On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
In October 2024, we’re doing the Midnight Movie Monster Mash with films that challenge our understanding of evil characters and creatures just in time for Halloween.
First, read the spoiler-free BAIT: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, come back for the BITE: a breakdown of all the spoiler-y bits you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.
The Bait: A Genre Cannibal Comedy Worth Preserving — Maggots and All
Measured against classics like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and contemporary farmhouse fare like “Pearl,” “Motel Hell” is no blue ribbon winner. Still, this outrageously funky genre blend — a pitch-black horror comedy about screwy siblings turning motorists and motel guests into scrumptious jerky — deserves its a special spot in the greater midnight movie pantry.
From swingers seeking bestiality to an inexplicable hypnosis sequence, there’s more than meets the eye to this 1980 throwback known primarily for planting a field with human heads. “Motel Hell” is directed by Kevin Connor and hosted by famers Vincent (Rory Calhoun) and Ida Smith (Nancy Parsons): a brother-sister duo 30 years into a criminal scheme that’s made them a little too close. Incest is rarely quaint, and yet Ida turns the crush she won’t act on into a sidekick role that’s as strangely sweet as the taste of human flesh.
How the locally famous partners in anthropophagy managed to keep their slaughter house and its terrifying treats secret from their other brother, Sheriff Bruce (Paul Linke), for this long is anyone’s guess. When the beautiful Terry (Nina Axelrod) falls into Vincent’s clutches after a car accident she doesn’t know he caused supposedly “kills” her boyfriend, the two develop a bizarre attraction. Soon, the jealous Bruce and envious Ida take notice and the timers on Terry’s life and Vincent’s enterprise start ticking.
That backwards love quadrangle is the main plot you’ll follow while staying at “Motel Hell,” which is a slight misnomer. Although this low-brow satire is set at the siblings’ roadside inn and feel very much like a collection of novelty-themed rooms, overnight accommodations don’t make for its best scares. Instead this tangy and terrifying agricultural extravaganza is peppered with gross-out torture that leans heavy into freaky food humor while slow-cooking its wildly inhumane kills.
Written by brothers Robert and Steven-Charles Jaffe, “Motel Hell” was deemed a cult classic sometime back. It’s an acquired taste with a bloated runtime (you’ll spend a lot of time watching Ida and Vincent tend to that aforementioned field of heads), but surprises as much as any mystery meat. Grab some bibs and brace your ribs; these reheated horror laughs are still finger lickin’ good.
“Motel Hell” is streaming with AMC+ and is available to rent or buy on most VOD platforms.
The Bite: Tobe Hooper Almost Served This
Check back in a feature-length beat… Are you watching “Motel Hell”?
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
- “The War of the Gargantuas” Dares to Ask Which Kaiju Monsters Have Souls
- How Ant Timpson and Tim League Made a Midnight Masterclass With 26 Horror Shorts in “The ABCs of Death”
- “Saturday the 14th”: It’s Jason vs. Julie Corman in New World Pictures’ Horror Spoof from 1981
- Want an Even Worse “Carrie”? Sean Byrne’s “The Loved Ones” Belongs on Your Dance Card
