'80s Slashers: Motel Hell (1980)


A strange, forgotten early '80s slasher/cannibal hybrid, 'Motel Hell' plays like a tongue in cheek homage to earlier meat classic 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', while also see-sawing between gross-out gore and silly over the top acting.
Deranged farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun) and his younger sister Ida (Nancy Parsons) spend their nights cooking up the body parts of strangers that they've ensnared near their motel Hello (except one of the letters is bust so it spells out Hell instead). After capturing their victim's Vincent takes them to a secret garden near the motel, there he slashes their vocal chords and plants them in the ground up to their necks, until he's ready to turn them into his famous smoked meats.

One night Vincent traps a passing couple on a motorbike by shooting out the tires of the vehicle,  the guy Bo is placed in the garden, but Vincent takes an instant shine to the young girl Terry. He even carries her up to the motel to care for her injuries, much to his sister's disgust. While Terry recovers from her injures she first has to contend with the unwanted advances of Vincent's brother the sheriff (Paul Linke) - who is unaware of Vincent and Ida's night time proclivities - and later the murderous Ida.
 
'Motel Hell' works effectively enough as a dark comedy with gross-out horror, but it does severely lacks in the actual scare department - save for the pig mask Vincent occasionally wears. The morose garden, although a nicely twisted idea, is sadly for the most part squandered. As for the acting it's suitably bizarre, but always entertaining, from Parsons of 'Porky's fame as the hog like Ida, to Wolfman Jack ('American Graffiti') as a TV evangelist, and particularity the scene chewing Rory Calhoun as the psychotically unhinged cannibal cook.

Overall this is a fun time-waster with some choice cult moments, it's just too hampered by a meandering plot and amateurish acting, if your a fan of chainsaw heavy cannibal movies, this could easily pass an hour, just keep your expectations suitably low.

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