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myhahnestopinion · 7 years

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The Night A BUREAUCRATIC, OPEN-HEARTED NICE GUY Came Home: HOSPITAL MASSACRE (1982)

A hospital is a pretty solid choice of setting for a horror film. There’s a nice irony to a place centered around healing to be the site of a series of grotesque murders. Halloween II used this irony to great effect, to emphasize the inexorable horrors of Michael Myers’ pursuit of Laurie Strode on Halloween Night 1978. Other films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, and, to a lesser extent, Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween II, also utilize this irony of transforming a hospital’s refuge into a house of horrors.

1982’s Hospital Massacre, also known as X-Ray and Be My Valentine, Or Else…, is not particularly concerned with this irony. It’s far too busy being fascinated by the bureaucracy of visiting a hospital. The film is most notable for staring Barbi Benton, whose career runs the gamut in moral inoffensiveness from Playboy model to Country music star (I’ll let you decide which constitutes the low point on that moral inoffensiveness scale). Like Laurie Strode just a year prior, Barbi Benton finds herself chased by a masked killer around a hospital, but her pursuer is far more concerned with getting the proper paperwork filed than getting his kill. You really should feel sorry for this killer though, because, well, he’s just such a “nice guy.” Why doesn’t somebody want to date him?

The film’s cold open is one that certainly matches My Bloody Valentine, another clear source of inspiration for the film, in abrupt escalation, but, hey, love just moves fast sometimes. We open on “Susan’s House,” as the film’s inter-title helpfully explains, because we all know where Susan’s house is located and who Susan is, right? Here, a young, shy boy named Harold puts the finishing touches of his hand-made Valentine, before leaving it on the doorstep. Aww, we’ve all been there, right?

Harold watches from the window as Susan takes the Valentine back to her living room, where she and her friend David laugh at it and crumple it up. Susan abruptly ends her laughing to announce, “I’m going to go eat some cake now.” It’s a sudden decision that gets her out of the room long enough for Harold to break in, and kill David. Aww, we’ve all been there, right? Right? Hello?

Susan returns to find David’s dead body on the hatstand. Huh, looks like Harold’s not the only guy who’s hung up on Susan now! Ha ha ha ha ha!

But seriously, I wonder why she doesn’t want to be his Valentine? I mean, sure, his decision to murder her best friend may have come out of nowhere, but so did her sudden desire to get some cake, so they seem perfect to me! Love thrives on spontaneity!

There’s no follow up to these events before we cut to 19 years later. That’s the origin story. One of the trademark elements of a slasher film is a villain who has been wronged in the past. Freddy Krueger was burned alive in an act of vigilante justice. Jason murders teens because they let him drown, as did his mother before him. The killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer kills because he knows what they did last summer. What does Harold from Hospital Massacre have as a motivation? He was rejected by a girl once in grade school.

You know, sadly, this is probably the most believable slasher villain motivation that I’ve ever encountered.

So, in 1980, Susan has grown up to be a successful business woman, but is still unlucky in love, having divorced her husband Tom, with whom she has a daughter. That’s about all we learn about this now adult Susan before she is driven by her new boyfriend Jack to the hospital, where the remainder of the film takes place.

The ninth floor of this hospital is currently being fumigated, which adds some nice eerie fog to the proceedings, as well as a lot of confusion as to why characters continue to visit this floor regardless. In the first of many instances of the poor communication between this hospital’s staff, Dr. Jacobs is called up to the 9th floor, and heads there, despite it being fumigated. She is promptly murdered by a mysterious man dressed in surgical scrubs.

After murdering her doctor, the surgeon killer swaps out Susan’s x-rays with a fake pair that apparently suggest that Susan is in need of immediate medical attention. The film can’t be bothered to specify just what life-threatening condition this could be exactly. All we know is that this is a urgent condition that requires Playboy model Barbi Benton to undress so that a doctor can re-evaluate her. Proper medical procedure or gratuitous nudity? I’ll let you figure that one out.

The movie tries to justify this nude scene by throwing in some hilariously lame attempts at building tension. During the check-up, the doctor moves his hands up towards Susan’s neck. Could he be about to choke her to death? Um, no, he’s just checking her pulse and breathing and stuff. But then, he picks up a sharp needle! Could he be about to stab her to death?! Um, no, he’s just drawing blood. Also, a needle poke wouldn’t kill someone.

