kevinolzak Review of It Happened at Nightmare Inn

It Happened at Nightmare Inn (1973)

First seen on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1979

[7/10 · 20 August 2011]

"It Happened at Nightmare Inn" aired 4 times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, initially giving out the title as "Nightmare Hotel," further airings actually leaving off the title ("Una Vela Para del Diablo" or A Candle for the Devil in Spain). For British actress Judy Geeson this came in between 1972's "Fear in the Night" (with Peter Cushing) and 1974's "Diagnosis: Murder" (with Christopher Lee), her top billed character taking a necessary back seat to the two sisters, played by 48 year old Aurora Bautista and 38 year old Esperanza Roy, who run an inn in a rural section of Spain in a morally agitated state. While Aurora, the epitome of steely, cold hearted hypocrisy, bitterly remembers how her husband-to-be abandoned her at the altar for a younger woman, the mild mannered Esperanza, easily dominated by her older sibling, carries on a secret love affair with their young handyman, each displaying full frontal nudity in their bedroom scenes. Unfortunately, all pretty young women staying at the inn are frowned upon as scandalous whores, and are quickly dispatched by the sisters (even the divorced mother, cruelly stabbed in the back as she tries to save her baby). The real busybody of the village is named Beatriz, who tells Aurora that the young mother doesn't know who the father is, when the audience clearly heard the girl say she didn't know WHERE he is. Fortunately, the evidence that reveals the gruesome truth about the psychotic pair makes Beatriz quite ill (they foolishly stashed the corpses in a wine vat). The butchered TV print ran about 70 minutes, minus the abundant nudity and much of the blood (there's even a sequence which would never be shot now in these politically correct times, with Aurura spying on preteen boys skinny dipping). Speaking of naked, Esperanza Roy was described as a 'near old age pensioner' by another reviewer, but this commentator was duly impressed by her 38 year old assets (the lads today would describe her as a cougar). Just another fringe benefit of seeing a beloved classic from those long ago days of late night hysteria in all its frank, uncut glory.