Deranged/Motel Hell (Midnite Movies Double Feature)
by Jeff Gillen
from MGM (Video & DVD)
A double bill of rural schlock, with both entries gruesome but somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Deranged was inspired by the unsavory saga of Ed Gein, whose isolated madness oiled the gears of both Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is a low-rent production all the way, but its shabby locations have a certain eerie authenticity, and it benefits greatly from the casting of the reliable character actor Roberts Blossom--a scarecrow in the American Gothic mold--in the lead role. Now and again a somber but vaguely amusing narrator wanders into the frame to remind us that we are watching the tale of "a necromaniac, a defiler of the dead," as though we could forget. Serial-killer completists should check it out.
Motel Hell is slicker but less effective. Former Western star Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, a country hotel keeper (free samples of jerky at the front desk) whose line of smoked meats turns his customers into unwitting cannibals. The movie's got some genuinely creeped-out ideas (a backyard garden of victims, buried up to their necks?), but the execution is pedestrian and the humor pretty square. Onetime cultural icon Wolfman Jack has a few scenes as a TV preacher, for no apparent reason. --Robert Horton
Deranged: Ezra's good at making friends... into home furnishings! Based on the same terrifying story that inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs, this hauntingly scary film chronicles the grisly exploits of a rural necrophiliac and murderer! Brace yourself for a "solid horror story" (Variety) that's guaranteed to make you bite your nails... because if you don't, Ezra will!
Motel Hell: You really are what you eat with Farmer Vincent's smoked meat in this creepy horror yarn that "packs a punch and goes way beyond mere terror" (Box Office)! Vincent's popular products contain a special ingredient that the psychotic farmer and his sister would literally kill to keep secret in this darkly funny flick that "just might be your cup of meat" (L.A. Herald Examiner).
How To Frame a Figg
by Alan Rafkin
from Universal Studios
A Guide for the Married Woman
by Hy Averback
from 20th Century Fox
Cybill Shepherd, trapped in a washed-out marriage, thinks about being unfaithful. Early look at Shepherd's comedic timing.
Motel Hell
Motel Hell is a gruesome but somewhat tongue-in-cheek bit of rural schlock along the lines of 1974's Deranged, although slicker and less effective. Former Western star Rory Calhoun plays Farmer Vincent, a country hotel keeper (free samples of jerky at the front desk) whose line of smoked meats turns his customers into unwitting cannibals. The movie's got some genuinely creeped-out ideas (a backyard garden of victims, buried up to their necks?), but the execution is pedestrian and the humor pretty square. Onetime cultural icon Wolfman Jack has a few scenes as a TV preacher, for no apparent reason. --Robert Horton
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