Varying degrees of exploitation in this oddball triple feature marathon I checked out. So what do we get from Death Pool, Grindhouse Nightmares, and Suite 313?
GRINDHOUSE NIGHTMARES (2017)
It’s easy to make this one short. Linnea Quigley hosts 2 stories in this anthology while dressed as a crazy nurse.
The first story is like a stretched out segment of Saw.
A guy wakes up, doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening, so a guiding voice instructs him on what to do to get out of the situation, much of it consisting of self-mutilation.
Going for a grindhouse feel, the film then subjects us to bad faux commercials followed by faux trailers, including a movie by a fictional version of Tarantino and a grindhouse musical starring Michael Madsen.
If you’re just looking for the old school trashy style of grindhouse flick with no concern about a plot, the second story has strippers, sexy nuns, car chases, pervy men, and Linnea constantly interrupting with commentary as if this is an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
SUITE 313 (2017)
A sort of cousin of the Hotel Inferno films (it’s actually written by Giulio De Santi, director of that series), first person film Suite 313 runs just over an hour long and follows the same basic premise—a guy arrives at a hotel and his every move is dictated by a voice on the phone.
Just like those films, this is basically the FPS video game concept reimagined as a movie. The difference is, while those films are nonstop over-the-top gore, this film feels somewhat more atmospheric and creepy.
As the main character explores the darkest depths of the hotel, he encounters endless streams of creeps that are nightmarish in a way that’s more on par with something you’d see in Silent Hill.
The biggest disappointment is the super cheesy final frame scare when he at last reaches his destination. It’s the kind of crap you can see in infinite short horror films on YouTube, the difference being you have to wait an hour to get to it here.
DEATH POOL (2017)
Jared Cohn (Hold Your Breath, The Horde, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill!, Devil’s Domain, Little Dead Rotting Hood) directs this movie that is somehow so ridiculous and so ridiculously fun I can’t even comprehend why I like it.
Oh yeah, now I remember.
It’s literally a story of horror hunk Randy Wayne (the reason I watched to begin with) as a dude who is afraid of water, yet takes an odd job with his burnout buddy (also cute) cleaning pools, and then just snaps and goes on a rampage drowning chicks in pools, showers, sinks, etc.
Randy is shirtless a lot, he and his buddy talk about how they’re done doing gay for pay for money, and they work at a poolside porn shoot (Jared Cohn cameos in his own film as the porn director).
Once Randy begins getting a fan following as the drowned killer, a dude in a store asks where he knows him from, and Randy awesomely references being an actor…and references another movie he did with Cohn.
Aside from this being a sort of dark s(p)lasher comedy, I have to say it sort of becomes reminiscent of The Boys Next Door.
