Italian Horror Blogathon: Welcome To Spring Break
Welcome To Spring Break was chosen for the blogathon by taking the latest example of 1980's giallo from this list and also for its name, which clues you in immediately to the poor quality of what is to come. Really, that's an extremely unimaginative name for a giallo film (the other name it goes by, Nightmare Beach, isn't any better) and also clues you in to , especially when you consider Luckily for me, it also ended up being an Umberto Lenzi film. Lenzi, the man behind the fantastically terrible Nightmare City and the infamous Cannibal Ferox, is in my viewings not much more than a third-rate director who specialized in exploitive, violent, and often very bad knockoffs of whatever the rest of the Italian industry were making at the time (sword-and-sandal epics, gialli, gritty Eurocrime police movies, war films, cannibal and zombie films, Conan-esque movies, and finally slasher films). I am told that his Poliziotteschi films with Maurizio Merli, like Violent Naples, are quite good for exploitation films, but I've not had a chance to sample them yet.
First, it may be a bit of a stretch to call this film Italian to begin with. It was filmed and set around Fort Lauderdale, all of the principle actors look to be native English speakers, and there's no dubbing of any of the voices. Yet, it's helmed by Italian schlock-auteur Lenzi (under the pseudonym, Harry Kirkpatrick) and produced under the Italian sounding Elpico Cinematografica, plus IMDB says the country of origin is Italy, so all of that is enough for me to consider it a valid choice for this project.
We start the film with the electric chair execution of convicted murderer Eduardo Diablo Santor, who goes to his death claiming that he's been framed for this and that he'll "come back to get even." At this point I was expecting a reprise of Wes Craven's Shocker, but alas, we are not so lucky. During this scene we are also introduced to a few of our principle characters, including several great character actors, who chew the scenery quite well throughout the film.
Lance LeGault (Col. Decker from the A-Team) plays Reverend Bates, the moral conscious of the town who has a lewd (his words) daughter, Michael Parks of Kill Bill and From Dusk Til Dawn fame plays the alcoholic, guilt-ridden Doc Willet, and our dull heroine, Gail (not pictured here), who's sister was the supposed victim of Diablo. But best and most important of all, we are introduced to Strycher (I love that spelling), a dirty cop played by a toothpick-chewing John Saxon. For those not familiar (and really, who isn't), John Saxon is THE go-to man if you want a bad guy played by an American actor in your Italian horror movie (just above Henry Silva), so seeing him show up here made me quite happy. I was disappointed that he wasn't credited in the opening credits with a
and
John Saxon
as Strycher
but you can't have it all.
This horrific and grueling execution (which is later described "like Julia Childs, roasting a turkey") leads us effortlessly into the credits and a super upbeat pop song by Kirsten along with beach footage that looks to be straight from Meatballs 3. Seriously, it's a fantastic transition
It's here that I see "music by Claudio Simonetti" (he of Goblin fame) and have hopes for at least one decent thing in the movie. Sadly, I'll tell you now that I never even noticed anything close to a Goblin sound in the whole movie, as it appears that it's Claudio in his pop-metal mode, with a fairly basic guitar and drum beat used for a minute here and there whenever our killer is killing or there's a chase (if you've seen Argento's Phenomena or Opera, you've heard this exact sound). Beyond that, the soundtrack as a whole is mostly comprised of crappy pop/buttrock songs.
From here, we get a lot of exposition -- the reverend's daughter is a slutty party girl, Strycher has been trying to take down Diablo's gang for a long time, the mayor doesn't want any bad press for the city, since it's spring break and all. Blah blah blah. No one cares about any of this, so I'll skip it.
We then get to meet our bland lead, Skip, and his stupid, "please let him be the first to die" friend, Ronnie. Seriously, Skip and Ronnie. Anyways, they've taken the ultimate chick magnet, their mom's LeBaron convertible, to go live it up for Spring Break - woooooooo. This transition below sums up all you need to know about these two:
There's also plenty of other incidental characters (read: meat)
a pervert hotel owner, a prostitute who targets rich men, a small-time thief (who I now realize we don't see die...cut-scene perhaps?), a practical joker who pretends to be dead or stab himself (just GUESS where that storyline ends), and plenty of members of the aforementioned biker gang. We also get the all-time greatest character in movie history, the man I like to call "GO GATORS!!!" Check him out in his only two moments of the movie:
So, we find out that Diablo's body has been stolen. Or, could it be that he has actually come back from beyond the grave, as he promised. The truth will shock you. We also find out that Skip and Ronnie are football teammates and that Skip is sad, because he apparently lost the "big game at the Orange Bowl" by throwing 5 interceptions and that he's also a shoe-in to be a first round draft choice. He doesn't really want to be at spring break, but Ronnie, the self-proclaimed head of "Beaver Scouting Patrol" thinks that one week of non-stop partying should be enough for him to get over losing the big game and uses some odd Easter basket/sex analogy, a slur, and annoying sounds and laughs to get his point across.
