Motel Hell (1980)

Vincent and his younger sister Ida run a motel called Motel Hello, but despite this film’s title, the motel is irrelevant. What’s more important to the story is the farm they run that’s attached to it, where they raise and slaughter pigs for jerky everyone in town eats. Only, something’s not quite right about this farm’s meat.

For some reason, this movie starts incredibly slow; I almost turned it off and watched something else. I was looking for some insanity and laughs that come with old slashers, and the beginning took too long to set up. Thankfully I hung in because man, oh man, did I get what I was asking for.

Wrong Turn borrowed this movie’s idea - Vincent sets up some traps to cause accidents on back roads. The accidents are bad enough to incapacitate but the aim is not to kill - he and Ida have ideas about what they’re going to do with the new “animals” they’ve captured. Their garden setup, where they “plant” their new possessions, is extremely creepy, as are Vincent and Ida themselves - hats off to the actors for their performances - being that they are batshit crazy small town folk with a sinister agenda. The scares end there, though, because the rest of the movie, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, is hilarious.