that mental.

SFX - Some decent practical gore FX as you'd expect from a slasher film of this vintage.

RATING - This is a fun and - in places - original take on the hillbilly horror/slasher genre. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Psycho and you're basically on the right track. The image of the victim's heads sticking out of the ground with thier only means of communication being unintelligible grunts is one that will stay with you.

4 and a half human meat heads out of 5. I had good fun with this one.

ART -