Laikals
The greatest movie ever made..!
Phonearl
Good start, but then it gets ruined
TeenzTen
An action-packed slog
Quiet Muffin
This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
movieman_kev
Susan (Barbi Benton, highly memorable from "Deathstalker" released the following year), at a hospital for a check-up, must deal with a lunatic that she has spurned the advances of decades before as children.This film is quite ridiculous. and a lot of it could be seen as a comedy, although I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. However it is entertaining enough, despite a bit of a lull in the middle, to keep me interested with its absurdities. The Prime stream seems to have been taken from an old VHS, so the picture quality isn't sterling to say the least, but in my humble opinion that only lent itself more to the overall experience.Eye Candy: Barbi gets topless
acidburn-10
The plot centers around Susan, when she was a young girl she rejected a boy who sent her a valentines card and then the boy kills her brother and then years later Susan arrives at a local hospital for a rountine check up unaware that someone dressed up as a surgeon is killing off docters and nurses and is hell bent on keeping Susan trapped for his own personal revenge.Well a slasher set in a hospital is certainly different, kind of an odd setting, but in my opinion it's no different from other slasher movies during this era, The movie is quite slow and even though it has its good moments.I ultimately didn't think that this was anything special. If it would only have settled with being a basic slasher movie this would probably have been a whole lot more entertaining but instead they tried to make it into a mystery thriller which just doesn't work. You couldn't care less about Susan's decease and there just doesn't seem like there was a lot of heart put into making this movie. All in all, not a bad movie but not great, could have been a lot better and a little far fetched, I mean how come no one notices that doctors and nurses are getting killed off in a big hospital as well.
Coventry
"Hospital Massacre" has a derivative plot outline, a familiar setting, clichéd situations and largely uninspired murder sequences
and yet still it's an above average and engaging little 80's slasher film that even is – do I daresay it – a little bit underrated! Back in the early eighties, hospitals were quite the popular setting for horror movies ("Visiting Hours", "Halloween II") and they incidentally also loved holiday-themed slashers ("Happy Birthday To Me", "Silent Night Deadly Night"). "Hospital Massacre" cleverly takes the best of both worlds, as the massacre takes place in a hospital on Valentine's Day! The prototypic pre-credits opening sequence is golden slasher stuff. The lovely 12-year-old Susan Jeremy receives a Valentine's card at her house from an unpopular boy who peeps through her window to catch a glimpse of her reaction. Little Susan is not very impressed with the card and her bratty younger brother even mocks the author. When Susan returns from the kitchen, her little brother is hanging dead on a coat hanger
What a lovely little appetizer, ain't it? I have a weakness for slashers that begin with an exaggeratedly OTT and gruesome flashback to indicate where the horror in the rest of the film originates from. Anyway, cut to 19 years later, when cute little Susan grew up to become a stunningly gorgeous 30-something year old divorced MILF (played by Playboy starlet Barbi Benton). She checks in to the hospital on Valentine's Day to pick up some formality test results, but enters a genuine and life-altering nightmare. There's a vicious killer lose and he/she apparently set up a whole evil master plan to keep Susan hospitalized and drive her paranoid. He/she kills nurses and doctors to change Susan's X-ray test results – making it look like she's terminally ill – and sadistically sends her the decapitated head of her new boyfriend in a box of Valentine's Day pastry. Could it be her childhood admirer returned after nearly 20 years of unprocessed rage and frustration? "Hospital Massacre" is a fairly well-scripted and suspenseful 80's effort, benefiting from the skillful direction of Boaz Davidson and the agitating charisma of Barbi Benton. The hospital setting isn't worked out well enough – they could have done so much more with it – and the red herrings (Susan's vile ex-husband suddenly disappearing, the mysterious old drunk wandering around the hospital floors, etc
) stupidly miss their effect. On the plus side, the characters are well developed and the murder sequences are effectively morbid. Perhaps it's not the goriest of films, but several scenes are quite brutal and offensive, like the axe-in-the-head murder or the poor nurse who has a gigantic syringe shoved in her spine. The pace even speeds up near the climax and the final confrontation between Susan and her assailant is impressive. Surely recommended to all fans of 80's horror. And yes, Barbi does go topless.
haildevilman
I heard this was made in 1978 but didn't get released until the early 80's when video made any slasher film a potential moneybag. Am I right? Hello? As far as comparison with its peers go, it's right there, DOWN there.Kid likes girl. Girl likes other kid. First kills second. Girl screams. That, my friends is the first scene. Cut to the present.Yeah, you know where this is going.Barbi Benton screams and watches as someone kills everyone in the hospital she's staying at. This hospital seemed to be on a VERY skeleton crew too. The whole place seemed like a deserted, condemned building to me.Since Barb was a Playboy model, we get lots of breast shots here. The doctor takes his time checking her chest, but the scene is played so seriously, its hard to care.Not much fear at all. A few jumps maybe, but that be all.And no prizes for figuring it out. I had it by the end of the first reel.