Nightmare Beach - La spiaggia del terrore

Umberto Lenzi (the Italian exploitation director who gave the world the incredibly gruesome CANNIBAL FEROX) spawned this entry into our beloved stalk and slash cycle under the amusing ‘all American' alias of Harry Kirkpatrick. Unleashed in 1988, I don't think that WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK ever got a UK release, so I had to hunt down a NTSC copy. I was kind of looking forward to receiving my print and didn't quite know what to expect. Knowing the work of Lenzi, I thought that this could either be a cheap bargain basement flick or a gruesome gore filled monster. I hoped that the latter would be the closest to the truth as I opened the jiffy bag in which my shrink rapped VHS arrived in and placed it into my video recorder…

It opens with a menacing looking guy – whom we later find out is named Edward ‘Diablo' Santor – being escorted to the electric chair for being found guilty of the murder of a beach bunny named Mary. He protests his innocence by shouting things like ` I've been framed' and `I didn't kill your sister bitch!' to a young attractive teen – Gail (Saran Buxton) – who's in the box viewing the execution. The convict gets strapped in and asked if he has any last words. He swears that he'll return to seek revenge upon those who wrongly accused him. The lever gets flicked and the unlucky inmate gets fried. Cue a cheesy eighties pop atrocity named ‘Don't take my heart', and on roll the credits… We are now introduced to a few of the residents of a sunny, sandy beach. You've got the Demons, a trouble making biker gang who terrorise all the local youths that are not a part of their group. Diablo - the guy sent to his death – was the leader of this rebellious pack and lets just say that the surviving members are not too pleased that he's not here to lead them astray anymore! You've also got a group of randy party loving teens who seem to enjoy nothing more than pulling dumb pranks upon each other, attending the beach wet T-shirt contests, chasing the opposite sex and drinking copious amounts of beer in the local bar. Gail (the sister of the pre-plot murder victim) pours the liquors in this seedy drinking establishment; and it's there where she meets Skip (Nicholas De Toth) and the two strikes up a romantic relationship. All these wild and fun filled nights are watched by an over zealous police chief named Striker (John Saxon) and a commandment abiding sinister minister (Lance LeGault) who warns the enthusiastic youngsters that they shouldn't sin! Before long a maniacal killer disguised in biker leathers and a helmet complete with tinted visor begins holding his own executions among the unsuspecting townsfolk. Each slaying becomes far more grisly than the next. The authorities try to keep the vicious murders under wraps, but when the bodies begin turning up in public places, it becomes incredibly difficult to keep the chilling fact a secret. So has Diablo kept his promise and returned from the grave to raise hell among the living?

To describe this flick to you in the best possible way, I'd have to say it's like a late night Baywatch complete with a psychopathic killer working his way through the lifeguards! If that takes your fancy then this may well be the movie you've been hunting for! It's blessed with some genuinely original death sequences, including one unlucky female getting chained to a post before she's, well, how shall we put it, ‘Flame grilled' by a large incinerator! It's also hilariously cheesy in a number of places and fans of bad cinema will find a few laughs scattered around freely here and there. It's pretty gory in a cheapskate kind of way and the killer's identity manages to remain quite well kept secret until he is unmasked in the closing five minutes. I was pleased to see John Saxon made a welcome appearance as the sadistic cop. Fond memories of his career best performance in Bruce Lee's ENTER THE DRAGON always allow him to hold his own in a movie. It's all located around a beautifully sandy sun splashed beach and we get some decent and inviting shots of the clear blue sea. Suspicion is chucked at everyone and the killer is hardly camera shy, managing to electrocute quite a few jocks and beach bunnies. The lead characters are likeable enough, giving you enough time to relate to them and hope they avoid getting slaughtered. Lenzi is also successful in keeping things interesting and has added all the relevant clichés without overdoing them to the point of becoming annoying.

Sadly however, WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK can't help but feel shamefully average, at best. The cast don't give us any memorable performances. And even the once charismatic Saxon looked bored. Likeable as he is, he seems to have lost his charm somewhat since the rapid decline of his once promising career. Things are also a little too predictable. You just knew all the way through what was going to happen next and the director doesn't even try to create any sense of fear or suspense. The kill scenes are painfully rushed without any stalking or effective build up. Our psycho just turns up when an unsuspecting victim is alone and then he quickly kills them! There isn't even a decent showdown when his identity is revealed. Although his motives for the murders are resolved and explained things still couldn't help but feel somewhat halfhearted and incomplete.

If I were to put this flick on a double feature, I'd pair it up with Ruggero Deodato's BODYCOUNT. The two are similar in many ways, if not for the fact that the two directors have a great deal in common. All in all this isn't excellent but it's not a complete waste of time either. Just a relatively simple ‘by the book' slasher, no less and certainly no more!

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!

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.

Over-aged "Spring Breakers" are being terrorized by a biker who enjoys electrocuting his victims. The "acting" is atrocious! The hair is big! The music stinks! The heroine/bartender is puffy-faced & stiff. Lots of loose ends. What became of the sun-dried "breaker" (who looked about 45!) who was stealing everyone's money, the Reverend's slut daughter, & the redneck cop dragged off by a motorcycle? Did I miss something? Not very scary (a few fried corpses) & not much fun. (Spring Break films worth checking out, minus the "horror": "Where The Boys Are", "Where The Boys Are '84", "Girl Happy", "Revenge of The Nerds II:Nerds In Paradise").

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.