Review #49: 'Motel Hell' (1980)

Vincent Smith (Rory Calhoun) and sister Ida Smith (Nancy Parsons) run a road side motel in some backwater town, in redneck country USA. As an addition to the motel, they also sell the finest meat in a 100 mile radius. They've been selling this 'special' meat for 30 years, and has become quite the famous brand around town and beyond. As the sign leading to the house says 'Farmer Vince's Smoked Meat: This Is It! Well, as you can imagine, from a horror-comedy, the meat is of the human variety.

The film opens with Vince watching as a couple on a motorcycle pass in the night, only to be purposely thrown from the road. Whilst collecting the meat, Vince looks at the girl, Terry (Nina Axelrod), finding her attractive decides that he wants to keep her alive (I'm assuming that his thought patterns on this one either centred on the beauty, or maybe he just thought the film needed an outsider (sic)). Terry is thusly integrated into the 'family'.

We soon discover that Vince and Ida have a secret garden where the human victims are buried up to their necks in the ground to be fattened up and harvested for meat. A pretty standard affair. The film does work as both a slight horror pastiche of films that preceded it such as the obvious The Texas Chain-saw Massacre (1974). The humour is suitable for the environment that it occupies. Rory Calhoun's debonair Vince (all smiles and charm) works fantastically, and Nancy Parsons Ida is a strange and comic delight at moments.

Directed by British filmmaker Kevin Connor whose previous work was in the '70's fantasy, Doug McClure starers such as The Land That Time Forgot (1975), and At the Earths Core (1976), represent nothing of what appears in this picture. It's possibly a strange choice. However, Connor holds his own in a very obvious slice of Americana. It is a relatively well-made film.

At the end of the movie, as the characters outside the knowledge of the meats source, find out the truth, Vince battles his police officer brother, in a chain-saw duel (well of course!!). Vince wears a pigs head throughout this scene (probably not necessarily a stylistic choice, but a practical way of not putting Calhoun through the physicality of the dual - well, I'm guessing). his final words are one of the funniest moments in the film. He staggers with a chain-saw stuck fast in his side. He laments "My whole life's a lie. I used preservatives."


Directed by: Kevin Connor
Starring: Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy