Hospital Massacre

Plot synopsis:
In 1961, young Susan and David are playing with a train with paper Valentine's Day hearts all around the room. A boy watching from outside leaves a red envelope at the front door and knocks. Susan answers, and she shows David and Valentine's card from Harold. The two laugh and crumple it up. Susan goes to the kitchen to cut some cake and when she walks back into the living room, David is dead and hanging on a coat rack. Susan turns and sees a smiling Harold standing by the open window. She screams and the young killer runs away.19 years later on Valentine's Day 1980. The grown-up Susan Jeremy has to go to the L.A. County hospital for cancer test results and she tells her ex-husband Tom to watch their eight-year-old daughter Eva. Susan's fiancee, Jack, drives her to the hospital and he asks if it is the same hospital where a patient once ran amok. Susan goes inside and heads for Dr. Jacob's office. In the elevator, Susan meets hospital patient Hal, who at first appears bloody and dead but is only napping after enjoying a burger with excessive ketchup. Susan inadvertently goes to the cloudy ninth floor where three men in gas masks are fumigating the tell her to leave. The elevator stops and Susan bangs on the door for help. Meanwhile, Dr. Jacobs is called to the ninth floor (she uses the stairs). Suddenly, the doctor is murdered by someone wearing OR scrubs and a doctor's surgical mask.The elevator starts again, and Susan gets off on the eighth floor. The masked killer goes to Dr. Jacob's office where he takes Susan's file and writes her name on another folder. Susan knocks on the office, forcing the killer to hide in a closet. Susan looks around the empty office and waits on a bench outside. The janitor goes to a room on the ninth floor and finds Jacobs' body hanging upside down in a locker. The killer is at the door and the janitor follows him to another room. The janitor calls out: "hey man, who are you?" The killer grabs the janitor and dunks his face into a sink full of acid. (The killer is wearing appropriate rubber gloves).Susan calls Tom, but her stubborn ex-husband refuses to answer and will not let Eva pick up the phone. A doctor suggests that Susan check the doctor's lounge for the missing Jacobs. Susan meets Harry, another doctor, and they go to Jacobs office where Harry looks at Susan's file. After checking the switched X-ray (which shows an advanced state of intestinal cancer), Harry tells Susan that he needs to find an MD to sign the report because he is only an intern.Harry and Susan go to Dr. Saxon's office where Harry (whispering something) gets Saxon to look at Susan's report. Harry leaves and Saxon excuses himself. Susan calls Tom again, and Eva answers. She tells Susan that Tom just went out and left her alone. Susan tells her daughter that she is going to be a little late in picking her up. Just then, nurses Dora and Kitty take Susan to a room where Saxon tells Susan that her cancer test results were inconclusive and that more tests are necessary. Saxon check's Susan, takes some blood samples, and sends her to a room occupied by three strange elderly women. Susan uses the room telephone to call Tom again but the receiver is off the hook (Tom is now home at the house with Eva).Nurse Suzy is in a room typing Susan's report, and Nancy comes in and asks her for a bite to eat. Suzy stays to finish the report and the killer murders the woman by stabbing her to death. The masked killer takes the report out of the typewriter and puts another on in its place. Harry walks in, sees no one, and takes the report sitting in the typewriter. He gives the report to Saxon and Dr. Beam and they determine among themselves that the report is "practically a death warrant." They secretly agree not to tell Susan about her cancer test results to avoid freaking her out.Nancy finds the dead Suzy and she runs out of the room until she finds the masked killer, who breaks her neck with his hands.Dr. Saxon goes to Susan and tells her that she has to stay in the hospital a while due to "discrepancies" in her tests and he admits that the results are serious but refuses to tell her about the results. After Saxon leaves, Susan leaves the room to get away from the eerie women and sees Harry in the hall. The two of them go to Jacobs' office and look at her files. He reads a file, and the tells Susan that someone is playing a con job on her and to wait in her room. He goes to Saxon's office, answers the ringing phone and says to someone on the other end that he will be right up.Meanwhile, Jake awakes, still waiting in his car in the hospital parking garage. He walks into the hospital and is sent by the ground floor receptionist to the eighth floor to look for Susan. He gets to her room and Susan tells him that the doctors will not get her go and they refuse to tell her anything about her medical condition. Jake and Susan head for the elevators but are stopped by Saxon and two nurses. Susan is taken back to her room and Jack is told to wait on the bench by Saxon's office. While waiting there, Jack is called to the ninth floor. He enters a room to see someone sitting in a wheelchair behind a dressing curtain. A voice tells him to come closer; a dead body is sitting in the wheelchair. The killer appears and kills Jack with a surgical drill.Susan is alone in her room (the three women are wondering around on the ninth floor when Jack was walking around), and the killer enters with a big red box, leaving it on the stand next to the bed. Susan sits up, opens the box, and finds Jack's severed head inside. She screams and runs into the doctors lounge. Saxon and Kitty enter and take Susan back to her room, where they find only a cake inside the box. Susan tells Saxon about her file in Jacobs' office (which Harry has).Susan goes to the elevator and hides behind a dressing curtain in the hallway when she hears someone approaching. She sees the masked killer standing by the elevator with a hatchet. She is almost discovered when she drops her lighter, but the killer leaves on the elevator. Susan runs down the stairs to the archive room (for another copy on her file). Saxon is there and tells Susan to go back to her room and again refuses to talk about her file. The killer arrives a minute later and murders Saxon by putting the hatchet into the doctor's head. Susan runs screaming down the hall, but is subdued and strapped to her bed by Dora, Kitty and another doctor.A little later, Dr. Beam comes in to see Susan and he refuses to listen to her rambling that there is a killer loose in the hospital. She bites his finger which results in him sedating her. Meanwhile, Dora is walking down the hall when she is attacked by the killer who stabs her with a giant syringe. The killer then follows Dr. Beam and stabs him in his neck with a large surgical blade as he is looking at Susan's forged X-ray.The killer then moves the unconscious Susan out her room and to a nearby operating room where he unstraps Susan and puts her on an operating table. Susan regains consciousness and tears off the killer's mask and the killer is revealed to be Harry. When she cries out his name, he says "It's not Harry, it's Harold". Harry is the young Harold who murdered David 19 years earlier. When Susan asks why is he doing all this and what does he want. Harry replies: "What I've always wanted: your heart!" Before he can attack, Susan grabs a scalpel off the surgical tray and stabs him with it. She unstraps herself and runs out of the room. Harry chases her to another room where she dumps a jar of flammable liquid on him. The chase leads up to the roof of the hospital where Susan ambushes Harry and beats him with a lead pipe a few times, but Harry still will not go down that easy. When he attacks again, she flicks her lighter and sets Harry afire. Running across the roof in flames, Harry jumps off the roof of the building and falls to a fiery death.The next day, Susan leaves the hospital and is greeted by Tom and Eva.

Tags: violence, revenge, cult, murder, sadist

Review:
That'd good, right?Playboy playmate, Barbi Benton, stars as a woman stopping into a hospital to get some routine test results back and, without warning, finds herself trapped in a bizarre nightmare down the rabbit hole.
Literally everyone in this film is nuts with the exception of Benton, who's actually fairly winning in her role.Hospital Massacre will probably be too frustrating a watch for some, but if you turn off your brain and tell yourself it's a surreal art film, you might get more mileage out of it..
Little touches like the horrible old women sharing Barbi Benton's hospital ward, cackling like the witches from Macbeth, added to the absurd bad-dream quality.
The murder scenes are well handled, violent and rough but not that splattery.This film has a similar feel to something like 'Don't Answer The Phone!' or 'The Centerfold Girls', serious in intent and not really 'camp' in any way.
"Hospital Massacre" is a pretty low aiming shot in the mid 1980's slasher stakes, and it has so many crappy moments in it that you should have a good laugh while watching it.
Basically, glamour model Barbi Benton plays Susan Jeremy, a woman who pops into hospital for some routine test results only to find that she can't get out again.
This is because a maniac with a serious grudge against her is blocking all escape routes and won't stop until he gets what he wants!Now let me say that the film isn't all bad, but what really doesn't work is the hilarious implausibility of the "situation" that Susan finds herself in.
As soon as the killer knows she is in the hospital, he plants some bogus test results in her file, and from this point onwards all the other hospital staff treat Susan like a dangerous and/or mentally deranged powder keg who must be detained at all costs.
