H!TITDS - Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983)
This sandwich tastes as dry as hell.
Hello, and welcome to Hello This Is The Doomed Show.
I am Richard.
Folks, I am on top of a mountain because my guest co-host chased me up there so that we could talk about a movie.
I am here with Arnie, AKA The Gordon Knight.
Hello, sir.
Hello.
Oh my god.
This is the place.
You're not in the wrong chat, dude.
Folks, we're going to talk about a little movie from 1983, called Mountaintop Motel Massacre, or as I call it, Mountaintop, Mountaintop, Mountaintop.
This is directed by Jim McCullough, Jr.
and written by his son, Jim McCullough, Jr.
Before we get started, just spoiler alert, because if you haven't seen this, the trailer I'm about to play is like the whole movie.
It's the cliff notes for sure.
Yes, yes.
This is the, why did we bother, going out to the movies version.
So please watch this film beforehand, especially if you like roaches.
Far from the beaten path lies a friendly little inn Girl, you better come get your cleaner before I chop his head off.
where folks come from miles around.
Hold on.
to rest, relax, and make new friends.
Honeydell.
I'm Tanny.
I'm Bill McWilly.
I'm Evan Crenshaw.
This is my cousin, Prissy.
Your relative?
Cousin.
Are you okay, man, Evan?
Crenshaw.
Edwin.
Tell your little wife I'll have a surprise for you.
where no one ever complains.
You mean we got to go down there after?
We have to.
And get my ice-cream lesson on, please, white woman.
No way, O.C.
Where people are dying to get a reservation.
Hello?
Hello?
And any moment might be checkout time.
I'm getting out of here.
Is this any way to run a motel?
You bet your life it is.
Mountain Top Motel Massacre.
That was the trailer for the movie.
For some reason, I still find it necessary to read the plot synopsis.
Even though, you know, and we're going to talk about the plot too.
So I don't know what we're doing here, but we're going to make this the most memorable Mountaintop Motel Massacre you've ever seen, heard, heard.
I keep forgetting this is not a video show.
This is from the New World Pictures VHS tape.
Welcome to the Mountaintop Motel.
Remote, secluded, private.
All the fresh air you can breathe and the best views that money can buy.
Young marrieds on a honeymoon, country preacher on vacation, road weary traveler looking for a warm room and a home cooked meal.
You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave.
Little do the guests here know that the Mountaintop Motel is run by a deeply troubled middle-aged woman who is slowly going berserk.
That's not slow.
No, she is in the grip of a stifling madness and she attends to the guests in her own wicked ways.
Poisonous snakes, roaches, butcher knives, or any available kitchen utensil will do.
She is on a bloody rampage from which there is no escape.
Mountaintop Motel Massacre, The Terror is Real, color, 95 minutes.
The tagline is, please do not disturb Evelyn.
She already is.
Or it's always wine o'clock somewhere.
Right, ladies?
We're gonna go over some of the cast because this movie has a lot of characters and a lot of these wonderful people never worked again.
That's a shock.
I know, you're gonna be okay.
Oh, but first, the director, Mr.
Jim McCullough Sr.
here, he was a producer for Creature from Black Lake from 1976, a masterpiece.
I love Creature from Black Lake.
He also did something called Video Murders, which I was mixing up with something that was shot on video.
But then when I looked at the movie, like it just looks like this totally different movie.
I was mixing up with video violence.
So I just have no idea, but I'm gonna look up Video Murders.
But he also did a movie called The Aurora Encounter.
Regionally made sci-fi epic children's movie set in the Old West.
The writer, his son, Jim McCullough Jr., he wrote Creature from Black Lake, and he produced something called Teen Vamp from 1989, which I am seeking out.
Let's just say the internet has a copy of Teen Vamp.
How promising is Teen Vamp?
3.3 on IMDb.
Which is kind of brutal, honestly.
Although I did watch, Leigh-Anne and I watched The Visitants.
It's a Halloween movie that the guy who did Blood Theatre did, and I loved it.
3.7.
Yeah, The Visitants.
Is that a word?
It is for this title of this movie.
But that was 3.7, so that's like, that's too good.
Anyway, so yes, this cast.
We got Bill Thurman, who plays Reverend Bill McWillie.
And I don't know if you know this, but the McWillie is my most favorite McDonald's menu item that got canceled a long time ago.
He's a big time character actor in Silverado, Last Picture Show.
Speaking of regionally made horrors, Gator Bait was another one.
Is that?
That's not a horror movie.
It's more like a country thriller, I guess.
Anna Chappell, who plays Evelyn, never did anything else.
No, I'm sorry.
She did one other thing.
She peaked in this movie.
I think she comes from a community theater background.
Yeah, she's real big.
She's like way over up over the top.
So I could absolutely see that.
Yep, we got James Bradford as the sheriff.
He is very successful TV and small roles in movies.
40 years in the biz.
That guy, crazy.
Next up, we've got Greg Brazel, who plays Vernon, the newlywed, who spends most of the time in bed with a fricking snake bite in his face.
He's a stunt guy, 116 credits for stunt work.
Couple other characters who just did not go on to do anything.
Al, who's the fake record executive.
We got Prissy and Tanya, the singers.
This movie features them singing and it's not good.
You heard a little sample of it in the trailer.
They even included their singing in the trailer.
Yeah.
And I also noticed there's a credit for singing voice.
So it wasn't all they were being dubbed.
It might not have even been them.
Yeah.
That is brutal.
That is so sad.