I'd like to point out here that believing that Skip (or Skipper, as Ronnie calls him) was any kind of college quarterback strains all credulity for me. Moving on. It's here that we finally see our killer and the high concept killing machine he uses, an electric chair strapped to the back of a motorcycle. Well, that is except for when he DOESN'T use that, as he actually kills more people without it than with it. You'd think that as a master killer that obviously put a lot of work and money into the engineering of such a device, that you would make it your calling card and use it as many times as you could. Perhaps, though, he didn't want to attract lots of attention to himself with it, so he switches it up from time-to-time.
From here on out, stuff happens -- Skip and Gail develop a relationship, although they show as little on-screen chemistry as any two actors I've ever seen, Ronnie sadly dies in a mesh shirt, kicking off the Scooby Doo portion of the movie where Skip and Gail try to figure out whodunnit, red herrings are introduced, wet t-shirt contests are had, more murders take place, the mayor tries to cover it all up (since it's bad for business), there's a driving montage complete with music from Magnum P.I., there's plenty more John Saxon, and the slowest bike chase in history commences
Eventually, Skip finds the body of Ronnie (it was hidden in a police cover-up!), which leads to this emotional scene, which I'd place on par with Ben Affleck's from Armageddon. And to think, he's now let Ronnie down twice, first by throwing those 5 INTs and now by letting him get murdered. It's been a rough few months for the Skipper
Now, however bad the acting seems there, it's nothing with what we get a few minutes later by "girl on beach." Something tells me that acting talent wasn't the number one quality that was looked for when casting these female roles...
Sadly, she dies for some reason in the next scene. In her honor...
If you think Lenzi hasn't done anything of use so far in the movie, then I direct you to the following scene, where he obviously delves into the repressed sexuality of the ol' Skipper. I can think of no other reason for why this scene is edited the way it is (I included the last few frames from the previous scene to show that there is only one way to contextually view this).
Whatever Lenzi was going for there, it's never expanded on. I'm almost willing to say that it was totally random, but it's just too obvious to be so.
From here, our heroes Skip and Gail continue solving the mystery, make enemies with Strycher (who we are supposed to assume is the killer), some more killings happen, zzzzzzzzz, all of which sets into place the final chase scene and the denouement of the identity of our killer. That's all well and good, but the real gem of the last 30 minutes is the padding provided by an awesome concert that all cool spring breakers would surely be at, involving this band, ZETA! They include a spandex laden, big-haired lead singer, a Kenny G looking guitar player, Barry Gibb on keyboards, and a Zubaz wearing, mulleted saxophone player.
There isn't much to this picture that screams "Umberto Lenzi." Say what you will about him, but his most interesting stuff at least lent itself to exploitation qualities that made it stand out. I'm sure this is partially due to the low-budget this assuredly had, but there isn't even an iota of creativity on display from the man who took the cannibal film as far as it could go. No, this is the work of an uninspired, generic director, which despite some above average moments in his career, is all I believe Lenzi to be. On the other hand, the movie is never explicitly boring, as you are usually able to laugh at whatever is going on, making it a fun bad-movie experience. Plus, all things being equal, it's a lot better looking than a lot of slasher films from this era (1988) were, as the cheap DTV era was just beginning.
Another question I had while watching this was "is the film really a giallo," as it is classified. Frankly, it seems funny to even care, when you consider how bad the movie is, but humor me. There isn't much beyond the whodunnit procedural aspect, the red herrings, and the look of the killer (clad in an all-black motorcycle outfit with helmet) to really make the film feel like a giallo. There's no psychosexual undertones, little blood, and no lurid murders. The "electric chair motorcycle gimmick" behind the murders is definitely more in line with an American slasher than it is with Italian giallo, as is the location of the proceedings.
To finish, I leave you with some more stills of this fine film...
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