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| The Review |
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Well, I don’t want to discredit myself too much. It’s not that I am primarily disappointed with Slaughter Hotel simply because really great people worked on it. Truthfully, a no name director could have been behind the lens for this flick and it still would have received the rating that it does. Although Di Leo isn’t so well known for a tremendous visual flair or striking use of symbolism, you can usually count on him for delivering a cohesive story in his movies. If not densely plotted, the pacing is usually just right and he manages to keep you engaged. There’s at least something to chew on between scenes of excess or bits of action within his Eurocrime stories. Slaughter Hotel however turns out as a tour of sexual excess, which unfortunately doesn’t come across half as interesting as it might sound. That is unless you just have a thing for nudity in movies and simply want to see some really pretty Italian girls get naked. I mean, If there’s anything this movie has it’s a ton of love scenes. Just sexual rendezvous after rendezvous, until the killer finally snaps and starts his homicidal rampage… which is really too little, too late. Not that I’m really the kind of guy who craves death or violence in horror movies, but the waiting that we as an audience have to do until we’re given our eventual massacre is a pretty tremendous task as the film ultimately denigrates into a series of sexual encounters not unlike a softcore porn movie. We’re even given a pretty graphic masturbation sequence featuring one of our leading ladies! There’s also the requisite lesbian sequence between one of the nurses and a patient, all while we hold on in anticipation for our killer to get his bearings and start his wholesale slaughter. Then, when we do finally get to see some red start to show it’s all relatively tame stuff. Even the sequence I described above, that I was only privy to due to a small screen capture, even that sequence is relatively tame in it execution. This wouldn’t really be that big of a deal if the movie attempted to be a respectable horror or giallo, but unfortunately it didn’t. It went for sleazy, but skimped on the violence.
So, after all this crying, I will say that Slaughter Hotel does have it’s positives. Although the violence takes forever to finally show up, the movie is short and the sex scenes keep the movie moving alone – even if it all does come across as repetitive. So, the pacing is there and it’s almost impossible to be ‘bored’ when a film features beautiful women like Rosalba Neri running around so very naked. Not to be a total misogynist, but I’m a red blooded hetero male – and I can appreciate a beautiful woman. Although I don’t like to put women up against one another on looks alone rather than acting talent, but I’m afraid a movie like Slaughter Hotel draws it right out of anyone – so I’ll pick a favorite starlet from the film: Monica Strebel. The redheaded nurse character who spends the better part of the film trying to seduce the African woman who has lost her memory, she really made an impression on me. She’s almost never mentioned when people talk about this film, and maybe I’m crazy for digging her look so very hard, but her red hair really did things for me here. It’s a mix between her beautiful red hair, the light complexion of her skin and her deeply feminine features. You can see for yourself in the picture above, it’s hard to miss her because of that hair. She’s truly something to behold here, forever preserved as a work of beauty. As are all of the women though, since there’s not a female on display here who could even be called “decent” looking. All the harder to believe they are your average mentally crippled women, rich or not. Aside from the girls, I’m at a loss for what else I could recommend. Normally, Klaus Kinski would be a no brainer if he’s listed in the credits but unfortunately Klaus is so very dull here. He’s essentially given nothing to work with. He’s there, he’s a doctor, he says a few lines and he collects a check. However, in the English dubbed version of the film his performance becomes slightly more interesting because the gentleman who does his voice sounds nothing like the man. So at least there’s a moment worth of humor upon that realization! Still, no matter what I think the major selling point even to this day for the movie is the beautiful women brought on board to show off their goods.
| The Conclusion |
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