Til Death Do We Part?: Honeymoon Horror (1982)

Can you-? Can you read it?

Honeymoon Horror (1982)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Paul Iwanski, Bob Wagner, Cheryl Black

One night, a husband finds her wife canoodling with another feller in a vacation house at a secluded island and three things broke: a scuffle, a beer bottle, and a lamp which sets hubby and the rest of the house on fire. Nobody but the cheating couple got out, so they assume hubby is as dead as a door nail.

Yeah. Sure.

A year later, the wife, Elaine, returns to the same island with her then-affair-now-new husband, Vic, with plans to re-open it as a holiday getaway exclusive for honeymooning couples, with their first customers being three sorority sisters who all will be getting married the following day. The sisters' rambunctious, short shorts-wearing friends get to the island first to decorate the rooms before the newlyweds arrive, all the while an elderly (possibly mentally handicapped) handyman and an "English" maid assist them. Elaine has no qualms with all of this, but somebody else in the island does. Somebody covered in burns. Wielding a machete. I wonder who could it be?

Before long, the newlyweds make it to the island, people starts to get hacked up, the truth behind the fire worries Elaine, and I simply nod my head in fake excitement as this movie draws near its end. Whoopie-fuckity-doo~

How am I gonna put this? Try imagining a moldy cheese. The greener the better. Now put that cheese in a blender, as well as your hand. Any hand. Turn the blender on and get yourself a nasty cut or worse. Not feeling too good now, are we? Well, that's the same kind of feeling you'll be getting if you decided to watch this cheesy trash willingly in hopes of seeing a good movie, or even a so-bad-it's-good campy garbage! It reeks of greasy rotten fondue from the beginning until the very last minute and the more you put up with its shtick, the more you'll question yourself for doing it in the first place!

Bad acting is almost always a certainty for slasher movies and Honeymoon Horror definitely has this around the talent department. I can tell as during one scene where our conniving wife points out where her ex-husband "died" from the fire and she said this all with a nonchalant "matter of fact" tone. This, however, is nothing compared to the deranged scripting the movie is filled with and its "dying slug" pacing made sure that it will slowly slowly numb our senses to the point of melting into nothingness, unless it (inevitably) puts us to sleep. Sweet sweet sleep.

Any kinds of scares or suspense are reduced to the killer just skulking around the cabins in the shadows, taking his sweet time before going for the blow and eventually reveal the crispiness of his burnt complexion. It's often decent in terms of bloodletting, but with the majority of the film spent on cheesy scripting, backfiring comic relief and, again, pacing issues, the suspense being built (if there were any) kinda wears out before the kills could even happen. I also believe the movie was trying to pull the same shock factor as the reveal done with the better backwoods slasher The Burning (1981) by keeping the burnt killer hidden from the neck up until the climax. That would have worked if the wait was worth it since, unlike the disturbing melted mess that is the killer's face at The Burning, Honeymoon Horror's homicidal burn victim looks more like a burnt potato. An angry burnt potato. In a white shirt and khaki slacks.

From what I understand, Honeymoon Horror was made around a small budget of $50,000 and a good amount of ideas from the director were let go due to this budget restraint. I also heard that there's a print out there that has a minimized amount of cheesy humor and more focus on the scares apparently, but I'm yet to see it, nor am I really that desperate to start looking for it. Take it from me, folks. If there's any movie that may have prematurely set slashers back a decade or century, this is one of them.

Bodycount:
1 female found hacked to death
1 female killed offcamera
1 female killed offcamera
1 female hacked to death with a machete
1 female hacked to death with an axe
1 female hacked to death with an axe
1 female gets axed in the head
1 male gets a thrown knife to the back
1 male dies from shotgun wounds
Total: 9