FANTASIA OBSCURA: Hungry for Some Horror Comedy? This One Isn’t So Tasty
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you’re just sitting there watching it all, and it can be so hard to swallow…
Motel Hell (1980)
Distributed by: United Artists
Directed by: Kevin Connor
Country living. That’s a term you say to most folks, and they think of good, honest people using their hands to do honest, wholesome work.
Well, here’s the antithesis to that hokum:
We open with a shot of the porch of the Motel Hello, whose neon sign out front gets a short soon enough that gives us the flash of the film’s title. Sitting there is Vincent Smith (Roy Calhoun), who after a little spell turns on the “No Vacancy” sign before heading out to a turn in the road.
He sets himself up there and waits like any poacher would, traps set and shotgun at the ready if the trap doesn’t take out the prey first. And he’s successful, getting a biker, Bo (Everett Creach, who here made his last appearance as an actor while continuing his career as a stuntman for 14 more years afterwards), and his ride, Terry (Nina Axelrod).
Vincent looks at Terry in a way that’s different from how he looks at Bo, and he ends up taking her back to the hotel. This surprises Vincent’s sister Ida (Nancy Parsons) who’s not entirely sure about having her in her family’s space, but abides for a bit, letting her heal up from her “accident” while she and Vincent attend to the main business of the farm: Selling the regional specialty, Farmer Vincent’s smoked meats, which people drive from miles around to buy and taste.
And because it’s a farm, it of course has to be inspected by the state agricultural department, and when Bob (E. Hampton Beagle) the inspector comes a calling for a spot check, he decides to get a better look at Vincent’s operations, and show us what happened to Bo:
Yes, Vincent is burying captured victims in the ground up to their necks, slitting their throats, and then prepping them for processing. These folk Vince has out back are the secret ingredient in his smoked meats, and what makes them so dang tasty to everyone.
(Insert gross-out Jimmy Dean or Bob Evans joke here…)
And the majority of the film from here on out, having hit the big reveal only 24 minutes into it, concerns Vince and Ida harvesting their “special ingredients,” including a rock band on tour they ambushed named Ivan and the Terribles:
(For those thinking the drummer looks familiar: Yes, that is John Ratzenberger in that role…)
It’s not all wall-to-wall harvest like the morning farm report, though; there’s a subplot about Vincent’s interest in Terry, which sets up a conflict with Ida, who isn’t sure she’s cut out for the smoked meats business as anything other than product, and Sheriff Bruce Smith (Paul Linke), Vince and Ida’s brother, who is interested in Terry for himself but doesn’t care so much for carrying on his brother’s business.
Which is hard to fathom why these two men have an interest in her, as Axelrod is just not that interesting. Her character is poorly realized to begin with in the script, and she doesn’t put a lot of effort into working with what little she has. If there were a competition for “worst Scream Queen,” she would certainly be a finalist.
Ironically, Axelrod would soon after this film transition into a career as a casting director, doing better work putting the right person in their role than the people responsible for placing her here..
As for the rest of the cast, the only ones who really seem to be enjoying themselves are Calhoun and Parsons. There’s not a lot for anyone else to do in the script, and the only person who makes a brave effort to get the most out of how little he had was Wolfman Jack, who plays a preacher who Ida listens to over the television and Vincent reaches out to, to have as the officiant at his planned wedding to Terry.
Which seems to come out of nowhere, like most of the film. Supposedly envisaged originally as a straight-up horror gore fest, when the project went into turnaround they decided to up the humorous elements in the production. In the process of finding funny things, they ended up doing a lot of “homages” to Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, mainly as means by which to put the film to bed, having nowhere they felt they could go in an original manner.
It’s not a very hearty film, mild to taste and maybe a bit too greasy. The end result is a movie much like Farmer Vincent himself: Earnest, smiling all the time to try and lull you to feel safe around it, trying to offer a good product with ingredients that are definitely not kosher.
No, not a good reflection on country living, no sir…
NEXT TIME: When things are going so badly for you, you’d do just about anything for a song…
