Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20048 in VHS
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Format: NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 89 minutes

Customer Reviews

Bad, bad, bad....
Yet another hospital slasher I got to see if it would be anything like "Halloween 2". The other had been "Visiting Hours", which sucked, but looks like Citizen Kane compared to this. "Hospitl Massacre" opens up with a pathetic flash-back scene, that is soppoused to take place in 1961, but everything looks exactly as if it were 1981. It's valentines day, and a boy and girl are playing with a train. All the while, another boy is watching them through a window. He has a thing for the girl, and leaves a valentine for her. She finds it, and the two kids start giggling when they see who signed it. The girl goes in the kitchen for a piece of cake, goes back in the living room, and finds her little boy-freind dead. Ten years later in 1981, and the little girl is grown up, played by Barbi Benton. She goes to the hospital for a check-up or something, and yadda, yadda, yadda, she had trouble getting out, and a killer's on the loose inside. I admit im not fully qulaified to write this review, becuase I never even finished watching it, becuase it was so bad. I wouldin't reccomend it, but for the fellows out there, there is about an hour long "examination" scene, in which Barbi Benton is fully undressed, and is told by a doctor to "breathe in, breathe out". A complete waste of time.

A clunker but fun
"Hospital Massacre" is a pretty low aiming shot in the mid 1980's slasher stakes, and it has so many crappy moments in it that you should have a good laugh while watching it. Basically, glamour model Barbi Benton plays Susan Jeremy, a woman who pops into hospital for some routine test results only to find that she can't get out again. This is because a maniac with a serious grudge against her is blocking all escape routes and won't stop until he gets what he wants!

Now let me say that the film isn't all bad, but what really doesn't work is the hilarious implausibility of the "situation" that Susan finds herself in. As soon as the killer knows she is in the hospital, he plants some bogus test results in her file, and from this point onwards all the other hospital staff treat Susan like a dangerous and/or mentally deranged powderkeg who must be detained at all costs. Thus we see a perfectly normal woman forced into straps and restraints, slammed into locked wards, subjected to humiliating examinations and, of course, in between all that she's being pursued by a masked killer. Now the film makes quite good use of the hospital location for some good murders, but this supposed inescapability I just did not swallow. Anyway, for even more fun, let me list a few of the really outrageous goofs this film thinks it can get away with.
Susan actually leaves her boyfriend in the car waiting while she pops into the hospital for "a few minutes". Amazingly, several hours go by and darkness falls before he even comes to look for her! Next watch out for a side-splitting scene when Susan hides behind a portable screen on wheels just inches away from the killer. Watch as she drops a lighter on the floor and retreives it with her foot while the killer stares right at the screen without out seeing anything. The screen even has about 12" of space below it where Susan's legs can clearly be seen. Oh sorry she also pulls the material aside to peer through the screen at him, and he doesn't see that either. Next watch for the notorious examination scene where Susan is stripped naked and felt up all over by a doctor in a supposedly sinister fashion. NO WAY would this ever be tolerated or handled in such a sleazy manner in a real hospital. Plus, save your breath for the scene in which a fleeing Susan bursts into a room full of patients in traction, who all spring to life and writhe their tethered, bandaged bodies around like it's a scene from some kind of purgatory. Why? I don't know. There's no reason at all for this shot, expect to put something bizarre to look at into the running time.

I'll say this though, Barbi Benton is not bad in the role of Susan. She screams well enough and is attractive to look at throughout. Shame that the script gives her so many stupid, dumb things to do and never once is there a moment when she decides to just leave the building (it's not a prison, fer crying out loud).

Luckily the murders are pretty good fun and the general looniness of the whole thing definitely makes it fun. Just forget logic and you'll enjoy it.

A movie in need of intensive care.
'Hospital Massacre' (a.k.a. 'Be My Valentine, or Else!', 'X-ray', and 'Ward 13') was released in 1981. I originally saw this movie at the drive-in when it was released. Back then I used to go to the drive-in regularly during the Summer and would get to see three or four horror movies in one night. As you could well imagine quite a few of those movies were slasher flicks. Considering all the bad movies I saw at the drive-in, this one stands out. 'Hospital Massacre' was directed by Boaz Davidson ('The Last American Virgin'), and is a name I never forgot after having seen this movie. This movie begins with a prelude (so common in slasher films) in which a young girl and boy are in a home on Valentine's Day as the girl opens a Valentine card left for her by the boy standing, unknown, outside the window looking in. She and the boy realize who it is from at start laughing at the thought as the boy outside the window is humiliated and angered. She leaves the room for a moment and comes back to find the boy she was with has been murdered. Fast forward several years and the girl is now played by Barbi Benton as an adult. If you think she had problems as a child wait until you meet the incompetent bunch of doctors with which she has to deal. She has had x-rays taken and somebody has switched them to make it appear as though she is very ill and needs surgery. Now some truly incompetent doctors who cannot read x-rays that are obviously not hers (I mean it is blatantly obvious) want to perform surgery without even a confirmation of the x-rays. As it turns out, one of the doctors is the boy who killed her friend when she was a child (as though that was not obvious), although he does run around wearing a surgical mask and wielding a scalpel effectively hiding his identity (not). This movie suffers from lack of originality in a formulaic script in which you will see the next plot device coming from a mile away providing it has not put you to sleep before then. There is humor provided by poor special effects (a doctor is stabbed through the head with a pick that is clearly bouncing on a shoulder mount device as he is sliding down the wall). The doctors are obviously concerned with cleanliness as one preps for surgery by washing his hands with regular bar soap, turns the water off by hand, and dries them with a towel that was already hanging there. No expense is spared (I mean provided) for the soundtrack music which consists of people chanting "He sees her." repeatedly. There is an occasional effective scene but they are few (one has the killer chasing a nurse holding a sheet in front of him blocking the hallway), however, this is rendered ineffective by so many scenes that do not deliver (it is pretty bad when you can make a topless examination of Barbi Benton dull). Davidson went on to direct some effective movies. 'Horror Hospital' is not effective and makes one wonder if they may have intended it to be a parody that unfortunately went wrong.-Bob