MOTEL HELL

Kevin Connor's film opens well enough, with Farmer Vincent (veteran actor Rory Calhoun) sat on the porch of his quiet country motel. He smokes a pipe contently as Lance Rubin's soft score adds an air of calm to the mild night setting. To Vincent's right, a neon sign glows in red: "MOTEL HELLO". The "O" suffers from a permanently faulty electrical connection, and therefore constantly flickers between on and off - often lending the impression that the sign reads "MOTEL HELL"...

The music takes a sinister turn as Vincent goes indoors and swiftly reappears armed with his shotgun. The farmer hops in his truck and takes a midnight drive to a quiet spot near the neighbouring woods.

Overlooking the quiet main road from his hiding spot, Vincent lies in wait for the next vehicle to appear. Before long, a motorcycle and sidecar combo roars into view - only to blow a tyre and spin off the road seconds later. Racing to the scene of the 'accident', Vincent observes that the cyclist is dead, and humps his corpse onto the back of his truck. The female passenger - Terry (Nina Axelrod) - is alive but concussed. Vincent tosses her into the truck's passenger seat and returns to the motel.

As opening scenes go, the first ten minutes are quite tame - though they are well-shot and darkly humorous (the neon sign, etc). They're also nicely atmospheric thanks to Rubin's score, and the smoke-filled night air breathing menace into the woodland scenery. And things don't change much from here on in.

The plot is wafer-thin, and anyone who spends more than ten minutes trying to figure out what the secret ingredient may be in Farmer Vincent's celebrated beef steaks hasn't seen enough horror films ...

Okay, so Farmer Vincent and his aide Ida (the excellent Nancy Parsons) run their quiet motel, where the sign outside always reads NO VACANCIES, as a front to hide their true business - a hidden garden based at the back of the motel where people are buried up to their necks in compost and force-fed natural foods until they are eventually ready to be harvested, and 'smoked'.

The film moves from one episodic confrontation to the next, with victims including a kinky couple, a nosy health inspector and a punk called Ivan And The Terribles - yes, that is John Ratzenberger (Cliff from TV sitcom "Cheers") as the drummer!

As with the opening scenes, each terror scene is handled competently by director Kevin Connor (AT THE EARTH'S CORE; FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE), with a nice balance between the humorous one-liners and the eerie ambience that keeps us watching in anticipation.

Alas, however, MOTEL HELL holds back on hardcore horror trappings. And the grue is minimal. Which, while not being essential to make a good film, is pretty much what you expect when you come to a film such as this.

The film has two major strong points - the first being Robert and Steven-Charles Jaffe's script. At times extremely witty and offering Calhoun some great lines, where the script fails in providing background for many characters it does however give Vincent a nutty religious bent (the religious motif is carried further with the recurring cameo by Wolfman Jack as a TV evangelist), and even shows him to be delusional in believing his actions will help reduce the planet's over-population and feed the rest of the world. Wow, an eco-friendly psycho!

The second strong point is the performances. Calhoun, in particular, appears to be loving every minute of playing the devilish Vincent. Parsons turns the thankless role of Vincent's side-kick Ida into her own, with an unnerving amount of backwoods authenticity. Paul Linke is notable too as the likeable (yet unlikely) hero Bruce.

Bruce is not only the local sheriff, but he's Vincent's brother and is madly in love with Terry - who has stuck around to recover from the opening crash, and the shock of learning of her boyfriend's death.

Overall, while competently made and with some wonderful set-piece scenes (the slaughterhouse finale is worth checking out - and uncut here, unlike the pre-cert UK VHS release on Warner), MOTEL HELL promises more than it manages to deliver. Perhaps the fact that it was distributed by United Artists/MGM goes some way to explaining why it never really hits the unapologetic heights of other horror films from its era (1980). Consequently, we get a film that is always interesting but lacking the energy and balls-out commitment to the genre that could have elevated it to genuinely classic status.

Arrow Video bring MOTEL HELL to blu-ray (a worldwide first) in a stunning new HD transfer which presents the film, uncut, in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Served up as an MPEG4-AVC file in glorious full 1080p resolution, The print used is clean, colours are bolder than ever before and there is a crisp clarity - to exterior day scenes in particular - that has not been witnessed before. With deep blacks and a newfound sense of depth to interior sequences, this is the best MOTEL HELL has ever looked on domestic release.

English audio comes in a pleasingly noise-free 2.0 stereo PCM mix.

The disc opens to an animated main menu page. From there, pop-up menus include a scene-selection menu allowing access to the film via 12 chapters.

MOTEL HELL has never been blessed in the extras department. Until now - it really gets the Arrow treatment.

Extras begin with a laidback commentary track from Connor and moderator Calum Waddell. While not the greatest conversationalist (at times he seems positively contradictory), Connor is coaxed into providing ample details of interest throughout: his thoughts on the inequality of nude scenes in films, recollections on the various actors, his distaste for the slasher films that MOTEL HELL was being measured against back in 1980, and so on. Surprisingly, Connor refutes any suggestion that the screenplay includes social commentary. An interesting observation though is made as to how the climactic chain saw battle was designed as an homage to THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, only for that film's sequel to rip this off a few years later! The icing on this cake is that Tobe Hooper was originally lined up to direct MOTEL HELL too...

Linke gives a good, light-hearted interview in a 14-minute featurette entitled "Another Head on the Chopping Block". He has fond memories of the shoot, which result in some interesting anecdotes.

"From Glamour to Gore" is an 11-minute chat with co-star Rosanne Katon, who offers an affable insight into her transition from Playboy playmate to bit-part horror film actor.

"Ida, Be Thy Name" takes an 18-minute look at females in fear films. Actresses such as Elissa Dowling and Chantelle Albers offer musings over what makes a good villainess alongside journalists for the likes of Twitch, interspersed with clips from films like SPIDER BABY and, predominantly, MOTEL HELL. Ida's possible influence on MISERY's Annie Wilkes character has already been discussed by this point in the commentary track, but the talking heads gathered here offer a valid women's perspective of what makes her so interesting. The latter half of this interesting thesis explores the role of female killers in the likes of BASIC INSTINCT, BLACK SUNDAY and DRESSED TO KILL.

"Back to the Backwoods" sees Dave Parker, director of THE HILLS RUN RED, discussing why MOTEL HELL remains popular to this day. This engaging featurette reveals Parker to be a highly informed fan and runs at 10 minutes in length.

Finally, the film's original theatrical trailer is 2-and-a-half-minutes long, and is good fun.

Also included in this dual format set but unavailable for review purposes are a DVD with the same content in standard definition, reversible cover artwork and a collectors' booklet containing liner notes from Kim Newman,

The Southern Gothic flavour is tasty, the performances are enjoyable and the set-pieces will linger in your mind. MOTEL HELL isn't perfect but it is fun. And Arrow yet again have produced a world-best disc for a cult horror film.

Review by Stuart Willis