Nightmare Beach (1989)

I love this movie so much

Just what I expected

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I saw the movie because Umberto Lenzi was its director. Umberto is one of my favorite directors, however, I was disappointed seeing this movie. There is some innovative murders in this (electric chair tied to a bike), but whole plot is so disjointed that it seems like they just stitched few scenes together without thinking of inter-transition. You won't feel any emotional attachment with any of the characters in movie. Not unwatchable, but you won't miss anything if you give this one a slip.

"Cannibal Ferox" writer & director Umberto Lenzi appropriated the spring break beach movies, the slasher movie, and the murderous animal movie and came up with the imaginative but ghoulish Welcome to Spring Break. Students arrive in Manatee Beach by the hundreds to party hardy and a collegiate footballer Skip (Nicolas De Toth of "The Stuff") and his best friendRonnie (Rawley Valverde of "Made in America") are among those who have come in search of beer and babes. The local authorities electrocute an unsavory biker for the murder of a teenager, but the biker did not kill the girl. Sleazy Police Chief Strycher framed the biker for the murder at the insistence of the paranoid mayor who did not want the town to acquire a bad reputation that might dissuade spring break students from populating their sunny beaches. Although they fried him in the electric chair, Diablo (Tony Bolano of "Invasion U.S.A.") appears to return in a snazzy leather outfit with a special motorcycle decked out with equipment that enables the driver to electrocute his passenger. The mayor wonders if the spirit of Diablo is not wrecking revenge on the town for his death. It seems that the body was stolen from the cemetery. Indeed, this string of unsolved murders is just what the local authorities do not want in the headlines because it will do for their tourist industry what the shark in Jaws did to that resort community. The hero is a brooding football quarterback who botched a championship game so his brain is not entirely into beer and babes. Later, after Chief Strycher (John Saxon of "Enter the Dragon") has run him out of town, Skip teams up with Gail (Sarah Buxton of "Today You Die") to learn who really committed all the murders. Gail earns her living as a bartender at a local bar. She is not the typical bimbo type. Initially, Skip suspects that a biker gang called the Demons may have been responsible for the murder of Ronnie. One of the biker chicks wears a medallion around her neck that belonged to Ronnie. Eventually, Skip discovers the body of his best friend hidden and the Strycher surprises him and orders him to get out of town.Lenzi does not spare anything on the murders. The killings are particularly gruesome. One girl has her head burned off, while other is electrocuted while riding on a motorcycle. The biggest stars appear in the supporting cast (though their names are billed above the title. Umberto Lenzi adopts the pseudonym of Harry Kilpatrick, but he need not have concealed his identity because Welcome to Spring Break qualifies as an above-average whodunit. John Saxon delivers the best performance, while A-Team co-star Lance Le Gault will surprise everybody with his man-of-the-cloth performance. Michael Parks plays an alcoholic coroner, but he gets lost in all the mayhem. There are moments when Lenzi develops what could be called a Robert Altman ensemble. Principally, we have a kid who stages death scenes, another kid who snatches purses, and an appealing hooker who claims to be earning money to pay for her college tuition. Lenzi scatters this characters throughout the narrative for maximum impact. Clocking in at 90 minutes, Welcome to Spring Break is not the best Lenzi movie, but it boasts a mystery, a genuine surprise, red herrings galore and several interesting characters.

This juicy slice of summer happens to be one of the most professional Italian movies made on US soil. You get young people partying, 80s metal non stop, wet t-shirt contests, pretty girls making a buck or two on the side with older gents, sharply dressed biker gang, shady local government figures, and a leather-clad masked killer who offs everybody in high voltage fashion. The story isn't very special, a beach town biker gang leader gets fried on electric chair, while John Saxon the sheriff and Michael Parks the doctor see to it. BTBGL's last words consist of a vow to avenge his own death. Later it's summertime and horny young people start turning up dead. Amidst all this two friends ride into town to join the party. Will it all turn out well? This film is one of the most watchable slashers out there. It's so well made, well paced and well acted (well, it's campy but not horrible) that it almost qualifies for a "feel-good slasher". You might not like it if you're a "gore hound" and only want to see people suffer, because here everybody's having fun.

Nightmare Beach may not be a very good film in the classic sense, but in terms of entertainment value; the film certainly has a lot going for it. Nightmare Beach is known as a Giallo in some circles, but I think it's quite clear that the main inspiration has come from the overpopulated slasher genre. I'm not a big fan of this type of film, but Nightmare Beach succeeds where other slashers fail because it doesn't try to be anything that it isn't, and the focus is always on the dumb teens at the centre of the story and the over the top murder scenes. The movie seems to take a lot of influence from Lamberto Bava's 'Demons', as trashy eighties metal is mixed in with just about every sequence...and was that the logo for said film that I saw on the back of the biker's shirts? The plot focuses on the annual Easter celebration known as 'Spring Break' at a certain (nightmare) beach. A biker by the name of Diablo was put to death by electric chair after supposedly being framed for murder by the local officer, and now the authorities have a problem on their hands as the biker going round electrocuting people threatens the business boom.Umberto Lenzi's career peaked in the late sixties to early seventies with Giallo classics such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and several awesome crime flicks such as Almost Human. It's safe to say that his career went downhill in the eighties when he started to imitate the likes of Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato with enjoyable yet trashy flicks such as Cannibal Ferox and Nightmare City. While Nightmare Beach is nothing like as good as Lenzi's earlier efforts, and certainly doesn't represent a return to form, at least this film is enjoyable throughout, and personally I didn't care too much that I know the director is capable of better. As you might expect, the acting is truly diabolical, with nobody except cult icon John Saxon coming out of the film with any credibility; although Saxon does lift the entire production with hard man role. The electrocution style murder scenes are well shot, and while they don't all look particularly realistic; and don't feature much in the way of gore, it's nice to see a slasher that doesn't just feature knife killings. The mystery surrounding the identity of the murderer is never too well explored, and by the end there really is just one suspect left. Overall, this film is bound not to please everyone; but it's a lot of fun to watch, and if you can put with trash films - this one is well worth seeing!