Dave from Ottawa This minor shocker from Italy has a few fairly brutal slayings and several nude scenes involving b-movie veteran Rosalba Neri, but little else to recommend it, even to jaded schlock seekers. The setting, a high-end sanatorium set in a remote château, is completely unbelievable, as are the doctors and nurses who work there (or more accurately commit malpractice there). Who puts a psychiatric facility in an old château filled with scary medieval weaponry and doesn't keep the dang things locked up? And why is the grounds keeper always wandering around on upper floors where the patients rooms are? The average weekly ER viewer has more medical savvy than is in evidence here, and the worst offender is Klaus Kinski, who looks WAAYYY too creepy to be a psychiatrist. A patient? Yeah, maybe. Anyway, most of the screen time is taken up with patients demonstrating strange compulsions while the staff cluck tolerantly and promise to make them well. Yeah, right. I would not trust any of them to treat a cold sufferer. The main problem is the script, which has the feel of having been made up on the spot, with no research time spent to acquire a feel for how psychiatric medicine is practiced, or what a sanatorium should look like, or how psychiatric patients with real disorders act or anything. With little credible drama to drive the story forward and almost no suspense, the viewer has just about nothing of interest to watch between slayings. This is a common problem with many slasher movies: a few moments of shock punctuate long stretches of unwatchable dead time. In a well made thriller, the viewer is carried from one high point to the next by developing a suspenseful or creepy atmosphere, but there is none of that here. Boring!

Michael_Elliott Slaughter Hotel (1971) * 1/2 (out of 4) This Italian giallo has the reputation of being one of the sleaziest out there but more on that in a bit. The film takes place at a mental asylum for rich women. Klaus Kinski plays a doctor trying to cure some of the women but soon a man dressed in a black coak shows up and starts killing the women one by one. After hearing so much about this film over the years I must say I can't remember the last time I was more disappointed in a movie. In fact, this might be the most disappointing Euro Horror I've ever seen, which is a shame because the film features a great cast. You got the wonderful Kinski on hand but he mostly sleepwalks through the film. You've got two beauties in Margaret Lee who was in Jess Franco's The Bloody Judge among others and you've got the incredibly sexy Rosalba Neri from Lady Frankenstein. The screenplay of this film never makes any sense and the movie also features some of the worst editing I've ever witnessed. Just check out the scene towards the start of the movie when we first see the killer and he's walking up the stairs. Another problem is that the film is rather dull and downright boring. There's never any energy behind the film, which sits even worse considering the first murder takes nearly half an hour. As for the reputation of the movie being sleazy, that's really not true. There are several murders but all of them are quite tame and there's quite a bit of nudity, including Neri playing a nymph, but nothing really stands out. There's a couple hardcore masturbation scenes but again, they aren't erotic and come off very lame.

Molly Celaschi (carlykristen) I will start by saying that in the Director's Interview, Di Leo admits outright that he did no research on mental institutions when he decided to make a film based on, well, mental institutions. When asked how he got along with the actresses on set, he replies, "They had good bodies." He also admits that he didn't like the film, but he is glad others do. This is really all you need to know about the film. No, wait… there is more.Slaughter Hotel's original ad campaign played upon the idea that the film is "Based on a True Story", which means it really wasn't. It was compared to the crimes of Chicago mass-murderer Richard Speck (who actually killed student nurses and not patients), but is technically unrelated.The premise of the film is to not be grounded in reality. Or that is my interpretation at least. Basically, this is a mental institution running in a castle complete with armored knights. The only patients they admit are young, beautiful women with a problem of running around naked for no apparent reason. The film has about 20 sex scenes, which are repeated in flashbacks as though I would forget, so I guess it is more like 115 times people have sex on screen. Ugh, there is no mystery here. I think Di Leo forgot he was making a horror film. I guess a couple girls die later leading to a tacked on, lame ending.The major problems with the flick are many. There is highly inappropriate music resembling The Love Boat. The sound quality is bad with constant thudding and a poor transition between music and background noise. Klaus Kinksi, the lead actor, stands around with nothing to do. Di Leo has no idea what mental stability and instability is. The scenes in this film are beyond bizarre. My favorite of which is when a Black patient hearing drums says, "This must be from my native country. I must have danced to this when I was a child." Yes folks, that's right, she proceeds to dance like a chicken and finish it off by having lesbian sex with her nurse. The rest of the film is pretty much the same. Nude massages & sponge baths, full-on female masturbation sequences, etc.I felt like I was watching porn with bad dialogue, but I guess that would be redundant because that's what porn is. Sex, bad dialogue, and some more sex.Nothing in this film makes sense. There is no linear plot, no mystery, and no one cares. I honesty think this was a wet dream Di Leo had. I was waiting for the flying unicorn to tackle the leprechaun for his pot of gold. And then have sex with it.Favorite Quote – Doctor says to Female Patient, "Your desire to make love is excessive. Now go take a shower."Extras: Well, I guess there was a Still Gallery, Trailers, and Interviews. As stated before, it includes educational commentary from the director.Bottom Line: Ultimate sleazefest with minimal gore and zero intelligence. If you like sleaze, I recommend buying it. You will be happy. If you want a good giallo, then set this on fire, do a dance around it, and hope that God will send you anything from Argento, the Bavas, or anyone else that is Italian.Rating: I guess it depends on your mood. Either 3/10 or 7/10.Molly Celaschi www.HorrorYearbook.com MySpace.com/HorrorYearbook

MARIO GAUCI I knew beforehand that Di Leo's sole foray into the giallo subgenre didn't have a good reputation, but I couldn't have anticipated that it would be so lame! As a matter of fact, it almost challenges Riccardo Freda's TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972) for the title of the poorest and most bewildering vintage film by a renowned Euro-Cult director I've ever watched! Despite its violent outbursts - mostly confined to the second half - typical of Di Leo (one particularly vicious episode at the very end, which leaves numerous victims, has to be seen to be believed), he shows no real feeling for - or even much interest in - this type of film! In fact, a good deal of the running time is devoted to exploitative erotic content featuring nymphomaniac Rosalba Neri and a lesbian relationship between a nurse and a black patient! With respect to technique, the editing is particularly sloppy: sometimes it seems like the editor has fallen asleep on the job, with several scenes going on for much longer than is required (beginning with the very first scene of the killer prowling the asylum grounds - though before the credits had even rolled, more than just my brain cells had suddenly snapped to attention with the appearance of a fully naked Margaret Lee {one of my favorite Euro-Cult starlets} tossing and turning in bed; regrettably, this is her only nude scene in the entire film!); occasionally, however, there are disorientating tilted shots and a series of pointless - and irritating - rapid cuts of two converging locations (for instance, the killer approaching a victim's room); besides, we get all kinds of people having flashes to earlier scenes, but the shots are so randomly chosen as to make no sense whatsoever!The score, usually a prominent feature in a giallo, occasionally delivers but it's too uneven (the killer's theme is dreadful, for instance) to really count as a success; indeed, the only worthwhile element to the whole film is the casting of three Jess Franco alumni in the lead roles: the aforementioned Lee (despite the fact that her role doesn't give her much scope) and Neri (who, at least, gets to shed her clothes quite often and takes a shower memorably), and Klaus Kinski as an enigmatic and wild-looking doctor who becomes romantically involved with Lee - even if his contribution is a listless take-the-money-and-run turn, seemingly there only to serve as a red herring! By the way, the notorious and mystifying audio glitch found on the version (horrendously dubbed in English and actually bearing the on-screen title of COLD-BLOODED BEAST) released by Media Blasters - which also plagued the copy I watched - is a real pain in the neck...