{"id":4150,"date":"2024-09-21T14:54:03","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T14:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4150"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:16:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:16:11","slug":"hospital-massacre-aka-x-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/21\/hospital-massacre-aka-x-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital Massacre [aka X-Ray]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hospital Massacre [aka X-Ray] <\/strong>(1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, gore, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Boaz Davidson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Marc Behm\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Arlon Ober\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas Josef von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia, Jon Van Ness, John Warner Williams, Den Surles, Gloria Jean Morrison, Karen Smith, Michael Frost, Jimmy Stathis, Lanny Duncan, Marian Beeler, Elly Wold, Jonathon Moore, Gay Austin, Bill Errigo, Beverly Hart, Ann Charlotte Lindgren, Judith Baldwin, Tammy Simpson, Elizabeth Hoy, Michael Romano, Billy Jacoby, Don Grenough.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I always feel like I\u2019ve unearthed buried treasure when I come across an 80s slasher flick I\u2019ve never seen. There always exists the possibility of a complete and total bloodbath.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve known about Hospital Massacre <\/strong>for years, but it was my recent viewing of the excellent documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films that finally prompted me to sit down and watch it. That\u2019s right, it\u2019s a Golan-Globus production. Also, it\u2019s directed by Boaz Davidson, a name very familiar to Cannon fans with cool titles like The Last American Virgin (1982) and Salsa (1988) to his credit. It stars model-turned-actress Barbi Benton (Deathstalker) as a young woman being stalked by a crazed killer in a hospital. With a pedigree like that, as well as a promising title like Hospital Massacre<\/strong>, how could it possibly suck?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t, not really. But it\u2019s not all that great either. It has some serious screenplay issues, like its near total absence of a plot, but I\u2019ll get back to that in a bit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Our story begins in 1961 with young Susan receiving a Valentine\u2019s Day card from an unpopular weird kid. She and her friend David laugh and crumple it up, prompting the other boy to retaliate by hanging David from a hatstand. This scene marks a reunion of Bloody Birthday co-stars Elizabeth Hoy (as Susan) and Billy Jacoby (as the weird kid).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The story jumps ahead nineteen years where we find Susan (Benton) arguing with her ex-husband (Frost) about their young daughter Eva (Simpson). She then has her new boyfriend Jack (Ness) drive her to the hospital to pick up test results. Somebody wearing a surgical mask is waiting for her. This person has it out for Susan. His sick games begin with killing Susan\u2019s doctor and tampering with her test results. The new results indicate something is wrong, seriously wrong. Another doctor (Williams) orders her to remain in the hospital so they can run additional tests. Meanwhile, the masked killer carves his way through nurses, secretaries, janitors and doctors in order to get to Susan. That\u2019s pretty much it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There isn\u2019t much more to Hospital Massacre<\/strong> than Susan being hunted by a psychopath is a hospital that appears to be staffed by psychos as well. How else explain the bizarre behavior displayed by this one doctor and a pair of nurses? Don\u2019t even get me started on the trio of elderly women sharing a room with Susan. I didn\u2019t mind the threadbare plot nearly as much as the huge narrative gap regarding the killer. There\u2019s no question as to his identity, it\u2019s the boy in the opening scene. If you pay attention, you won\u2019t have a problem picking him out of all the characters in the rest of the movie. BUT what happened to him in the nineteen years in between? What were the consequences of him murdering the other boy? Did he spend that time in a mental institution? It\u2019s never explained at all. It\u2019s never even explained how he managed to heft the other boy onto the hatstand. It defies the laws of physics and common sense. Then again, if you\u2019re looking for common sense, you\u2019re watching the wrong kind of movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Contrary to its title, Hospital Massacre<\/strong> isn\u2019t nearly the bloodbath one would hope for. It has a body count of 10. There are a few cool kill scenes: an axe to the head, a saw through the neck, a man has his face dunked in acid, strangulation by stethoscope and a decapitation. There\u2019s some gore, but not as much as I\u2019d have liked. What we do get from Hospital Massacre<\/strong>, however, is this weird vibe. The hospital feels like something out of a David Lynch movie. The killer plays mind games with Susan to the point where others see her as acting irrationally. Speaking of which, she isn\u2019t portrayed as a particularly nice person. You almost feel as though she deserves what might be coming to her. Benton isn\u2019t all that good an actress, but she\u2019s HOT! Plus, Davidson (who does his usual good job as director) saw fit to put in a nude scene, so we get to see her breasts. Naked boobs always go over big with teens and dirty old men.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hospital Massacre <\/strong>has more red herrings than the Philadelphia Fish Market, but they\u2019re pretty much rendered moot since it\u2019s fairly easy to identify the killer (just pay attention, you\u2019ll get it). Despite its flaws, Hospital Massacre<\/strong> is a watchable slasher flick. It is what it is, an obvious knock-off of Halloween II (1981). But since it\u2019s a Golan-Globus movie, I can overlook quite a bit and enjoy it at face value.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hospital Massacre [aka X-Ray] (1982)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, gore, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Boaz Davidson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Marc Behm\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Arlon Ober\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas Josef von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Barbi Benton, Charles Lucia, Jon Van Ness, John Warner Williams, Den Surles, Gloria Jean Morrison, Karen Smith, Michael Frost, Jimmy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Hospital-Massacre-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4945,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4150\/revisions\/4945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}