Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Motel Hell(1980)






This movie is hilarious! It is directed by Kevin Connor and it stars Rory Calhoun and Nancy Parsons. It is going to be remade I hear, so I would watch the original before it is ruined.
Farmer Vincent(Calhoun) owns a motel called 'Motel Hello' but the O is broken on the sign, so it is 'Motel Hell' instead and how right it is! This motel is very different. It is more along the lines of the Bates Motel! Farmer Vincent lives with his sister Ida(Parsons) and together, they run the motel and the farm. Farmer Vincent smokes his own meat and sells it within a 100 mile radius. People come from all around to taste his meat as it is so different and he says that he never uses chemicals. Little do his customers know that the meat is actually human flesh and that Vincent spends his nights setting up traps on the road to catch vehicles as they pass and make them crash so that he can get more people for his secret 'garden'. His 'garden' is comprised of all the people he has caught and buried up to their necks in his garden. They have all had their vocal chords severed so that they cannot scream. They all have sacks over their heads also. They are fed until they are ready to be chopped up and smoked!
A motorcycle crashes one night and he hauls the male rider to his garden, but he saves the young woman, Teri(Nina Axelrod) and he brings her to his house. The next morning, Vincent's brother, Sheriff Bruce(Paul Linke) arrives and he is taken with Teri. He knows nothing about Vince and Ida's activities. Vincent tells her that her boyfriend died in the accident and that he buried him. Teri goes to see the grave. It seems to be okay with the Sheriff...Teri decides to stay at the motel(she MUST have hit her head hard!) with Ida and Vincent. She knows nothing of their gathering human meat for their smoking factory and she thinks that they are real good folk! So, we see Vincent and Ida at work for most of the movie. Vince catches them and Ida helps him to 'plant' them in the garden. Soon, they have plenty of people there. Bruce, meanwhile, is falling for Teri and he takes her to a movie- but then they watch it through binoculars(weird!). Teri doesn't seem to mind!There are some laugh out loud moments in this movie and that is one of them.
Then, Teri begins to lust after Vincent! It is too weird! He saves her from drowning after Ida tries to kill her(!) and she bares all for him, but he wants to marry her before they do anything(great morals there- he doesn't seem to mind killing and cooking people though!). It gets weirder as they arrange to be wed and Teri seems happy about that! They drug her with champagne and then go about their 'work' with some bodies. They hypnotize three victims with some coloured lights and then kill them with a tractor(you have to see it to believe it!). Bruce hears about the wedding and he is very upset. He comes around snooping as he knows that there is something not right about all this. He finds the motorcycle that Teri was on and he sees that it got caught in a trap, along with lots of cars. He puts two and two together and he goes in search of Teri to get her out of there. He finds her and they are about to leave when Ida catches them and hits Bruce.
Meanwhile, the humans in the garden have loosened themselves and they are trying to get out. Ida takes Teri to the smoking factory and goes back for her brother. She is ambushed by the victims who have broken free. Teri tries to escape but Vincent catches her. He ties her up and then he goes about his business. One of the victims breaks through the roof, but he is quickly subdued by Vincent. Bruce comes to the rescue and there is a fight with chainsaws(A little nod to a well-known movie!) and Bruce manages to get Vincent. Before he dies, Vincent leaves everything to Bruce and tells him that he was a hypocrite because - wait for it- he uses PRESERVATIVES in his meat!!!!! Then he dies and the two escape...Oh yeah, the o on the sign explodes, leaving the place as 'Motel Hell'!!!! This was a very funny horror movie and I liked it a lot. I am going to give this a 7.5/10.

1 comment:

  1. I would like to invite you to participate in our internacional anthology. Your texts are very interesting and they complete our sense of universal stile and a cultural trip by the literary form.
    I hope that you acept aou project of literary inclusion

    Nova coletanea
    www.novacoletanea.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

Please leave any comments here!

No insults or offensive/obscene comments please!