While Susan awaits the results of her test, the film sets about establishing its murder mystery. The film’s pitiful attempt to build up a cast of suspects for its masked killer essentially amounts to the film making us question whether all the male characters are staring at Susan just because she is played by Barbi Benton, or because she’s played by Barbi Benton and so they want to kill her.

Could the killer be Hal, a man who is allowed to wander the hallways of the hospital drunk for some reason, and who sloppily eats a hamburger with way too much ketchup so that the film can try to briefly trick us into thinking its blood? Um, no, ketchup and blood do not look similar. At all.

Could it be Susan’s ex-husband Tom, as suggested in a brief, unresolved subplot where Susan calls her daughter and is told that Tom left their child home alone?

Could it be handsome doctor #1, Dr. Saxon, who seems intent on keeping Susan in the hospital at all costs?

Or could it be handsome doctor #2, whose name is Harry, just like the Harold from the film’s cold open, and who acts charming towards Susan before disappearing for three-fourths of the movie?

Huh. I just don’t know, Hospital Massacre.

While a nurse is typing up Susan’s blood work, she is killed by the surgeon, who waited behind a closet door until she finished typing, despite the fact that he just wants to swap out the blood report with another fake document. Another nurse discovers this, and is strangled with a stethoscope, so at least the film delivered on everyone’s expected hospital themed murder.

When the doctors receive this false report, they decide that Susan needs to be kept in the hospital for observation. She is placed in the same room as three elderly women, who gossip to themselves about the ways in which Susan’s still-undefined illness could cause her to shrivel up and die. Like the fumigated floor before them, the three elderly women add atmosphere to the film, being reminiscent of the Fates from Greek mythology, as well as add a lot of confusion, particularly as to who they are and why the film spends so much time on their bickering when it could be developing a more complex mystery.

With Susan kept in the hospital far longer than expected, boyfriend Jack decides to visit her. When told by a nurse that Susan was placed under observation and that she can give him no more details, Jack mutters, “That explains everything,” in a line that was clearly written as sarcastic, but is delivered in a manner that suggest the film really does want us to forget that it can’t be bothered to come up with some possible deadly disease that Susan could have.

While waiting for more word, Jack receives a phone call telling him to head up to the floor that is currently being fumigated. There, he crosses paths with the three elderly women, who are also just randomly wandering these gas-filled hallway, before heading into a nearby room. He begins to hear a menacing whisper from a shadowy figure. “Is Susan your mistress?” the voices hisses. “Can you touch her wherever you like? In all her… secret places…?”

Secret places? Geez, I wonder why this guy can’t get a date. Well, there’s the breasts and the vulva and associated areas, but, well, most people know about those, surgeon killer… Or are there more secret places that we don’t know about?! Gasp! WHAT ARE YOU HIDING FROM US, SUSAN??!

The surgeon steps out of the shadows and kills Jack. He then delivers a Valentine gift to Susan’s bedside. Susan awakens and opens the gift to reveal a… Jack-in-the-box. Aww, how cute! Well, more accurately, it’s Jack’s-head-in-a-box, but, hey, it’s the thought that counts. This film is really trying to one-up the other Valentine themed slasher flick I’ve covered in this series with this bit, as that one only ever had cardiac organs in its Valentine’s Day presents. Eat your heart out, My Bloody Valentine!

After receiving her boyfriend’s decapitated head, Susan runs through the hallways of the hospital screaming for help. The only people she finds, though, are three men strung up in full body casts, which only causes her to scream louder. Oh my god! It’s people who have had severe enough injuries that they need extensive cast work on their bodies! The horror! How do we know if they are even people anymore with their bodies covered like that?!

Dr. Saxon finds Susan screaming, and returns her to her hospital room. After seeing that the Valentine box now only contains a cake, he decides that Susan needs to be detained, as one of the reported symptoms of her still completely unexplained medical condition is mental deterioration. With Susan now confined to the hospital, strapped to her bed, and drugged by some non-descript pink pill designed to treat her non-descript fake illness, it appears that the killer’s plot is almost complete! What could it all be leading up to?!

The surgeon picks off some more nurses and doctors before we find out. One kill involves the killer walking slowly down a hallway towards a nurse, holding a spread-out white sheet in front of him. For anyone with a dreadful fear of white sheets, such as this young nurse, it’s a terrifying sequence. For all of you out there not scared by bedsheets, it’s, well, pretty laughable.

