No, really, I'm not kidding
For about half of Motel Hell, I was concerned that I'd stumbled across another one of my alt.horror "blind spots" - one of those pesky movies everybody seems to love but me. But it's hard not to warm up to it by the end, and once it's over, Motel Hell is certainly enjoyable, though I think a far cry from worthy of the hype (as if any movie is worthy of its hype).
Recently outed leading man Tex Calhoun - wait, not Tex Calhoun, it's Rory Calhoun - stars as Farmer Vincent, who runs the Motel Hello (the sign ain't working) with his sister (Nancy Parsons). He's also a small-business meat packer whose special ingredient keeps everybody in the county coming back for more and coming back often. That special ingredient happens to be unlucky people who drive by and are trapped, with variously silly methods, by Vincent, buried up to their necks in his garden, their vocal cords cut so they can't scream. After they're sufficiently tender, or something, they're put out of their misery and they re-enter the food chain. Whether this is meant to reflect some real-life meat industry cruelty, I don't know (though they do pack those chickens in mighty tight, don't they?).
One day Vincent blasts the tires out of a motorcycle and sidecar and hauls the driver out to be dealt with, but the girl in the sidecar (Nina Axelrod) is okay, so he saves her. He tells her that her lover had died and that he's already buried him in accordance with county law. She seems a little upset about it, but not so upset that she isn't soon enough on a date with Vincent's goofy cop brother (Paul Linke) and begging Vincent to marry her by the end of the film.
Like I said, the first half of this one just didn't involve me much at all. Too many cheesy rhymes (and yes, I hate that "all kinds of critters" line), impossible-to-miss-in-the-credits John "Cliff Clayven" Ratzenberger doesn't say anything, Vincent's sister is just annoying, and it's hard to get a handle on the character of Vincent yet. Things pick up in the second half, though; I'm not sure when the turning point was, but I was giggling fairly consistently throughout.
Particularly amusing was Vincent's attempt to communicate to the rock band in his garden (Cliffie's on drums) about the "trip" they're gonna take, while showing them this hypnotic, psychedelic light display. And, of course, the line "He's the biggest cannibal in the whole county!" is probably the funniest line I've heard in at least half a year.
It's hard to miss the influence this must have had on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; aside from the climactic homage to the original film, the notion of a small-business human-meat packer with real human concerns on the side is well exploited. TCM2's Drayton Sawyer was a family man first and foremost, but Farmer Vincent is content to be something of a cultural and entrepreneurial staple of his community. They both have values beyond simply being cannibal maniacs. And they both have climactic chainsaw duels, chains of both saws never snagging on each other. Though I do wonder just how the hell that guy is seeing out of that pig's head. For that matter, it's hard to tell if that's supposed to be just a mask of a pig's head, or a poorly-realized attempt at an "actual" pig's head.
If you haven't already noticed (you must be new if you haven't), Motel Hell is somewhat of a long-running inside joke at alt.horror, the stock answer to any "what movie is this?" question, no matter how obviously wrong it is (e.g. Q: "Could anybody identify this movie for me? I remember this movie from a long time ago, it all took place on an airplane, and the airplane was knocked by a ground-based nuclear explosion into space, and the airplane crashed on the moon, where the people inside had to survive while under siege from moon-mutants. Anybody remember what this movie is?" A: "Motel Hell."). I've tried sporadically to replace this with Gymkata, but it never took off.
Directed by Kevin Connor, who mostly works in TV. Watch for Wolfman Jack in dual cameos as himself (in voice only) and one of those television evangelists you just know is gonna die nasty in a movie like this. Unfortunately, in this case...
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