Movie Review: Motel Hell (1980)

Motel Hell is one of those cult classic horror movies that I’ve put off watching for a long time for no real reason. I think I got it mixed up a bit with sort of similar movies. It has the cannibalism setup of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (really more the second one, come to think of it). It’s got the motel setting of Psycho. And it’s got the weird kind of goofy tone of something like Creepshow (not as comedic as like The Evil Dead II or Return of the Living Dead).

And yet I really enjoyed it.

I just realized now that this will be the second month in a row where a cannibalism-based dark comedy will rank very highly in my best first watches of the month list, but that’s fine, when they’re as good as this and Eating Raoul.

Because I was laughing pretty consistently.

Like so many other horror comedies, I can’t imagine actually being scared by this, despite some mildly creepy imagery. The performances are so….well, they’re not really comedic, but they’re not creepy either. They’re incredibly sincere, which kind of makes the comedic tone work a bit better. Had they been goofier, this movie would have been a lot worse.

Anyways, I liked it. You’ll probably know if you’ll like it or not.

Rating: 7/10