Dead Inn (1997) User Reviews

Surprisingly fun genre hybrid starring Edgar Allan Poe's favorite descendant.

[ElijahCSkuggs · 6/10 · 23 April 2009]

Dead Inn (called Hillcrest Inn in the movie) is the main setting for this whacky genre hybrid flick. What ya got here is a rag-tag group of escaped convicts holing up at this crummy lookin inn. Well, the proprietor of this Inn (and Morgue/Lab) isn't your everyday fat oaf reading the funnies behind the counter. He's an ancient lookin' southern gent (played by Edgar Allan Poe IV), who more resembles a stiff than a living being. And he's got a whole bunch of supernatural tricks up his sleeve. With his craft laying in the unknown and all types of whatchamacallits, these violent escapee jerks have no prayer. Throw in a love-story with the Inn-keepers grand-daughter and Lab Products deliveryman, a good amount of horror nods (complete ripoffs as well), cheesy as hell humor, actors who are on board, and some bizarre social commentary and you've got Dead Inn.

It's not the greatest horror comedy in the world, hell, you may watch a better one this week. But it's something different, and kinda refreshing. My main gripe with the flick is that it strayed too often in the laugh territory. The flick which sported some low-budget but fun make-up effects could have done better in the horror department if it so chose to. But it didn't and we're stuck with too much silliness and not enough grue. But don't dismay, if you're into low-budget horror comedies with charm, this should be on your to-see-list. And at only 70 something minutes, it's not a chore at all. And hey, there's even a pair of boobs.

Drop in and lose your mind...

[TonyDood · 9 May 2005]

This is one of the "trippiest" movies I've ever seen, and I consider myself an expert on trippy movies! I literally felt like I was going insane while watching this flick, and that's not a bad thing! I picked it up for $2, are drugs that cheap? I thought it would be another tired old slice n' dicer. It turned out to be much more.

This is not standard horror, and I'd love to know how it got made, it absolutely defies definition. It has slapstick comedy (lots of mugging and over-acting, even using twirping bird sound f/x when characters get hit on the head), there's a love story, mystery, even some comments on racism near the end. But what in hell is it all about? Don't ask me, and I don't really care. It was many things, but never dull, especially at only 72 minutes. It looks cheap, like a video-for-film t.v. show, maybe an expanded episode of the old late-80's series "Monsters," which I adored.

It begins with an opening credits montage that clues you in that this will be a "different" kind of movie, when you get a long shot of a traveling salesman of mortuary supplies, played by Mark Miller (who seems to be the only actor who had a "career" in the cast) peeing beside his car on the road. Next you get a quick-cutting montage of a group of convicts escaping from prison. The lead convict kisses a security guy full on the lips, then butts his head. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Everyone meets up at a spooky old inn in an undefined location. There they find a creepy, old, wheel-chair bound innkeeper with one eye sporting a black pupil, corpse-like skin and a slow, confident "South'n Hos'p'tality" way about him (wonderfully played with droll confidence by a relative of Edgar Allen Poe...?!). Is the un-named innkeeper a ghoul? The walking dead? A demon, or wizard? The answer, if there is one, isn't easy to say. The traveling salesman finds kinship, and falls in love with, the innkeeper's beautiful, sincere, but ghoulish daughter who, ironically (and oddly!) works with cadavers. The convicts, trying to avoid the roaming local police, take over the whole place and their leader tries to terrorize everyone with acts of violence.

And this concludes the "sane" portion of the movie.

The violence of the crazed convicts escalates, bodies begin to pile up, then turn up, re-animated. People start seeing visions of Romero-like zombies, there's something about a reoccurring spider motif, a "reviving" powder is introduced, there's a séance with a bunch of old ladies in which, literally, all hell breaks loose. The whole thing recalls "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the "Evil Dead" series, the Romero zombie series, the "Basket Case" series, Pasta-land chunk blowers and even Bugs Bunny cartoons. In the final scenes, the film takes a direction that is so absolutely unpredictable and incomprehensible I have no idea what it meant. It ends up much like an art film, or something by David Lynch, ambiguous and startling and strange. However, Lynch was never able to keep it this brief, and stopped being this fun many, many years ago.

Among the plusses: **decent acting **good make-up and gore f/x **some random but not gratuitous nudity **a demon puppet that looks fake, but maybe it was supposed to? Anyway, it's cool **demented atmosphere and **surprises.

If you can relax and enjoy each scene for what it is and not hope for a linear plot or "Hollywood Script 101" logic, you might enjoy this movie. I personally would have liked it if they'd toned down the goofy humor a little and played up the scares more--there was plenty of potential for sincere fear. But this is a movie that refuses to play by "the rules." Either the creators were completely incompetent, or geniuses, or both. Regardless, if you like off-beat movies that don't necessarily make sense, and if you can even find this sucker, stuff it in your VCR, sit back and go on a trip to insanity! It might help to have a lot of alcohol handy.

"We'll keep the light on for ya!"