Don't Disturb Evelyn, She Already Is: Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983)

Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983) (AKA "Horrors at Mountaintop Motel", "Mountaintop Motel")
Rating: ***

Starring: Bill Thurman, Anna Chappell, Will Mitchell

Ah, the backwoods in a horror movie. Filled with spiders, snakes, the usual doomed victims of a sickle-wielding maniac and a looney old bird who happens to be said sickle-wielding maniac~!

Middle-aged Evelyn, a former mental patient, runs and lives with her daughter, Lorie, on the eponymous Mountaintop Motel, a cabin-in-the-woods motel property off a local highway. It's only been a few years since Evelyn's release from the ward and Lorie believes her mum isn't really all that well still, presented to us with Evelyn going stabby on a pet guinea pig after she caught it eating some of the vegetables she's growing. On a very macabre turn, Lorie holds a séance of sorts with rabbits and goats in the catacombs underneath the motel, attempting to communicate with her late father for some guidance. Evelyn sees the ghoulish practice and, not being a big fan of it, goes on a sickle fit hacking everything she could hack. Including, accidentally, Lorie.

Distraught, Evelyn props her dead daughter's body up in a staged gardening accident and phones in an ambulance. The local sheriff accompanying the paramedics doesn't believe the death happened as Evelyn described it, though, but decided to let it go for now as he has little to no proof to indict Evelyn for any serious charges. As Lorie gets laid to rest, Evelyn's psyche reaches voices-from-the-void level and starts thinking everybody is out to get her, a breakdown that gets worse by the time she returns to the motel.

As night falls and a storm rolls in, a variety of guests arrive to check in at the Mountaintop Motel, consisting of Evelyn's alcoholic pastor friend, a old black carpenter who needed a spot to rest, a pair of young newlyweds in their honeymoon, an ad executive and two cousins who are aiming to hit high as singers. A fallen tree would soon block their only way out and kill off the lights and phone line, trapping these hapless ladies and gents for a night of not only Evelyn's dirty little pranks and surprises, but also her unraveling mental state and the blood-soaked sickle that comes with it! 

Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983) isn't a great movie, though it's not entirely a bad one neither; the most notable eccentricity of the film is the fact that for almost an hour after Evelyn got away with accidentally murdering her own kid, the story simply drawls through the old hag's short reign of mischief as she places snakes, roaches, and rats in the guests' rooms through a handy system of underground tunnels and trap-doors in the cabin floors, allowing Evelyn access to all of the tenants and inconvenience them without anyone detecting her. (Though inconvenience is putting it lightly to the fella who got bit in the face by a venomous snake. That's straight-up assault!) Not exactly the kind of horror one expects from a movie that has massacre in its title and I do see how this can get tiring to sit through, although most of the characters at play here do add some life and intrigue towards some of the duller moments, mainly the two old fellas sharing an engaging talk about church work while swigging booze and the two cousins who are having a conflict of moral grounds as they argue about sleeping with a sleazy con pretending to be a music agent. 

The hokey yet eerie atmosphere of the direction and plotting is also greatly encapsulated through its dilapidatedly macabre set-designs and 60s B-movie inspired score. Once Evelyn got the word from her dead daughter's voice to go kill, her massacre is gloriously bloody and savage with a few excellent-looking gore make-up, working as much splatter as they could with the little bodycount to go around. This leads to a climax that's kinda awkward to watch but hilarious for the corniness of it all as two middle-aged folks struggle around with a gun and a sickle, thankfully paid off with one last kill and a decent shot of the resulting gore effect. 

As lumbering as the story's stride is, there's a honest cheesy charm to Mountaintop Motel Massacre's simplistic plot and nutty exploits and I can't help but appreciate the effort given, even more so when it tries to break the typical slasher formula for something a tad different yet fun. Far from the finest, sure, but an enjoyable 80s slasher nonetheless! 

Bodycount: 

1 female hacked with a sickle

1 female slashed across the face with a sickle

1 male hacked on the chest with a sickle

1 female repeatedly hacked with a sickle, sliced through the cheeks

1 male had his throat slashed with a sickle

1 male had a hand hacked off with a sickle, hacked

1 female gets nearly decapitated with a sickle

Total: 7