Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983)

In Nowhere, U.S.A (although a friend of mine who saw it with me was convinced it was Canada for some reason), Evelyn, the owner of a shoddy little trailer motel, spends a few years in a mental asylum. She's brought home, only to later kill her teenaged daughter in a hysterical fit of rage. After convincing the authorities that it was an accident and mourning her daughter, Evelyn opens the hotel for business. Unfortunately for her costumers, she's slowly going mad again, haunted by the ghost of her daughter and afraid of being sent back to the ward again...

With a tagline stolen from, of all things, Crazy Fat Ethel II (compare that film's "Don't disturb Ethel...she ALREADY is!" to Mountain Motel Massacre's "Please don't disturb Evelyn. She ALREADY is!"), and the hokey cover that depicted a blood-soaked woman leering insanely from a motel door numbered "13," my attention was caught by this flick. (Unsurprisingly though, the woman on the cover bares little resemblence to the actual killer.)

The movie starts off promisingly, with Evelyn's daughter contacting her dead father in a poor rural American version of the Victorian seance. Meanwhile, outside, Evelyn does a bit of gardening with a sharp sickle (later to be, you guessed it, her murder weapon) and-just as the daughter expresses her concerns about her mother's sanity-Evelyn takes her anger out on one of her daughter's "critters." When Evelyn goes back and finds her daughter immersed in the "black arts," Evelyn goes off the deep end and kills her in a fit of blind rage.

These are the most effective scenes in the movie, believe it or not. The rural seance had some really nice touches, with varous small animals and pictures of dead people scattered over crude dirt walls. Even more impressive was the way Evelyn's murder of her daughter was depicted. We don't actually see Evelyn do the deed per se, but we do see the camera whirl around, the sickle flying, and blood spattering on the walls. Whoda thunk that a low-budget horror movie would actually attempt to capture what a fit of insanity must not only look, but feel like, through the killer herself? It was a nice and much appreciated touch to this battle-weary B-movie viewer. Sadly, though, my pessimism kicked in, and I thought, "It's going to go downhill from here, I just know it." I wish for once I could stop being right all the time. I admit, the initial scenes do create an effective atmpsphere for the film, one that, in a way, is rarely dropped. Not only is it the usual dreary feeling one sees in some slasher flicks, but it also manages to be uniquely rural without leaning too far over into camp territory. This isn't the mostly harmless country of rednecks, WWF, and married cousins. This is the country of Flannery O' Connor, with dirt roads that seem to go on forever through deep forests that you don't think have even seen a civilized human being, and with half-collapsed farm houses dating back from even before the Civil War...

Unfortunately, the characters aren't even half as provocative as the atmosphere. While it's good to see a slasher film that has a mostly adult cast, the characters are little better than the one-dimensional cannon fodder you usually see. While they occaisonally show the illusion of depth, it's really nothing but that. The victims, all of whom by design or circumstance converge upon the motel,include: two would-be starlets (both of whom reminded me somewhat of Michele in The Girl in Gold Boots), a sleazy record producer (who is actually a much tamer version of Buzz from the same film), a hick preacher, the token black guy (both of whom are actually the most interesting and likeable characters in the movie, really), and a young married couple on their "honeymoon." Of course, there's also the sherrif, who comes in to save the day. Believe it or not, though, the actual hero of the film is the sleazy producer (he even has the moustache for the role!), which makes it just a little difficult to root for him.

To be fair, the movie avoids all the old slasher film cliches. The black guy is actually last to die, and of the two starlets it's the one that actually gets in bed with said sleazy producer that lives to the end. Unfortunately, the killer herself, Evelyn, isn't that much fun. She only has one tool for the job, her sickle, and, while the idea of her being able to creep around in the catacombs under the motel and sneak in the room to deposit deadly snakes or insects or kill is interesting at first, it runs its course quickly. Evelyn does have her moments; such as when she hears her dead daughter's voice, or when she says in a maternal tone "Look at you, you're a mess" to one of her victims (who is already suffering from a snake bite) before slitting his throat, but most of the time is wasted on just showing her sneaking around in poorly lit scenes. Add in the film's slow pacing and a little bad editing, and you have a film that is dull where it should be suspenseful.

While I wouldn't buy a copy or even rent it again, memories of it don't cause me to go into spasms. I guess that says something positive, compared to some of the other movies on this site.