The Hot Spot Rating
Motel Hell (1980)
Cast: Rory Calhoun, Nancy Parsons, and Nina Axelrod
Director: Kevin Connor
Synopsis: Delicious dark horror with a strong Ed Gein undercurrent. A change of scene from an era dominated by Slashers.
“It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters.”— Original tagline
“Delightfully disgusting.”— Roger Ebert“A grisly little gem.”— Time Out
“One of the funniest horror films of the 1980s.”— Empire“A wickedly funny blend of horror and satire.”— AllMovie
“A cult classic.”— The New York Times
“Macabre, absurd and surprisingly clever.”— TV Guide
“Equal parts slasher movie and black comedy.”— Slant Magazine
“One of the strangest horror comedies ever made.”— Bloody Disgusting
“Disturbing and hilarious in the same breath.”— Cinefantastique
My first-ever trip to the United States happened to be in October, right in the middle of an unprecedented horror movie boom, with cinemas littered with horror titles like never before. It was only a short trip, and I had to manage my time shrewdly in order to take in as much as possible. Back in the UK, we used to get films months after their American release, and many of the lesser-known or more brutal horror movies barely made it across the Atlantic at all during those early days of home video.
The cinemas were showing Dressed to Kill, Fade to Black, The Fog was still playing, Maniac was on, Mother’s Day had just opened, Terror Train was screening, Phantasm could still be found, and Motel Hell was due to open the following Friday. I was like a kid in a candy store.
We happened to be shacked up in some sleazy hotel bang in the middle of Times Square, and believe me, in 1980 it was a far cry from the sanitised, family-friendly tourist attraction it later became. Times Square was arguably the sleaziest square mile on the planet back then, with 42nd Street being the jewel in the crown. The walk with my highly respectable father to the Greyhound station remains etched in my memory forever. Where there were once topless bars and sex booths now stand Madame Tussauds and the Disney Store.
Personally speaking, I was in heaven. A dozen different horror movies were screening within a stone’s throw of my hotel room. The sleaze, the grime, the drugs, the winos, the prostitutes — they barely registered with me at all.
I had already earmarked the Embassy Cinema a couple of blocks down Broadway, where I was due to catch Terror Train before Motel Hell replaced it the next day. I rolled up to the cinema around 9:30 in the morning for the first showing and watched Jamie Lee Curtis, David Copperfield, and that glorious Groucho Marx mask entirely alone in a fairly large theatre — an experience that was far more unnerving than anything on the screen itself.
On my way out, I picked up a ticket for the opening-night screening of Motel Hell, expecting a lively packed-house atmosphere.
Sure enough, being Times Square, there was an eclectic and knowledgeable crowd gathered for Motel Hell — all pumped up, lubricated, and popcorned-up for ninety minutes of carnage. It took a while, however, for the audience to come to terms with the film’s sluggish pacing and the fact that they were not about to be terrified out of their wits, but instead treated to a dark little black comedy that pokes fun at the whole Ed Gein-inspired backwoods horror genre, particularly The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho.
The film revolves around Farmer Vincent, who has earned a reputation for producing the finest smoked meats not just in America, but supposedly in the entire world. People travel from far and wide to sample his famous wares. Vincent and his companion Ida run the business with great pride and obvious enjoyment, lovingly preparing, curing, and smoking their meats with diligence and care.
Farmer Vincent also happens to enjoy designing elaborate bear traps, which he uses to snare fresh victims. These unfortunate souls are then blended with swine meat to create the mouthwatering delicacies for which he is so renowned.
The method is simple enough: Vincent lays traps in various ingenious forms and lures potential “meat” into the area. Once captured, they are handed over to Ida, who deftly operates on their vocal cords so they can be fattened up like Hansel and Gretel without all the tiresome screaming and whining.
The humour is laid on thick throughout. There are one or two genuinely memorable lines, and the film moves along pleasantly enough as a macabre black comedy that remains consistently amusing, even if it rarely reaches the outright lunacy of something like Braindead or Army of Darkness. The humour here is more sly grins and dark chuckles rather than full-blown laugh-out-loud insanity.
At times the film even becomes faintly grim, though never genuinely frightening, which may explain why portions of the opening-night audience were beginning to grow restless before the climax finally injects some much-needed energy into proceedings.
Those expecting a genuinely scary horror film may well come away disappointed. Those with patience and an appreciation for dark humour, however, may find themselves warming to it considerably. The film has actually aged rather well and plays far better once you know not to expect a terrifying experience — because that is very clearly not what it is trying to be.
Motel Hell remains a mildly amusing but refreshingly offbeat entry from an era dominated by endless Halloween and Friday the 13th imitators. Perhaps its greatest strength is precisely that it refused to follow the crowd. Whatever its flaws, it was certainly no clone, but a strange little entity entirely of its own.
Pleasantly surprised to later discover that director Kevin Connor was British.
