Hospital Massacre (1982)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Susan Jeremy (a pretty clunky, yet still appealingly sincere performance by gorgeous brunette knockout Barbi Benton) goes to the hospital for a routine check-up. However, poor Susan finds herself being stalked in said hospital by a mysterious psycho. Directed with astonishing all-thumbs maladroitness by Boaz Davidson, with loads of laughably obvious red herring probable suspects (skeevy drunk, weird janitor, sinister physicians, and so on), a ludicrous script by Marc Behm, clumsy attempts at suspense, an absurd heavy-breathing maniac, uproariously over the top murder set pieces, an overblown hum'n'shiver synthesizer score by Arlon Ober that comes complete with a campy shrieking chorus screaming up a storm during the more intense ooga-booga moments, and a colorful assortment of oddball patients (the trio of hideous old hags in Susan's hospital room are positively hysterical!), this hopelessly ham-fisted clunker plays like an unintentionally hilarious send-up of the slice'n'dice horror sub-genre. Making Susan a bitchy and snippy divorcée certainly doesn't help matters any. Fortunately, Barbi does indeed bare her exquisitely enormous breasts in a wonderfully leering, gratuitous, and protracted physical examination sequence. Only Nicholas Von Sternberg's glossy cinematography manages to transcend the general gut-busting ineptitude. An absolute schlocky hoot.

Quite a few hospital horror movies were being made around this time such as Halloween II and Visiting Hours. Hospital Massacre isn't released on DVD and is the hardest to find of the bunch. It is also the lesser of the three movies mentioned. Hospital Massacre sounds great in theory, a psychotic killer stalking the halls of a deserted hospital trying to kill a very beautiful woman. But after watching Hospital Massacre, I found out that it isn't all that great unfortunately. The movie starts with the murder of a young boy on Valentine's Day. After another boy named Harry gets "rejected" by our lead character Susan, he murders the young boy she's playing with. Flash forward 20 years now. Susan has a young child and a boyfriend and she is headed the hospital to find out test results from a routine checkup she had done. We then see our killer who is dressed up as a surgeon. He switches her test results to make it seem that she is dying, when then leads to the hospital staff forcefully admitting Susan to the hospital overnight. We get a few kills along the way of nurses, doctors and secretaries. It all leads up the finale and revelation of the murderer.Obviously the killer is Harry from all those years ago. The mystery we have to solve is "who is Harry"? We saw him as a kid so we don't know what he looks like as an adult. The suspects include a couple of doctors, one by the name of Harry (go figure). The murders aren't anything special, sort of bloody but not too much. It's just all so random for me. He kills a bunch of nurses before we even get introduced to them. One second we see Susan talking and then bam, a random nurse gets stabbed. No character development at all.I liked the creepy deserted hospital scenes and a few of the murders were well done like when he is chasing a nurse down the dark hall. But Hospital Massacre felt rushed and very busy. Too many things were going on and yet nothing was being explained. We get that the killer is insane, but why kill all of these random people? There were times he could have easily killed Susan, but he chose to kill hospital staff that for the most part weren't even in his way. It's worth at least one watch for horror fans, but could have been better.5/10

The plot centers around Susan, when she was a young girl she rejected a boy who sent her a valentines card and then the boy kills her brother and then years later Susan arrives at a local hospital for a rountine check up unaware that someone dressed up as a surgeon is killing off docters and nurses and is hell bent on keeping Susan trapped for his own personal revenge.Well a slasher set in a hospital is certainly different, kind of an odd setting, but in my opinion it's no different from other slasher movies during this era, The movie is quite slow and even though it has its good moments.I ultimately didn't think that this was anything special. If it would only have settled with being a basic slasher movie this would probably have been a whole lot more entertaining but instead they tried to make it into a mystery thriller which just doesn't work. You couldn't care less about Susan's decease and there just doesn't seem like there was a lot of heart put into making this movie. All in all, not a bad movie but not great, could have been a lot better and a little far fetched, I mean how come no one notices that doctors and nurses are getting killed off in a big hospital as well.

"Hospital Massacre" has a derivative plot outline, a familiar setting, clichéd situations and largely uninspired murder sequences … and yet still it's an above average and engaging little 80's slasher film that even is – do I daresay it – a little bit underrated! Back in the early eighties, hospitals were quite the popular setting for horror movies ("Visiting Hours", "Halloween II") and they incidentally also loved holiday-themed slashers ("Happy Birthday To Me", "Silent Night Deadly Night"). "Hospital Massacre" cleverly takes the best of both worlds, as the massacre takes place in a hospital on Valentine's Day! The prototypic pre-credits opening sequence is golden slasher stuff. The lovely 12-year-old Susan Jeremy receives a Valentine's card at her house from an unpopular boy who peeps through her window to catch a glimpse of her reaction. Little Susan is not very impressed with the card and her bratty younger brother even mocks the author. When Susan returns from the kitchen, her little brother is hanging dead on a coat hanger… What a lovely little appetizer, ain't it? I have a weakness for slashers that begin with an exaggeratedly OTT and gruesome flashback to indicate where the horror in the rest of the film originates from. Anyway, cut to 19 years later, when cute little Susan grew up to become a stunningly gorgeous 30-something year old divorced MILF (played by Playboy starlet Barbi Benton). She checks in to the hospital on Valentine's Day to pick up some formality test results, but enters a genuine and life-altering nightmare. There's a vicious killer lose and he/she apparently set up a whole evil master plan to keep Susan hospitalized and drive her paranoid. He/she kills nurses and doctors to change Susan's X-ray test results – making it look like she's terminally ill – and sadistically sends her the decapitated head of her new boyfriend in a box of Valentine's Day pastry. Could it be her childhood admirer returned after nearly 20 years of unprocessed rage and frustration? "Hospital Massacre" is a fairly well-scripted and suspenseful 80's effort, benefiting from the skillful direction of Boaz Davidson and the agitating charisma of Barbi Benton. The hospital setting isn't worked out well enough – they could have done so much more with it – and the red herrings (Susan's vile ex-husband suddenly disappearing, the mysterious old drunk wandering around the hospital floors, etc…) stupidly miss their effect. On the plus side, the characters are well developed and the murder sequences are effectively morbid. Perhaps it's not the goriest of films, but several scenes are quite brutal and offensive, like the axe-in-the-head murder or the poor nurse who has a gigantic syringe shoved in her spine. The pace even speeds up near the climax and the final confrontation between Susan and her assailant is impressive. Surely recommended to all fans of 80's horror. And yes, Barbi does go topless.