Motel Hell

We head back to 1980 for a horror-comedy detour with Motel Hell, a quirky, blackly comic cult favorite that we both remembered more fondly than it played this time around.

We talk about the film’s odd tone, slow pacing, and the Texas Chain Saw Massacre-style setup of Farmer Vincent’s famous smoked meats, plus the bizarre “garden” reveal where victims are buried up to their necks.

Along the way we dig into the performances, the dated humor, the strange character turns, and that iconic pig-head-and-chainsaw finale, including the movie’s straight-faced closing joke about “artificial preservatives.”

We also debate whether this is a charming product of its time or just too dumb to fully work today, and where it lands as a cult curiosity.

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Automatic Transcript

Motel Hell (1980)

Episode 496 – 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig

Todd: This week, uh, thought I’d take us back to the ’80s, 1980 to be exact, to the point in which horror movies were coming big on the scene, slasher movies, things like that. Uh, we’ve done several slasher films from 1981, 1979, whatever, just around this era, oh, a few weeks ago and, and we had been- I’d been on a bit of a kick doing these, uh, old early ’80s slashers, and I promised Craig this week that I would not choose another early ’80s slasher.

We were both just ready for something fresh. So, um, I pulled up this movie that I know I had seen at some point, or at least run across on cable, maybe not seen the whole way through, but it certainly haunted the video store shelves of my childhood. And I knew it was a horror comedy, and it comes up every now and then and people talk about it as a quirky satire, comedy horror movie, blah blah blah.

And so I said, “Let’s do it, Craig. Let’s do Motel Hell.” Had you heard of this one before?

Craig: Yeah. Like you, I know I’ve seen it. I think I’ve probably seen it more than once. And I remembered a lot of things about it, but it had been a long time since I’d seen it, so I didn’t remember a whole lot. And I mean, I guess I was gonna say you could technically call this a slasher, but it’s not really.

No. It’s got a similar vibe, but it’s different in that it’s… I mean, y- you already said it’s a comedy, and it is, but it’s, it’s more of a black comedy, not a scary movie parody, slapstick, goofy comedy. It’s… I mean, it’s still silly, but it’s a little bit darker and it’s not as in your face with gags and stuff- Right

um, as, as some things.

Todd: It’s a shame too.

Craig: Well, I don’t know. I thought it struck kind of an interesting balance. Uh, I don’t know if it was perfect, but I don’t know. I’m interested to hear what you thought.

Todd: I don’t know. Like I’ll be honest with you, I had a hard time staying awake. Now, I was watching it at like 11:30 PM or something like that.

I’d had a long day. My parents are still visiting. We’ve been running a little hard, and so I was already pretty tired going into this. But I kind of expected it to perk me up. I thought this was gonna be this fun, irreverent, satirical black comedy that everybody says it is, and both my dad and I found it hard to stay awake.

About halfway through I wanted so bad to just shut it off and finish it in the morning, but unfortunately, I mean he was watching it with me and he was staying up too, so I just pushed through. So I don’t know if that affected my reception of it, but w- I was just groaning and rolling my eyes through the whole thing, and I didn’t find it particularly funny, and I didn’t find it scary at all.

I was pretty disappointed overall. It wasn’t what I remember from flashes of my childhood.

Craig: Yeah. Gosh. I don’t know how we want to approach it, but I mean, I, I feel similarly and I r- first of all, I just decided, like, I’m just gonna watch this. I’m not gonna take any notes. How serious can it be? And so I cuddle up in bed and turned all the lights off.

Had the, you know, laptop, like, right there next to me, and I got about halfway through it and I was like, “I have to turn this off and go to sleep.” And it was early, like- Ah. Like, it was earlier than I would usually go to bed. So I was like, “No, I’m just gonna wait until the morning.”

Todd: No.

Craig: And then I finish it this morning.

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of slow and there’s really not a ton that happens, but it’s odd.

Todd: Definitely odd.

Craig: Well, and I, I, I think that that oddity saves it, and I, there, like, there are some interesting performances. I don’t think it’s poorly shot or anything.

Todd: No.

Craig: And I kinda think that maybe they got what they were going for because originally, and I don’t remember, it was s- I don’t remember if it was attached to a particular director initially, but the, I know that the original script was a lot darker.

It was written by a couple of brothers, I guess, Robert and Stephen Charles Jaff, and it was, like, I don’t know, just more violent and graphic and had, like, bestiality in it and stuff. But when they got the director, Kevin Connor, he said that he would do it, but he wanted it to be a dark comedy because some of the crazier elements, I guess he thought if we played this totally straight, audiences aren’t gonna buy it.

Todd: Yeah. And I can see that.

Craig: Yeah. And I can see that too. I think it was probably… I, I, I certainly wouldn’t, I don’t think. I mean, it would, it would take a lot to get me on board with some of these plot points if they weren’t presented in a ridiculous fashion, because they are ridiculous. Yeah. So- I don’t know.

I think it was, it was, uh, intended to be a little dark and weird and quirky, but it is a little bit slow too. I mean, I… How do, how do we wanna talk about what it’s about? I mean, it’s-

Todd: Well, ultimately it’s, it’s a little bit inspired, I would say, slightly Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in that you have a, not a whole family, but you got, you got, you got a guy, and Nuts is not his wife, it’s his sister, right?

Craig: It’s, I, yeah, I thought it was his wife- For

Todd: the longest time … or

Craig: girlfriend or something for the longest time, but apparently it’s his sister,

Todd: right? Yeah. So you got Vincent and Ida, and instead of running a restaurant, they run a motel. The Motel Hello, you know, which conveniently the O burns out at points to make it Motel Hell.

Right. And he serves his famous meats. Smoked meat. Smoked meats. Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats. This

Craig: is it.

Todd: So it’s so similar in that way to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ’cause they had what? They had a barbecue place, didn’t they? Yeah.

Craig: I’m not confusing

Todd: that with-

Craig: That may have been part two. I don’t remember.

Todd: Oh, maybe that was part two.

Craig: They definitely did cook people up, though, and serve them to people, that’s for sure.

Todd: Yeah. And so, um, it, you know, it really kicks off with Farmer V- Vincent, who’s this man played by Rory Calhoun, who is a pretty well-known Western guy. He was in a million Westerns and all over television and stuff I think if you watch movies and TV in the ’80s, in particular if you were into Westerns, you would recognize this guy right away.

Craig: Yeah, he’s got a really recognizable face. I didn’t watch those types of things. My grandparents, my mom’s parents were into those shows, so they were kind of always on in the background. But he has that typical look, and if you look him up on- online, you’ll see old black and white photos of him where he’s, you know, a handsome, rugged kinda looking guy.

But ironically, I think I read that he was kind of known as being the reliable, trustworthy, good guy in most of the stuff that he did back in the day. So to put him in this more menacing role was a switch for him, but I …