Slaughter Hotel (1971)

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This minor shocker from Italy has a few fairly brutal slayings and several nude scenes involving b-movie veteran Rosalba Neri, but little else to recommend it, even to jaded schlock seekers. The setting, a high-end sanatorium set in a remote château, is completely unbelievable, as are the doctors and nurses who work there (or more accurately commit malpractice there). Who puts a psychiatric facility in an old château filled with scary medieval weaponry and doesn't keep the dang things locked up? And why is the grounds keeper always wandering around on upper floors where the patients rooms are? The average weekly ER viewer has more medical savvy than is in evidence here, and the worst offender is Klaus Kinski, who looks WAAYYY too creepy to be a psychiatrist. A patient? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, most of the screen time is taken up with patients demonstrating strange compulsions while the staff cluck tolerantly and promise to make them well. Yeah, right. I would not trust any of them to treat a cold sufferer. The main problem is the script, which has the feel of having been made up on the spot, with no research time spent to acquire a feel for how psychiatric medicine is practiced, or what a sanatorium should look like, or how psychiatric patients with real disorders act or anything. With little credible drama to drive the story forward and almost no suspense, the viewer has just about nothing of interest to watch between slayings. This is a common problem with many slasher movies: a few moments of shock punctuate long stretches of unwatchable dead time. In a well made thriller, the viewer is carried from one high point to the next by developing a suspenseful or creepy atmosphere, but there is none of that here. Boring!

Fernando Di Leo (known primarily for his Italian crime action thrillers) directed this exploitation flick, set in a posh "asylum" where wealthy wives are "put away" to "get better" by their "concerned" rich husbands. I guess many will consider "The Cold Blooded Beast" (its alternate title is "Slaughter Hotel", which I think is not accurate and misleading) a giallo of sorts. A killer, wearing a black cloak and ski mask (Di Leo mostly shoots him in shadow and off to a distance), is selecting patients to murder and it is up to the viewer to decide who this mysterious psychopath is. Could it be the enigmatic, man-of-few-words Dr. Francis Clay (Klaus Kinski, just as fascinating and tight-lipped as he normally was back during this time in his career), adored by the neglected patient, Cheryl Hume (Margaret Lee)? Could it actually be someone with a deranged psychosis that causes him to lash out at women? The bevy of beauties who populate this locked down institution include Rosalbi Neri (stealing the film as the sultry nymphomaniac, Anne Palmieri, whose illness could derive from her husband's impotence towards her), Jane Garret (as Mara, pretty much abandoned by her parents), and Gioia Desideri (as Ruth, a patient with suicidal and homicidal tendencies). The institution, which looks more like a fashionable resort than a den for lunatics, has medieval devices (not sure why these weapons are used as décor for a place dedicated to wealthy, but troubled wives) the killer will use throughout, such as a dagger, sword, crossbow, iron maiden (!), and spiked ball (used to bash the heads of nurses in one hurried assault as the police are after him!). The violence, to be honest, is off-screen and edited in a fashion not to detail the kind of savagery that seems implied (to be honest, when Di Leo shows the results of the killer's savagery, they are less gruesome than it might appear, such as Rosalbi's fate).This film also features (much to my pleasure) a blossoming lesbian romance between a nurse (the gorgeous, petite red-head Monica Strebel)and her favorite patient, Mara, including a massage and bathtub rub-down, climaxing in a dance and brief, but titillating, love-making session. I was a bit frustrated that Di Leo pulls away from their climax just as it was getting good, but the whole film seems to shy away from "going too far" (all though there are plenty of female crotch shots to our disposal). Neri, to tell you the truth, is the reason to seek this one out—she smolders seductive power and makes love to us through the camera. I tell you I worship every inch of this woman's tantalizing body. Who can fault the gardener for not rolling around with her in the greenhouse?!?! Again, their sex scene only goes to a specific "safe" point, without becoming too softcore. Margaret Lee, who certainly isn't a slouch, also has a scene similar to Neri's final scene, where she writhes in ecstasy on her bed, naked and in a state of bliss, seemingly caught in a fantasy dream. If you like this, then Di Leo doesn't disappoint you. Neri practically makes love to her bed, masturbating, and wallowing around in her sheets like a pig in slop; it is spellbinding if you love the female form. Kinski is as odd in behavior and strange as he needs to be to possibly convince an audience of his perhaps being the killer. With John Karlsen as the chief of the institution, Professor Osterman.

