Moutaintop Motel Massacre (1986)

There is a movie- one that exists in real reality- with the title Mountaintop Motel Massacre. In it, crazy old Evelyn is released from captivity and returns to her motel. In a fit of witchcraft- and rabbit-induced rage she kills her daughter and then a bunch of people come to stay at her massacre motel for massacring! Massacring is a word!

Being a movie released in 1986 with "massacre" in the title you'd expect a violent slasher movie but you'd be wrong so don't think that. The movie is actually closer to the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which given the title makes some sense. An early scene takes place in a room decorated with animal bones which looks just like that one room in the 1974 horror classic. Mountaintop Motel Massacre even features a similar chaotic soundtrack!

Though it goes without saying this is nowhere near as good as that masterpiece, things do get awesome when Al shows up. This guy is sporting a mustache that just doesn't work with his boyish face and we are treated to a scene where he lounges around shirtless and it's not that he is in bad shape or anything, but he's no machoman that's for sure.

Making things even more awesome is that during this scene he is trying to trick two girls (who are cousins!) into coming to bed with him, by pretending to be a record executive. Which leads to one of the girls being brutally murdered. Ladies and gentlemen, our hero!

Sadly, Al's slimy magnificence only lasts for a few precious scenes and the rest of the movie is skulking around slowly, and people trying to figure out the mysterious secrets of Mountaintop Motel, which we the audience already know. Watch it for Al and then you can fast forward to the end.

8mm (1999)

A very rich man has died and a suspicious film has been found in his secret vault. A film which, if genuine, would be the first snuff film ever in the world! However, the footage is murky and could be fake. It would require an investigator of the first order to crack this case.

If there is one thing Nicholas Cage is good at, it's beating up women on bee-infested islands. If there are two things he is good at, then investigating snuff films is probably number two. And so with Nicholas "a snuff's enough" Cage on the case, our movie begins.

The premise is cool- urban legends are scary and snuff films are possibly the greatest urban legend of them all (except for the hook murderer one). The only way to improve on that would be to get Nicholas Cage involved, and they've already done that. Unfortunately, they then went on to find the only thing that could ruin it and did that. So while the movie starts out pretty strong eventually it just becomes a string of increasingly unlikely coincidences until you get to the end (which features a dramatic battle in the rain, like most private investigations).

So this is what you are up against when you sit down to watch 8mm. It's one of those movies where the hero will watch a ten second clip and find a shadow of a guy in a single frame and then track that guy down and it just so happens that the first place he shows up at is behind the entire thing.

However, the cool premise and dark photography makes it worth putting up with that.