MOTEL HELL

Farmer Vincent makes the best smoked meats in the county, and like any successful small businessman, he has a secret recipe. Unfortunately, the secret is people. With help from his devoted sister Ida, Vincent plants unlucky travelers neck-deep in a hidden garden, fattens them up and eventually turns them into the famous fritters, sausages and jerky sold from his roadside motel. As Vincent likes to say, “It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters.”

MOTEL HELL takes THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE’s cannibal backwoods nightmare and runs it through a roadside tourist trap where everybody is just a little too friendly. Rory Calhoun plays Vincent with the sunny confidence of a man who genuinely believes murder is simply part of running a quality farm-to-table operation, while director Kevin Connor piles on chainsaws, meat smokers, severed heads, sexual weirdness and a climactic duel involving a pig mask that deserves to hang in the Smithsonian. Gross, goofy and unexpectedly good-natured, MOTEL HELL combines the atmosphere of a Saturday-night barbecue with the ethics of a slaughterhouse. It’s the rare cannibal movie that could almost pass for wholesome entertainment, provided you don’t ask what’s smoking out back.