Hospital Massacre: Early Ruminations in Draft form

After taking a look for the first time at an early 90s oddity, Happy Hell Night, I return to the early 80s, where I am introducing myself for the first time to a slasher set not only on Valentine’s Day (I guess you could consider this the other Valentine’s slasher, as My Bloody Valentine (1980) is certainly more heralded and known when it comes to slashers set during this particular holiday) but in a hospital. It focuses on a beautiful woman named Susan visiting a hospital on Valentine’s Day to get test results. She had a traumatizing experience as a little girl when, while cutting a cake, found her buddy hanging from a coat/hat rack thanks to a childhood student her age (who had a crush on her) named Harold, a psychotic. Harold is also now an adult, but he’s still a maniac, and the hospital has him murdering folks while she’s inside it. That, my friends, is the gist of it.

I could feel this sense of tongue-in-cheek, “we know what we’re making” approach to the material. In an elevator, before Harry pulls a lever that traps her inside it, Susan has this drunk, with ketchup all over his hand and mouth while eating a burger and getting a little too close. Then she accidentally goes to the 9^th floor which is being fumigated, met by three weirdoes in gas masks and sanitation suits telling her it isn’t safe. Like the drunk, these three stare at Susan lying leering buzzards waiting for the kill. Anyway, she takes their advice, presses the button for the 8^th floor, but Harry has other plans, making sure Susan is trapped on the elevator for a little while. This was supposed to just be a minor visit to get test results but the film isn’t about to let her do the ole in-out.

The 9^th floor is perfect for the killer as it allows him to have a place of hiding and hanging around until he does what psychos in slasher flicks do…slay. He offs one female doctor, “taking her place”, kind of a psychotic substitute so Susan will be near him. It is the obsessive personality disorder that drives him to do whatever it takes to have her close.

So this offers some of the particulars. What we do without them, right? The POV from the killer’s point of view…right here. Hearing the killer breath when grabbing a hold of Susan’s x-ray files…accounted for. The violin-esque score that loudly orchestrates false scares, often with characters set up to supposedly find dead bodies, only to discover dummies, mannequins, anatomical figures, with open cans which spill out sauce that looks like blood…you betcha. 

Oh, but this film has characters walking in areas alone (obviously) so that the killer could pick them off. Slasher padding as expected: designed set pieces specifically for introduced, undeveloped characters to be bumped off. I had this thought, though. One of the initial red herrings is a janitor. The janitor seems to be the slasher equivalent of the butler in murder mysteries.

There’s this weird occurrence that had me rather amused. Characters of all kinds stare at Susan. A surgeon waiting on her to get off the phone, the aforementioned janitor (who gets a face acid bath in a memorable kill scene), an old man using a walker to gradually move down a hall while she waits by her doctor’s office (why doesn’t she just leave and come back another day???), the drunk in the elevator and three fumigating sits (as previously mentioned), etc. They all seem fixated with Susan while she looks (appropriately) uncomfortable. All that gawking is purposeful. She’s a very attractive woman and all eyes are drawn to her. One doctor asks her what is wrong, if he could help, and she wonders about her physician. He tells her to try the doctor’s lounge, and as she walks away, he watches intently and lustfully! When the film cuts away from him, I imagined he had to “relieve himself” for a bit.

The whole point of the film is that Susan can’t get out of the damned hospital. The means to do so—Harry swapping x-rays of a very sick person with Susan’s—is how to accomplish that. What was just a check up for insurance purposes as Susan got a promotion turns into a lot more than Susan bargained for thanks to Harry.

So there’s this lengthy “check the vitals” scene that is rather audacious in its sexism. I can imagine feminists with picket signs outside a theatre showing this movie. A doctor with the false x-rays spends a lot of time with Susan. He makes sure she’s out of her clothes, not long inside her gown, and eventually he’s methodically, using his hands to start at her feet, working them up her legs! She lies there looking mighty confused and non-plussed! Why would she agree to this?

After the whole vitals and drawing of blood, Susan is to wait in a room with female loonies. One nutjob with some spoons making noises on her hand, another wearing a scowl while staring at her, a third taking it to some rosary beads…it is like we stepped into this lunatic-r-us. 

Worst. Valentine’s Day. Ever.

This is all like some mad dream. All the people in the hospital either feel and seem weird or sinister. There is rarely a member of the staff or patient that is or seems normal. I have to say I thought this was a really oddball treat, in a way a cult film ready to be discovered now that it has achieved a blu-ray release.