I knew beforehand that Di Leo's sole foray into the giallo subgenre didn't have a good reputation, but I couldn't have anticipated that it would be so lame! As a matter of fact, it almost challenges Riccardo Freda's TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972) for the title of the poorest and most bewildering vintage film by a renowned Euro-Cult director I've ever watched! Despite its violent outbursts - mostly confined to the second half - typical of Di Leo (one particularly vicious episode at the very end, which leaves numerous victims, has to be seen to be believed), he shows no real feeling for - or even much interest in - this type of film! In fact, a good deal of the running time is devoted to exploitative erotic content featuring nymphomaniac Rosalba Neri and a lesbian relationship between a nurse and a black patient! With respect to technique, the editing is particularly sloppy: sometimes it seems like the editor has fallen asleep on the job, with several scenes going on for much longer than is required (beginning with the very first scene of the killer prowling the asylum grounds - though before the credits had even rolled, more than just my brain cells had suddenly snapped to attention with the appearance of a fully naked Margaret Lee {one of my favorite Euro-Cult starlets} tossing and turning in bed; regrettably, this is her only nude scene in the entire film!); occasionally, however, there are disorientating tilted shots and a series of pointless - and irritating - rapid cuts of two converging locations (for instance, the killer approaching a victim's room); besides, we get all kinds of people having flashes to earlier scenes, but the shots are so randomly chosen as to make no sense whatsoever!The score, usually a prominent feature in a giallo, occasionally delivers but it's too uneven (the killer's theme is dreadful, for instance) to really count as a success; indeed, the only worthwhile element to the whole film is the casting of three Jess Franco alumni in the lead roles: the aforementioned Lee (despite the fact that her role doesn't give her much scope) and Neri (who, at least, gets to shed her clothes quite often and takes a shower memorably), and Klaus Kinski as an enigmatic and wild-looking doctor who becomes romantically involved with Lee - even if his contribution is a listless take-the-money-and-run turn, seemingly there only to serve as a red herring! By the way, the notorious and mystifying audio glitch found on the version (horrendously dubbed in English and actually bearing the on-screen title of COLD-BLOODED BEAST) released by Media Blasters - which also plagued the copy I watched - is a real pain in the neck...

Slaughter Hotel isn't exactly a well-renowned slice of Italian cinema, as most people that have seen it don't exactly have a lot of good things to say about it; but personally, I thought it was rather good! The first half of the film doesn't contain a lot of excitement, as barely anything happens and the time used, which is obviously meant to build up the situation and main characters, isn't exactly fascinating. However, Giallo films are most famous for their style and this film has bags of it! Director Fernando Di Leo makes good use of his colour scheme, and every time the plot starts to get a bit dry - Rosalba Neri (in the role of a nymphomaniac, no less) and her beautiful female co-stars are always on hand to get their kits off. The plot isn't exactly deep, but it's well worked and makes good use of the central setting. We focus on a rest home for rich, beautiful women that like to have sex with just about anyone. The Giallo elements creep in by way of a serial killer going round murdering various members of the cast; but it's obvious that this film is more geared towards fans of exploitation.I can't deny that, really, this is a poor film; but it does everything that you want from Italian seventies cinema so well that it's difficult to hate it. Everything about the movie is over the top - from the brutal murder scenes all the way down to the plethora of sexual activity - and that's nothing but a good thing if you ask me! I don't tend to like films where the killer uses the same weapon over and over again, but that's not a problem with this film as our killer here has a cabinet of medieval relics at his disposal, with all manner of implements from crossbows to swords, all the way down a mace getting covered in blood. The murder scenes aren't very realistic or shocking, but they bode well with the film's style - and this is quite an achievement since the murder plot isn't really relevant to the rest of the movie. Wet-dream Rosalba Neri heads up a decent cast, which includes Klaus Kinski in one of his less memorable roles...but it hardly matters, as it's the women that lead this movie. The ending is totally ridiculous and illogical, but it does feature a great assault on a bunch of female patients and while I don't care who the murderer is; it doesn't matter at all. If you like your films colourful, illogical and sexy; this movie is for you.