Nightmare Beach

This juicy slice of summer happens to be one of the most professional Italian movies made on US soil. You get young people partying, 80s metal non stop, wet t-shirt contests, pretty girls making a buck or two on the side with older gents, sharply dressed biker gang, shady local government figures, and a leather-clad masked killer who offs everybody in high voltage fashion. The story isn't very special, a beach town biker gang leader gets fried on electric chair, while John Saxon the sheriff and Michael Parks the doctor see to it. BTBGL's last words consist of a vow to avenge his own death. Later it's summertime and horny young people start turning up dead. Amidst all this two friends ride into town to join the party. Will it all turn out well? This film is one of the most watchable slashers out there. It's so well made, well paced and well acted (well, it's campy but not horrible) that it almost qualifies for a "feel-good slasher". You might not like it if you're a "gore hound" and only want to see people suffer, because here everybody's having fun.

Here in his attempt to shamelessly imitate the success of American teen slasher-movies, veteran Italian director Umberto Lenzi bids you welcome to a lot more than just Spring Break! Welcome to clichéd situations and ridiculous stereotypes! Welcome to cheesy gore and gratuitous nudity! Welcome to zero tension and maximum nonsense! Welcome to horrible rock music and awful dialogs! In short, welcome to the glorious and wonderfully entertaining world of 80's horror film-making! The overall quality level of this movie may very well be less than mediocre, but it guarantees a damn good time and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to tolerant fans of the genre. Some people and websites describe "Welcome to Spring Break" as a Giallo, but that's probably just because its director is Italian and maybe even because the DVD-cover proudly depicts the image of a maniacal killer wearing a pitch black motorcycle helmet (which was one of the favorite disguises of Giallo-killers), but it's actually a full-blooded and prototypic slasher in the trend of "Friday the 13th", "Happy Birthday To Me", "April Fool's Day" and other so-called holiday-themed splatter junk. The simpler the concept; the better. Unleash a killer – preferably one with an eerie disguise who likes his murders gruesome – among a group of stupid, drunken and hormone-laden teenagers in sunny, beach area. Try and raise confusion by suggesting the killer may be the vengeful reincarnation of a wrongfully executed biker, cast the almighty John Saxon as a sadistically corrupt cop, throw in some totally random images of a wet T-shirt contest and you got yourself the true definition of an 80's guilty pleasure. If you've seen a few movies like this, it shouldn't be too difficult to guess the maniac's identity quite early in the film already, but at least Umberto Lenzi's efforts to provide red herrings are admirable. The maniac's favorite method is interesting as well, as you don't see a mobile electric chair too often. The acting performances are mostly atrocious, with the exception of the aforementioned John Saxon and Michael Parks ("From Dusk Till Dawn", "Planet Terror") as the alcoholic doctor. There are a lot of things wrong with this film, but why bother getting annoyed over them? The girls are beautiful, the boys are dorks, the killer is cool and John Saxon is the man!

Actually, no, this is not Porky's 4. The clichéd title (Welcome To Spring Break) makes this sound like an '80's T&A teen comedy, but it's not. A biker is juiced in the electric chair and soon the teens on Miami Beach on spring break start dying, at the hands of a maniac riding a motorbike and wearing a helmet to hide his/her identity (Night School?). The villain(s) do become apparent at the 45 minute mark, and after a while the mystery killer story basically becomes secondary to all the other sub-plots. Slasher fans should look elsewhere. Mystery fans would be more at home watching one of those Perry Mason TV movies. Fans of '80's B-movies might enjoy this on a viewing, but otherwise it's useless. The slasher story set up it offers for a while is hampered with a dim-witted killing spree of useless characters, offed with electricity, which defeats the whole purpose of this being a slasher movie. The mystery angle the movie offers is supported with horrible characters and a story that goes nowhere. The movie has average production values, but scenes of real spring break action which is shown frequently is distracting, and the beach the thing takes place on is always cloudy. A waste of time. '80's B-movie fans might wanna look once. One And A Half Stars.

Nightmare Beach may not be a very good film in the classic sense, but in terms of entertainment value; the film certainly has a lot going for it. Nightmare Beach is known as a Giallo in some circles, but I think it's quite clear that the main inspiration has come from the overpopulated slasher genre. I'm not a big fan of this type of film, but Nightmare Beach succeeds where other slashers fail because it doesn't try to be anything that it isn't, and the focus is always on the dumb teens at the centre of the story and the over the top murder scenes. The movie seems to take a lot of influence from Lamberto Bava's 'Demons', as trashy eighties metal is mixed in with just about every sequence...and was that the logo for said film that I saw on the back of the biker's shirts? The plot focuses on the annual Easter celebration known as 'Spring Break' at a certain (nightmare) beach. A biker by the name of Diablo was put to death by electric chair after supposedly being framed for murder by the local officer, and now the authorities have a problem on their hands as the biker going round electrocuting people threatens the business boom.

Umberto Lenzi's career peaked in the late sixties to early seventies with Giallo classics such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and several awesome crime flicks such as Almost Human. It's safe to say that his career went downhill in the eighties when he started to imitate the likes of Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato with enjoyable yet trashy flicks such as Cannibal Ferox and Nightmare City. While Nightmare Beach is nothing like as good as Lenzi's earlier efforts, and certainly doesn't represent a return to form, at least this film is enjoyable throughout, and personally I didn't care too much that I know the director is capable of better. As you might expect, the acting is truly diabolical, with nobody except cult icon John Saxon coming out of the film with any credibility; although Saxon does lift the entire production with hard man role. The electrocution style murder scenes are well shot, and while they don't all look particularly realistic; and don't feature much in the way of gore, it's nice to see a slasher that doesn't just feature knife killings. The mystery surrounding the identity of the murderer is never too well explored, and by the end there really is just one suspect left. Overall, this film is bound not to please everyone; but it's a lot of fun to watch, and if you can put with trash films - this one is well worth seeing!

First things first - many have considered this film to be a 'Giallo'. It has some features of a giallo plus an Italian director, but it's a full-fledged slasher. And an entertaining one.

Being a slasher fan, I really enjoyed it. Sure, it's dumb as hell, the characters are just stereotypes, plot is as unoriginal as it gets, yet this movie is still fun to watch. It has all the elements right - a bunch of read herrings, a touch of supernatural, a twist ending, Spring Breakers and nudity a plenty plus John Saxon. The killer is easy to figure out, but that's the case with many slashers.

If you're a fan, don't hesitate and grab a copy.