"Motel Hell"(1980)d/Kevin Connor

What we have here,woprophiles,is the only movie I can think of that actually makes the viewer hunger for beef jerky.Happens everytime I throw it in.I see people gnawing delicious hunks o'smoked meat and it's off to the convenient I go,in search of a sizeable strip of seasoned animal flesh to tear into.In fact,if Vincent n' Ida's lucrative meat business actually existed IRL,it's pretty safe to say they could tell me all about the "secret garden" in lurid detail,and the result would only be yours cruelly buying a family pack box anyway.
Scientific studies have proven time and again,that it is physiologically impossible to dislike this movie.I suppose one could cite the ineptitude of director Connor's earlier efforts like "At The Earth's Core",or "The Land That Time Forgot" or the film's meager box office returns as proof towards its deficiency,but one would be a total snobbish douchebag if one did that,afterall,wouldn't one?One my favorite horror comedies out of the eighties,that I caught regularly on that big,black,beautiful cable box for years,and one I actually missed during its theatrical run,if you can believe that one(there haven't been many of those,obviously).I distinctly remember being hella jealous over my buddy Cowboy X scoring the highly choice one sheet years later,despite having more one sheets than walls myself.I've always been a sucker for theatrical release posters over here,as anyone who visited my apartment in Allentown will attest to.Bare wall space makes waste,as I've been known to say.Despite the film's miniscule budget hindering any chances of seeing the original terror angle come to fruition,what's left is a satirical tribute to the gore drenched seventies,and a cult classic in every sense of the term.I actually made the mistake of checking out a few other sites' reviews on the title the other night,and came away with a hardcore brain ache,from trying to salvage some insight,humour,or personality from their posts,that didn't go easily into the night without the help of a couple vicodin 500's in the process.Remind me never to do that again,huh,folks?

Couldn't we get something like this done to Sean Penn already? Seriously.
There's no more delectable,regional treat than the mouth-watering smoked meats of Farmer Vincent(Rory Calhoun),a farmer/butcher/small businessman who runs the Motel Hello with his rotund sister Ida(Nancy Parsons).We find him procuring the special,secret ingredients one evening,after shooting out a motorcycle's tires on a nearby country road and snaring a grizzled old biker named Bo and his jailbait old lady named Terry(Nina Axlerod).Though Bo ends up planted from the neck down in the pair's secret garden with his vocal cords cut and a burlap sack tied around his head,Vincent takes a shine to the young lady and brings her into his home to recover.The next morning,Bruce(Paul Linke),a gullible goober and naturally,the town sheriff,pays his brother Vincent a visit,when he's informed of the motorcycle accident and consequent burying of the bereaved biker in a makeshift grave on the hill.Upon hearing the tragic news,Terry decides to stay on at the farm and help the siblings with their work.Meanwhile it's business as usual for Vincent and Ida,as the burlap sacks beyond the hidden fence keep adding up.The health inspector arrives to give the farmer's pigs the once over and ends up buried in the soil when he tries to get nosy.Then a cheesy punk band called Ivan and the Terribles get their tour van hijacked and find themselves planted.He then traps a pair of dames on the road with lifesize cardboard cows and a tank of knockout gas.Finally,a pair of swingers lured to the motel by a false advertisement get roped and gassed after the promise of kinky carnality.The flames of jealousy spark when Vincent mentions teaching Terry the tricks of his trade,after which Ida tries to drown the new girl after slicing her inner tube in the lake,only to have Vincent save her in the nick of time,endearing himself to the young woman in the process.

Terry(Nina Axlerod)finally notices the modest erection I've gotten over her.
Bruce also has eyes for his brother's new tenant,but when she rejects his advances,he jealously starts to investigate the string of accidents in the area,theorizing that the farmer had a part in them.Meanwhile three of the punks have fattened up real pretty-like in the secret garden,so Vincent and Ida hypnotize them into a trance where they're unaware their necks are being snapped by nooses fastened to the siblings' tractor and pulled lifelessly from the ground.The gruesome harvest frees up Bo enough for the biker to free himself while Bruce sneaks back to the motel to inform Terry of his findings and get her to leave while she still can.Ida overhears the sheriff while fixing herself a midnight snack(probably the grossest scene in the movie)and knocks the hayseed abruptly the fuck out,taking Terry to the meatpacking plant at gunpoint.Realizing the girl isn't cool with headless human torsos being smoked on meathooks,Vincent ties her to a conveyor belt,sealing her to a fate of ending up as just so many honey bbq meat sticks herself.When Ida goes back to the motel to get Bruce,she is overtaken by a crowd of hissing food "animals" who have all been freed by the biker,who gets strangled in his weakened state by Vincent in the meat room.Bruce grabs his shotgun and heads out to save the day,but is surprised to find his angry brother wearing a decapitated pig head over his own and wielding a chainsaw.A chainsaw fight ensues with Vincent taking a spinning blade to the labonza,fatally wounding him.Bruce frees the girl,and listens as Vincent makes a final sputtering confession,while impaled on the buzzsaw.He was a hypocrite afterall,for using preservatives!Out in the secret garden they find a dead Ida buried face down in one of the plots under a burlap sack.Terry suggests they burn the evil motel,and as they walk past the neon sign the ever-flickering letter O shorts out,leaving the viewer to gaze upon titular irony instead.

Vincent and Ida(Rory Calhoun and Nancy Parsons) lovingly gaze upon their future fritters,composed of all types of critters.
The late Calhoun who will be remembered for his massive body of western work,also appeared in genre films like Night of the Lepus(1972),Revenge of Bigfoot(1979),Angel(1984),and Avenging Angel(1985).The late Parsons,who did a lot of television work, will always be Beaulah Balbricker from Bob Clark's Porky's(1982) to me.John Ratzenberger,famous as Cliff Clavin on Cheers,makes a cameo as the drummer in the hijacked punk band.Wolfman Jack is also aboard as a hypocritically memorable man of the cloth.Monique St Pierre and Rosanne Katon,the cardboard cow victims,were both Playboy centerfolds in the seventies.2002 saw the dvd release of the movie as part of MGM's Midnight Movies series,on a double bill with Alan Orsmby's superior Gein-take,Deranged(1974).Make no mistakes,folks,this is one entertaining and morbidly funny ride you'll want to take multiple times.On the scale,three wops.

After experiencing Vincent's strange courtship methods,Terry began to have second thoughts about their generation gap-bridging relationship.