The Merits of Sin: Killer Motel (2012) (Japan)

Horny is the best adjective to lay upon Killer Motel. The horror elements are here and even though they are placed front and center, the whole film is overshadowed by a mostly playful vibe of randiness. I’m not complaining. I enjoyed this one quite a bit and when sex and horror combine I usually find myself nodding off. Not here. The sleaze combines well with innocence and there’s enough insanity running throughout to keep everything moving. It also helps that the sex scenes are not drawn out. They’re quick bits of titillation that actually work. Sure, a penis gets bitten off, but sometimes thems the breaks.

Two young folks are doing the backseat mambo (in relation to an automobile…not the butt) and they’re are interrupted by a creepy bald dude. He tells them that this kind of activity belongs in a motel. He just so happens to run one in a secluded neck of the woods. Because they are idiots, they follow him. Already there is a pretty young writer staying at the motel. She’s working on an erotic horror novel and is prone to flashes of fantasy. She feels the weird motel offers the perfect vibe to get those creative juices flowing. The bald man’s accommodating daughter is also at the motel helping everywhere she can. A trio of folks wandering in the nearby woods run into trouble after one of them gets her foot caught in a trap. Baldy shows up and tells them the hospital is too far away but they have medical aid at the motel. Alisa (the writer) offers her assistance and comes across a giant purple mushroom (“…bigger than your penis head.” One of the trio helpfully adds.) but when she gets curious, Baldy warns her off. We’ll find out a little later that he had a son that was killed by said fungus.

The six wary travelers get along famously. Booze and strip ping pong makes for an entertaining night. There’s a bit of sex and some ‘rock paper scissors’ played between a man’s hand and a woman’s vagina. Yeah. I didn’t know that was a thing but I’ll get to researching as soon as I’m done here. The ensuing hijinks allow everyone to drop their guard (although most of these folks had no survival instinct to begin with) and then the shit hits the fan.

Baldy and his daughter begin attacking the travelers. One dude heads to the sauna after his sexy sexy time with his gal and is interrupted by the daughter. That severed penis I was talking about comes into play when a blowjob goes about as bad as a blowjob can go. Baldy attacks his partner as she dresses. It would seem that the motel serves as a bit of a lure to ensure a steady supply of meat. “Why meat?” You may ask. Well, that purple mushroom didn’t just kill his son, it had the nasty effect of turning him into a tubby zombie.

The rest of the film follows the survivors running around the motel, dodging zombie-boy and his deranged family. Alisa seems to sink deeper into a psychosis brought upon by her writing and intensified after coming face to face with the zombie.

Loaded with likable characters and off the wall idiocy, Killer Motel never falls into an uncomfortable slump. There’s some splatter sprinkled throughout but it’s the film’s wildness that really brings it home. There’s never much of a lull as we’re treated to playful sex, oddball behavior and violence at wild abandon. Hell, the title card doesn’t show up till one of the characters says the name of the movie…there’s about thirty minutes left in the film at that point. Everything just seems to land perfectly. It’s cheap as all hell, thrives on convenience (syringes full of “SUPER ENERGY” show up out of nowhere) and no human being acts like these lovable morons but it’s a horror-sex film where I was actually bummed by the deaths of a few characters…and that says something. 8/10