Finally, the surgeon enacts the final stage of his master plan. With all this planning involved, I hope its something really good! He wheels Susan to a surgical table, where he begins to caress her “secret areas.” However, the surgeon decides it’s best not to leave Susan strapped down as he prepares to operate on her. And, so Susan reaches out and pulls of the mask revealing the killer to be…

Yeah, it’s Harry.

Well, as an irritated Harry says, “Not Harry. It’s Harold, remember?” at which point the film flashes back to the cold open where child Susan laughs at child Harold’s Valentine. Yes, this film’s twist ending relies entirely on the viewer not knowing how nicknames work.

This twist is apparently targeted at the kind of people who can’t figure out that LarryBoy is actually Larry the Cucumber… which is honesty probably more people than I expect.

But wait! There’s more! “Harry” backwards is “Yrrah”, which is approximately the sound I scream out in frustration when having to deal with how dumb this mystery was!

So, with the killer’s identity revealed, Susan asks Harold what he wants. “What I’ve always wanted,” Harold replies, while grabbing a surgical saw. “Your heart.”

…You know, I’ve heard of a lot of elaborate attempts to win over a romantic interest before, but, well, Harold here just blows them all out of the water. Here is a man who is willing to spend 19 years, during which time he made no further effort to communicate with Susan or express his feelings for her, building up his master plan, attending medical school, getting a job at a big-city hospital where Susan lives, waiting for her to get a work-related medical check-up, waiting for her to return for the results of this work-related medical check-up, murdering her primary physician so that he can swap out her X-rays for fake ones, murdering a nurse so that he can swap out her blood work for another fake, building up enough of a paper trail to get her placed under observation, and then finally taking her to an operating table so that he can literally, not figuratively, have her heart.

Wow! How romantic! I mean, if it was me, I probably would have just cut out her heart without all that trouble or paperwork, or maybe just talk to her again because people’s feelings change a lot since grade school. But, hey, it’s just really sweet when someone’s willing to make such a grand gesture for the person they love. What a nice guy!

And so, after 19 years of careful planning, Harold’s master plan is undone when the three old women show up again, looking for Dr. Saxon, which distracts him long enough for Susan to stab him with a knife and run away. Yes, he would have gotten away with his elaborate murder plan 19 years in the making if it weren’t for those meddling… elderly people! Never underestimate the meddling nature of elderly people, dude!

The film then culminates with a tedious chase sequences around the hospital, ending with Harold being doused in chemicals, lit on fire, and tumbling off a roof to his death. Now that’s what I call burning love, am I right? Ha ha ha ha! Susan exits the hospital and is reunited with her ex-husband and daughter before the movie ends, because, hey, what other resolution do we need from a film with no plot and unremarkable characters.

You know, sometimes, the heart knows what it wants, and sometimes it doesn’t. Hospital Massacre does not know what it wants. Was it a Valentine’s Day themed slasher, or a hospital themed one? Was Harold meant to be a sympathetic character in that cold open, or was Susan? Were those three elderly women meant to be comedic relief, or a deus ex machina, or did they serve no purpose at all? Was Harold’s forging of documents an elaborate plot, or was it entirely pointless? The film ultimately can’t decide on any of these points, leaving Hospital Massacre to desperate scramble to come up with increasingly absurd reasons as to why anything happens in this film at all, while always refusing to detail Susan’s supposed illness. While there’s a lot of charm from the film’s shlocky slasher nature, it really features nothing that hasn’t been done better elsewhere, such as in the hospital-set slashers mentioned at the beginning, or in My Bloody Valentine.

There is, however, one part of this film that truly stands out, and that’s Harold. His elaborate romantic gesture towards Susan is just truly inspiring. Seeing a man go through medical school and forge all that unnecessary paperwork just so he can gain the heart of his grade-school sweetheart… well, it was just really something. Hospital Massacre may be a terrible slasher, but I’ll always remember the way in which Harold’s gesture touched my heart, the most secret of all secret areas.

Hospital Massacre is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

NEXT: The Night A TRULY NUCLEAR FAMILY Came Home…

#film #thenightxcamehome #halloween #hospitalmassacre #xray #bemyvalentineorelse #horror films #bad movies #so bad its good

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