Motel Hell (1980) Review
A number of years ago, my cousin and I discovered a
sub-genre (more of a sub-sub-genre, really) of horror we can only refer to as
“food-related-horror” and have made it a tradition to watch a new one every
Thanksgiving. For the final reviews of Schlocktober, I’m going to look at five
such films, concluding with the one that started our tradition in the first
place. First up is Motel Hell, which
is one of the best the sub-sub-genre has to offer.
Farmer Vincent is quite the entrepreneur. He owns a motel,
called Motel Hello (but the O is burnt out, hence the title), and a lucrative
sausage business, which he operates on his farm, so he’s also a farmer, and a
butcher. His meat is renowned, because as the slogan goes, “It takes all kinds
of critters to make farmer Vincent fritters!” But mostly, it just takes people.
Vincent and his sister catch innocent victims and bury them up to their necks
in their secret garden, cutting their vocal cords out so they can’t scream for
help, and keep sacks over their heads to hide them from anyone who might look
in on their crop. They feed them, and once they’re ripe, kill them and butcher
them. It’s a pretty sick and sadistic premise, but plays out in a pretty
comedic fashion.
Motel Hell is
almost a serious horror movie, but not quite. The filmmakers intended for it to
be played as straight horror, but like the original Evil Dead, the low budget made it evolve into a horror-comedy
hybrid that still managed to be creepy, but also purposefully funny, and just
plain campy. A number of moments are meant to be darkly comic, and they mostly
work. The heads poking out of the ground gargling is pretty disturbing, but the
camera lingers on them too long, to the point of becoming more goofy than
scary.
The characters are all quirky, but the bad ones are also a
little menacing at times. At other times, they’re just hilarious. One of the
funniest scenes has a kinky couple getting it on in their motel room, and
Vincent and his sister enter with the intention to tie them up and take them to
their garden, but the couple think they are just into bondage, so welcome them
into their room and laugh as they get tied up and gassed. It’s twisted, but
hilarious.
Right from the first five minutes, Motel Hell is entertaining, and continues to be for the majority of
its runtime. It all culminates in an epic chainsaw battle between Vincent and
his brother, with Vincent wearing a pig mask and laughing maniacally the entire
time. Motel Hell is certainly food
for thought. 
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