By Stephen Pytak 

     I think the reason I watch this film every 
once in a while is Rory Calhoun.
     His "Farmer Vincent" is like "Jed Clampett" 
of "The Beverly Hillbillies" with a "Texas 
Chain Saw" mentality.
     Vincent is a motel proprietor who's 
"famous," at least in a 100 mile radius, for his 
smoked meats.
     If you stop by, he'll try to sell you the
souvenir sampler pack for $2.95. That 
was back in 1980. Now, if he was around
that is, he'd probably hit you up for $10.
     He's a Christian right, down home
kind of guy. 
     However, he likes to bury people up
to their necks in his "secret garden" and,
every now and then, wear a pig's head
and do some chainsaw chooglin.'
     Oh, by the way, while he's doing all
this nonsense, he still comes off as this 
Christian right, down home kind of guy.
     Calhoun has this strong-as-an-oak-tree 
kind of look; the architype frontiersman.
It's a kind of presence. He looks very old
school.
     Seeing him in some of the left field
situations here is side-splitting.
     In one scene, a couple of swingers
stop in looking for a room and an
experience.
     Farmer Vincent and his tubby psycho 
sister "Ida (Nancy Parsons)" give them 
one all right.
     With good neighbor smiles, they
hit them with knock-out gas, hog tie them,
cut their vocal chords and bury them
next to about 10 others.
     Before Vincent and Ida pluck one of
these unlucky souls from the ground,
break their necks and put them on the
butcher block, they hypnotize them.
     They use some kind of strange swirling
lights. Vincent says it's hypno projection.
I think it's something he bought at Spencer's.
     We get to see these things work on three
members of a rock band called "Ivan and 
The Terribles." I love when Vincent tells
them they're in for "a radical hypno-high."
     For first timers, this film will be a very
strange journey into the weird.
     One might also get the impression that
there's a third killer running about.
     On the cover of Fangoria No. 9, the
farmer with the piggy head and chainsaw
from Motel Hell was featured.
     Early in the film, little girl twins explore
the motel site and slip into the butcher
shack. There, someone wearing the pig's head
pops up and frightens them.
     The ghoul isn't identified. It's not Vincent. 
He's busy selling meat to the girls' 
folks.
     By the film's end, when we are sure there
are only two crazies on the premises, we 
can conculde that that pig was Ida.
     In the last reel, Vincent dons the pig's
head in a chainsaw fight. He's the 
character on that famous Fangoria cover.
     I think there were scenes from this flick
that ended up on the cutting room floor
somewhere.
     On a lobby card I have, Vincent and Ida
are at some revival celebration with Wolfman
Jack. And they're praising God like never 
before.
     Maybe someday we'll get a special 
edition with lost scenes so we can join in.