Nightmare Beach - La spiaggia del terrore

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!

Nicolas De Toth and Rawley Valverde play Skip and Ronnie, a pair of college football players who, along with thousands of other like-minded youngsters, head to the beach for spring break in search of sun, sea, sand and sex. The pair's fun is interrupted, however, when they get on the wrong side of the town's local biker gang, and a mysterious killer begins to bump off the Easter revellers in truly shocking style.

Hiding behind the pseudonym Harry Kirkpatrick and shooting on location in Fort Lauderdale with an all-American cast, Italian horror director Umberto Lenzi is clearly intending to pass off this 80s slasher as a product of the US of A; to complete the illusion, he sets his sexy spring break shenanigans and murderous mayhem to a suitably loud hair metal soundtrack (he's not fooling me though: with a Claudio Simonetti score that sounds like leftovers from the Demons and Phenomena soundtracks, a really silly motorcycle that electrocutes its pillion passengers, and a daft denouement that could have come straight out of a giallo, this film's Italian origins seem only too apparent).

Whenever Lenzi's attention is focused on either the wild antics of the sex-mad teens (wet t-shirt competitions, drunken zany pranks etc.,) or the gruesome activities of the psycho killer (best death: the roasting of a young woman in front of an open incinerator), Welcome To Spring Break is reasonably enjoyable trashy fare. Sadly, the plot frequently wanders into territory far less likely to entertain, the business with the bikers soon getting tiresome and a ridiculous sub-plot about the town's corrupt officials (which sees John Saxon slumming it as a sleazy sheriff) only serving to add to the tedium.

All in all, this is a pretty uneven effort, one for those who have already seen the slasher classics and wish to explore lesser known examples of the genre, or who simply enjoy their 80s horror extra cheesy.

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for all those lovely, big-haired, 80s beach babes.

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.

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.

First, the movie istelf starts pretty well because it has all the ingredients to be cool; 80's vibes, cars, girls, parties, drinks, gore and a little of Sci-Fi.

Second, I really enjoyed the first 60 minutes. Good memories from the 80's and some nostalgia from here and there. What it really worked here are the mistery aura from the killer, the gore and the main characters as acceptable actors.

Third, the settings are cool and the bikers gang and music are the best probably. The Sheriff is a classic actor from Horror movies. Don't want to spoil anything.

Last, the bad. The last 20 minutes are terrible. It ruined almost everything and everything ends really fast. Poor. Really poor. Not to mention some characters "disappear" and we don't know anything about it.

So, overall a horror entertaining b-movie with 80's vibes.