Motel Hell is a B movie and everybody involved knows it. It takes 18 minutes before any blood is shown, and even then it is done in a way that intentionally elicits laughter. Actually there are a lot of moments that are played up for comedic effect. One could almost think this was a comedy film first and a horror film second. To that end I’m surprised there’s not much gore at all in the film.
You won’t recognize most of the names that are involved in Motel Hell. Heck, only a few of the faces are recognizable. There’s the guy who was one of the secondary characters on “CHiPs” and the woman who almost always played a ditzy blonde secretary on TV shows. John Ratzneberger and Wolfman Jack make appearances as well.
Overall Motel Hell is enjoyable, but it is a bit slow. The plot sort of plods along following a young girl who survives a motorcycle accident (her boyfriend wasn’t so lucky) and is taken in by Farmer Vincent and his sister. The duo operate a motel and small farm where they make their own smoked meats. Yeah, we can drop any pretenses of spoilers here because you’re sort of expecting it. The question is whether or not she survives the film, and of course, whether or not Farmer Vincent does in the end.
The humor is sort of good, at least when it shows up. For a comedy it doesn’t have as many jokes as it should have, which is a shame. When Motel Hell wants to be funny it is, and there’s decent tension as well. The pacing is just off enough to stop this from being anybody’s favorite film. It is, however, still quite enjoyable.
Shout Factory has put together a solid batch of extras of course. Starting with an audio commentary we get plenty of insight into the making of the film along with some featurettes with the cast and crew. Altogether there’s about an hour and fifteen minutes worth of stuff. Then there are the image galleries. Plenty of stuff here for fans of the film as well as B movies in general.