Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983)

Directed by Jim McCullough Sr. 
Written by Jim McCullough Jr.
Details at the IMDB, US.IMDB
  

One of the greatest satisfactions for the alert B movie viewer is seeing some necessary creativity at work.  Sometimes a group of filmmakers on a limited budget will invent the most amazing variations on stories, camera work, and special effects because they are forced to do so by the economy of their situation.  This novelty can make the whole B movie obsession worthwhile.

But sometimes you get the feeling from a movie that its filmmakers weren't trying so hard.  And then we must demand satisfaction.
  

The Plot

We open with Evelyn (Anna Chappell) working in her garden.  She's a former mental illness patient..  Meanwhile a young girl called Lorie (Jill King) plays in her room with some of her pet critter friends.  (We're not sure about the relationship between Evelyn and Lorie, but we suspect it's something like set-up & punch-line.)  Evelyn sees one of girl's pets in the garden and shouts for her to come get it.  But the girl's busy holding a séance with her furry friends, so she doesn't seem to notice.  After a moment, Evelyn ventilates the little garden furball with her sickle and goes into the house.  When Lorie in mid-séance is says, "Give me a sign," Evelyn enters the room and whacks her with the sickle.  (Apparently, the sign was, "NO SHOULDER A-HEAD")

The sheriff (James Bradford) and paramedics arrive, but they can't save girl.  Evelyn attends the girl's funeral, imagines she hears voices accusing her, and goes back to tending her motel.  (If you sense some implausibility at this point, then you have a feel for the rest of the movie.)  Her current guest is a backslid preacher named Bill McWilly (Bill Thurman), but later in the day the guest count doubles when carpenter Crenshaw (Major Brock) checks in.  And it doubles again when a newly married couple (Greg Brazzel and Mariane Jones) gets a room.  And it nearly doubles on top of that when two country singer wannabes (Amy Hill and Virginia Loridans) and a slimy businessman (Will Mitchel) get a key.

However, instead of jumping for joy at the rush of new business, Evelyn starts leaving things in the rooms -- and I don't mean Belgian chocolates on their pillows.  We learn that this motel has more underground tunnels than the New York City subway system.  She uses one of them to quietly deliver some unrequested  room service to the newlyweds.  It's a rattlesnake.  After the guy gets fanged in the face, Evelyn does the same favor for the preacher; however, her treat of choice for the faithless flock leader is a bag of rats.  If you think that doesn't sound too intimidating, just wait, because she gives the carpenter Crenshaw some roaches (not the smoking kind).

Evelyn must be all out of animals (unless she was going to terrify the others with one of Lorie's pet bunnies or something) because she switches tactics.  She pops in on one of the country-western wannabes and splits the fretting girl's chord with her sickle.  And so it goes....
  

The Good Stuff

Some of the economical production has some good return on the investment.  There's a nice innocent yet creepy tune that plays in the background of a few scenes.  The cinematography is functionally good without attempting anything artsy.  The actors deliver their lines such that you can hear them, and the sound mix is pretty good.  The scenes in the tunnels are creepy, with bits of undergrowth dressing up the set and obscuring a mortal game of hide-and-go-seek when some of the characters decide to go into them to confront Evelyn.
  

The Bad Stuff

Rather than taking some time to carefully explain a few of the things that are lacking in this movie, I hope nobody minds if I just take a deep breath and get all this out my system.

[Inhale...]

First of all let's talk about the girl because I mean who the heck is she an adopted daughter or granddaughter or what and then the sheriff has no friggin' clue that this was as much an accident as those testicles ending up in one of Jeffry Dahmer's jars and you get a couple of reasonable character actors like Thurman and Brock but they get dialogue as heartfelt as the assembly instructions for a lawn chair and then the scenes bridging all this has more padding than the bra of a fourteen year old girl on her first date and there are all those tunnels under this motel but where in the hell did they come from because the only thing I can figure is this place was built by a some dwarves laid off by Ralph Bakshi after he decided he wasn't going to do that second Lord of the Rings cartoon about the time this was made and one of the first critters Evelyn uses is a rattlesnake and I guess we're supposed to believe it's one of Lorie's pets but who besides Aleister Crowley is going to let a child play with one of those things but then the newlywed couple shows up and they're pretty boring so when Evelyn puts the snake in their room they stretch out the inevitable to build suspense but there's no point in building suspense because no one is going to give a rat's backside about these two designated victims and speaking of which what was the deal with the rats was that a backhanded homage to Willard and then the slimy business guy shows up with the two girls and the first one to get whacked is the one that doesn't want to put out so is that the philosophy here if you don't put out you get whacked (I'd suggest that's how the girls got their parts but that wouldn't be nice so I won't suggest it) and while we're on the subject when someone gets whacked in this movie the special make-up effects barely rival peanut butter and corn syrup and now that Evelyn is in full swing does anybody ever ask what set Evelyn off because you don't get an explanation at the beginning about the nature of her mental illness and we don't get a psychologist (like at the end of Psycho) to put it together for us at the very end especially when we see Lorie again for no real reason than maybe somebody thought it'd be a cool and spooky thing to put at the end but

[...gasp!]

Thanks, guys. I feel so much better now. There's more, but I was blacking out.
  

The Who Cares Stuff

Most of these people (the writer, director, some of the actors) have also enhanced our lives with other fine films, like Creature from Black Lake (1978), The Charge of the Model Ts (1979), The Aurora Encounter (1986), and Video Murders (1988).

There's a temptation to compare the McCullough group with the team of Charles B. Pierce and Earl E. Smith.  Both groups were making movies in neighboring geographic regions (Louisiana for the McCulloughs, Arkansas for Pierce and Smith).  Both groups made a Bigfoot movie (Creature from Black Lake, Legend of Boggy Creek) followed by a serial killer movie (Mountaintop Motel Massacre, The Town that Dreaded Sundown).

When you start comparing two groups like that, an assessment of relative quality follows.  I leave that to those who've seen all the above, but if the decision had to be made for the pair I've seen (this movie and Town) then I'd have say it doesn't look so good for the McCulloughs.  But at least you can't honestly say the McCulloughs are a Larry Buchanan to Pierce & Smith's Roger Corman, no matter how much fun that might be.  (If that does happen to be your idea of fun, I so pity you.)

The end credits include a list of acknowledgments. People are unabashed about their B movie status when that list includes Goodwill.

Some sources say this film was made in 1986, but the end credits claim 1983.  (The IMDB used to have the year set to 1986, but it has since been corrected.)  We suspect this movie might have waited a while for broad distribution. 
  

The Bottom Line

Dangerous motel manager doesn't accommodate guests in a movie that doesn't accommodate its audience.  Recommended for people who can't sleep and there's nothing else on.  Watch it if you must; we'll leave the light on....

Originally submitted to the B-Movie Mailing List on 19 September 1999
Published to B-Notes on 23 May 2003