Honeymoon Horror (1982)

 I've been having another of those viewing experiences where, every time I tune into particular Roku channel, the same bloody film is showing, albeit at a different point each time.  The channel in question is 'American Horrors Classic', the other 'American Horrors' channel, recently set up by Hart D Fisher to extend his brand.  You'd hope that with double the number of channels, you'd now have double the selection of films, but it seems that the same number of movies are now simply being spread over two channels.  That said, I don't recall having seen this particular film, Honeymoon Horror (1982), having ever shown up on the original channel.  Even when see, in brief segments while channel hopping and out of order, it has to be said that Honeymoon Horror is a truly dreadful film. It's another example of low budget regional film making by a bunch of local film makers, in this case in Texas.  Featuring a no-name cast of non-actors, (presumably friends of the producers), it is a truly generic slasher movie.  It has all the tropes present: a remote location, in this case an island housing an hotel specialising in honeymooners, the usual group of victims, (honeymooners and some random co-ed girls), dark secrets, an obvious red-herring suspect, axe murders and a killer who turns out to be that guy who supposedly burned to death in the prologue.  Oh, not to to forget the bumbling local law enforcement.  

Actually, the scenes with the sheriff and his deputies were added later, presumably to bring the running time up to feature length, and seem to be intended as comic relief.  Relief from what, I'm not sure.  Certainly not the gore and horror, which are pretty mild.  Nor the suspense, which is pretty much non-existent, (characters just seem to stand around, waiting to be murdered).  Perhaps they are there to distract from the script and acting, (although these added scenes feature equally inane dialogue and hammy performances), the worst of which is the 'English' maid who talks as if she had just wandered in from a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film: 'Lawks a'mercy! Fair gives me the willies, it does', she utters, or words to that effect.  (It is worth noting that the film has a contemporary US setting, rather than Victorian Whitechapel).  It's a relief when she's the first character to fall victim to the killer.  Truly, this film is an endurance test, regardless of how you watch it - in short segments as I did, or in one go, straight through).  Yet, it does occupy a significant place in horror film history, in that it was one of the first movies to be picked up by a major distributor for a direct-to-video release.  Sony bought it and released it on VHS in 1982, subsequently making a significant profit from rentals.  The fact that Honeymoon Horror was only ever released on VHS for rental and never on DVD reinforces my suspicion that much of the film content on both 'American Horrors' channels consists of Hart D Fisher's personal VHS collection, which itself consists of second or third generation VHS dupes, so crappy are their quality.  If that sounds like a rebuke or criticism, it really isn't - as I've noted before, the only way to watch these films is in this condition.  It's part of their charm and I remain a fan of Fisher's Roku channels for providing this authentic retro viewing experience.  Even something as awful as Honeymoon Horror has a certain mesmeric hold upon me thanks to its sheer VHS era crappiness - the low budget stuff turned out these days just looks too slick to be truly entertaining in the same way.