So then we have my favorite character, Major Brock.
He plays Crenshaw, the self-proclaimed gentleman carpenter.
How is this guy not in hundreds of movies?
Yeah.
Because he's great.
He is great.
Oh my God.
So yeah.
Crenshaw is a great name too.
He will nail your trap door shut and that's not a euphemism.
We'll come back to the crew later.
We will talk about who else worked on this beauty when we talk about some trivia.
We actually for very rare on this show, we actually have some trivia.
In a recent episode of Cameron Road, it was too much trivia.
Oh, it was the Amityville 2 episode.
They would have been three hours long if we did all the trivia.
Whereas most of the movies we cover on this show have no trivia.
This has a fair amount.
But yes, here comes the plot of the movie.
We get some blood dripping t-shirt font credits.
And we get the beautiful stats, like a baseball card of stats for Evelyn.
I forgot to take a screenshot to read this.
It's like institutionalized 1978, released 1981.
And I'm like, Ronald Reagan, why did you let all those poor people out of the asylums?
You son of a bitch.
I think that's one of the things Reagan was known for.
You posed a good question.
So Evelyn has a dead husband.
What do you think about this situation?
So I personally think that she killed her husband and that is why she was institutionalized.
Right.
The sheriff, no, the preacher says that he was a friend of hers and then kind of trails off like he doesn't come out and say that she killed him.
Right.
But I think that's got to be what's implied there.
Okay.
I didn't even think of that.
I love the portrait, the sexy portrait of her dead husband that she kind of talks to a little bit.
She has a daughter, which is amazing.
Talk about a character I thought would be in the whole fricking movie.
Oh, yeah.
This is her daughter, Laurie, which I don't even know.
Is this another actress that did not work again?
Jill King.
I didn't look her up, I forgot.
Yep, her only credit, which is a crime.
Wow.
She loves animals.
She's having a tea party with her bunny and her goat, and her mom is killing her.
Was that a guinea pig or a bunny?
It was either a guinea pig.
Yeah, maybe it was a guinea pig.
I was gonna say hamster, but yeah.
Some creature.
Luckily, it's fake.
This is all fake.
And it was just full of blood.
Yeah, like like a water balloon.
Yeah, of blood just spread.
Meanwhile, Lori is down in the cellar doing some intense summoning.
She's communing with the dead or something.
It's not established what she's doing, but when her mom finds her, all hell breaks loose and she goes into a rage and is using her scythe and scything up all the shit in the room, breaking all the stuff, does a 180 and then slashes her daughter's throat.
Show me a sign.
But this is a smart lady, she calls the fricking cops and the ambulance and what happens?
She convinces them that there was a gardening accident, right?
And they're quiet all over the garden.
Oh yeah, in the kitchen.
So there's blood in the cellar, which nobody knows exists.
We'll find out later that nobody knows about the secret cellar situation, which is of course the fricking tunnel, speaking of hamsters, there's a tunnel.
And then there's just a little blood in the kitchen.
She moved the body to the kitchen.
So there's this tiny little bit of blood on the floor.
She's bled out, she's dead.
And yet they believe her.
Totally works.
No reason to be suspicious of her.
No, but you had a, you said it looked like a certain film in your notes.
Oh yeah, the scene.
So in the kitchen, when the EMTs are there and the sheriff is there and the preacher.
Yeah, everybody's there.
And the sun is like coming through the kitchen window where she has a box fan in the window and the sun is shining through the fan blades.
So the shadow is going around and around everybody and there's this loud sound effect.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
The whole time.
It looks like Apocalypse Now.
I'm trying to remember the line from Apocalypse Now.
He's like, I'm back in Shreveport.
God damn Shreveport.
No, here it is.
Shit.
I'm only in Shreveport.
Every time I think I'm going to wake back up in the Mountaintop Motel.
I can't believe after all those times watching freaking Apocalypse Now over and over again, I forgot that line.
That's like my brain's old or something.
So now the unexpected result of killing her is now that Laurie is free from her mortal coil.
She's commanding her mother to do things, which is part of the many not well-established stuff that's going to happen.
I have a serious opinion about Laurie.
But we'll talk about that when we get to the end of the movie.
Our buddy, the preacher, he just is staying in one of the cabins, presumably to like look after Evelyn.
So he's staying in one of these awful cabins, and he's about to have dinner when his new best friend shows up, Crenshaw, the superstar of this movie.
I'm glad to hear you say that, because I really do love that guy.
He is great.
He's definitely the most smartest of everybody.
And he has the best line in the fricking movie.
He and he was thinking about going to get some dinner in like a nearby diner.
And that's when Mr.
McWillie, Reverend McWillie suggests they have somebody eat.
What does he suggest?
Viennese sausages.
Yes.
And old crow.
A bottle of old crow and some vi-ini sausages.
I've never heard it pronounced that way.
I still have to catch myself.
That's the way that people still say it.
Where I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, which is nowhere near Shreveport at all.
Even though it looks extremely similar.
Sure.
Sure.
But yeah, I still have, sometimes I have to mentally check myself before I start to say Vienna sausages.
How often do you say that?
Surprisingly often because that is a very popular lunch food at my workplace.
Nice.
See, my dad loved that.
My dad loved that when I was a kid.
And I, the color, I was like, oh, no, I'll eat a hot dog that's like been cooked.
That just looks like a raw hot dog to me.
And then I saw him spreading it on a cracker and I was like, oh, no, that's not for me.
I do like liver now, like pate once in a while.
