Slaughter Hotel is a sensationally sleazy and spectacularly silly giallo. It involves a mystery killer who stalks and slashes in a clinic for mentally disturbed women. This clinic is ideal for the purposes of a homicidal maniac as it contains a room with an arsenal of medieval weapons and torture devices. The film-makers find no reason to explain this. It does seem a trifle irresponsible considering some of the inmates have murderous tendencies. But there you go. The clinics other feature is a croquet green - I can honestly say I have never before seen a movie where croquet and medieval weaponry share the billing.
The doctors include a Peter Fonda lookalike and the legendary Klaus Kinski. In the Shriek Show DVD Klaus has a really silly English accent but it isn't as distracting as it might be as Kinski basically sleepwalks through this movie. The women are pretty hot though. Rosalba Neri turns up and delivers classic dialogue like 'I'm not one of those mad people who need you, I just want to make love' before going off for a soft-core shower. Generally speaking the dialogue in this movie is atrocious, it's not exactly helped by the appalling dubbing but it is very (unintentionally) funny in places. However, the cinematography is pretty decent, incorporating a great deal of angular camera-work. And the set itself is pretty lush, recalling the colourful interior decor from Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. A good thing. The mix of Gothic and giallo imagery is unusual and occasionally arresting. The music by Silvano Spadaccino is pretty forgettable, incorporating Euro-cheese and an insistent piano soundtrack when the killer is on the prowl. When the murders do happen they are impressively unconvincing. Occasionally laughably so. But they are often super-sleazy. In most giallos the sex interrupts the violence, in this film Di Leo takes the opposite approach. There is a very high sleaze factor. It occasionally even enters (if you excuse the pun) hardcore territory with some really graphic female masturbatory action. There is copious other soft-core fumblings, including a memorable butt massage. In fairness, Di Leo handles the sex better than the violence. Ultimately, Slaughter Hotel falls into the same category of giallo as Renato Polselli's Delirium, i.e. it's basically a bad movie that sort of gets away with it by way of its unrestrained Euro grind-house excess.
The doctors include a Peter Fonda lookalike and the legendary Klaus Kinski. In the Shriek Show DVD Klaus has a really silly English accent but it isn't as distracting as it might be as Kinski basically sleepwalks through this movie. The women are pretty hot though. Rosalba Neri turns up and delivers classic dialogue like 'I'm not one of those mad people who need you, I just want to make love' before going off for a soft-core shower. Generally speaking the dialogue in this movie is atrocious, it's not exactly helped by the appalling dubbing but it is very (unintentionally) funny in places. However, the cinematography is pretty decent, incorporating a great deal of angular camera-work. And the set itself is pretty lush, recalling the colourful interior decor from Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. A good thing. The mix of Gothic and giallo imagery is unusual and occasionally arresting. The music by Silvano Spadaccino is pretty forgettable, incorporating Euro-cheese and an insistent piano soundtrack when the killer is on the prowl. When the murders do happen they are impressively unconvincing. Occasionally laughably so. But they are often super-sleazy. In most giallos the sex interrupts the violence, in this film Di Leo takes the opposite approach. There is a very high sleaze factor. It occasionally even enters (if you excuse the pun) hardcore territory with some really graphic female masturbatory action. There is copious other soft-core fumblings, including a memorable butt massage. In fairness, Di Leo handles the sex better than the violence. Ultimately, Slaughter Hotel falls into the same category of giallo as Renato Polselli's Delirium, i.e. it's basically a bad movie that sort of gets away with it by way of its unrestrained Euro grind-house excess.