Motel Hell

1980 horror comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters." That slogan right there should turn any carnivore off Farmer Vincent's pork products. The sausage man sets up booby traps in order to kidnap travellers. He and his sister then bury them up to their heads in his garden and surgically remove their vocal cords. After fattening them up a bit, he is ready to use their flesh as the secret ingredient for his meat products. Yum!

My thoughts during the first fifteen minutes: "This is barely watchable. Why am I watching this crap?"

My thoughts after I figured out that this is a comedy: "This is actually pretty good, a mildly entertaining dark comedy. Cannibalism is always funny!"

My thoughts during a climactic fight scene which I won't spoil for you other than saying there's a chainsaw fight with one of the participants wearing a pig's head like a mask: "If this isn't the greatest thing I've ever seen, then where did this erection come from? Booyah!"

Nope, this one shouldn't have worked, and I fully expected this to be a terrible movie that I could laugh at and then trash here at shane-movies.blogspot.com. But it succeeds in being kinda creepy, and succeeds in being kinda funny, and it succeeds in being really entertaining. There's a completely ludicrous romance subplot and some moments when this gets a little too stupid. It's also called Motel Hell which probably costs it a few rating points automatically. But this was still a pleasant surprise. 1980 was a great year for John Ratzenberger, by the way. Superman II, The Empire Strikes Back, and Motel Hell? Sure they're minuscule parts, but how many other actors get to be in three blockbusters in one year?