There's no reason at all for this shot, expect to put something bizarre to look at into the running time.I'll say this though, Barbi Benton is not bad in the role of Susan.
While receiving a routine check-up, a beautiful woman (Barbi Benton) is stalked by a maniac (Charles Lucia) out to avenge a childhood Valentine's Day humiliation.I see another reviewer called this Kafkaesque, and I am glad I was not alone in thinking this seemed in many ways like "The Trial" or other such works.
Hospital Massacre (1982) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Incredibly strange, over-the-top and at times downright crazy slasher about a young woman who sees her best friend murdered after they laugh at a boy who left her a Valentine's Day card.
Flash-forward nineteen years and the now woman (Barbi Benton) is at the hospital for a check up when a madman begins killing everyone trying to get to her.
HOSPITAL MASSACRE, also known as X-RAY and several other titles, is a pretty poor movie that has so many unintentionally laughable moments that you really can't help but have fun with it.
When that's the highlight of a movie, it means that the whole movie sucks."Hospital Massacre" is a boring, standard 80's slasher with a stupid premise (although we get to know who is the killer at the end).
From the moment she enters the hospital, she is approached by weird doctors, old and strange patients, and is forced to undergo one of the most exploitive examinations in movie history (THE DOCTOR TAKES HER BLOOD PRESSURE AFTER PLACING HER HAIR JUST SO YOU HAVE A GOOD LOOK AT BARBI'S NIPPLES).
Hospital Massacre does a good job of hiding the who did it from you and there are not many woman any more beautiful than Barbi Benton, she is always gentle on the eyes :o) The opening with the little girl getting the card captures your attention quickly and sets you up to enjoy this chiller..
The conclusion is predictable from start to finish and the ending wouldn't even a surprise a grade-schooler but with the original working title of "Be My Valentine, or Else" let's see what this 1982 entry has to offer.The story takes place in 1961 - young Susan and her brother are playing with a toy train set.
Luckily Hospital Massacre rushes right into the thick of it, wasting absolutely no time on yawn-inducing sub-plots and After School Special dopiness.
Hospital Massacre is a well done Slasher movie but not a film worthy to exist among my collection.
"Hospital Massacre" opens in the year 1961.It's Valentines Day.A boy named David and girl named Susan Jeremy are playing with a train.Another boy Harold is watching them through a window.He fell love with Susan and leaves her a valentine.She finds it and the two kids start giggling when they see who signed it.Harold is angry and he kills he kills David by breaking his neck on a coat hanger.Nineteen years later in 1981 grown up Susan is sent to her local hospital for a "routine checkup".She quickly discovers someone doesn't want her to leave.There is a slasher on the loose disguised as surgeon,who kills various nurses,patients and doctors.Very enjoyable 80's slasher with few silly moments and some bloody death scenes.Barbi Benton provides a bit of nudity with her topless examination scene.The script is formulaic and the soundtrack consists of people chanting 'He sees her' repeatedly.If you enjoyed "Halloween II" or "Visiting Hours" give this one a look.7 out of 10..
The movie starts with the murder of a young boy on Valentine's Day. After another boy named Harry gets "rejected" by our lead character Susan, he murders the young boy she's playing with.
The film is focused on the unfortunate Susan, pursued by an amorous nut-case who has already maligned her in childhood and now takes the opportunity to turn a routine hospital visit into a frightening collision of Kafka and slasher cheese by way of a bit of result tampering.
Barbi Benton has an appealing presence as the bedevilled Susan, lovely looking lady and enthusiastic too, she doesn't act much above soap opera levels but carries the film amply, while Charles Lucia makes for an effectively barmy villain.
Cut to the present.Yeah, you know where this is going.Barbi Benton screams and watches as someone kills everyone in the hospital she's staying at.
Nineteen years later, a now fully grown Susan (played by Playboy playmate Barbi Benton) attends a hospital appointment only to find a still-rather-obsessed Harold waiting there to try and steal her heart once again—only this time, he intends to do it literally with a variety of nasty surgical implements!!Chock full of ridiculous red-herrings and annoying false scares, and displaying zero originality from start to finish, Boaz Davidson's Hospital Massacre is a derivative piece of slasher garbage that, at times, is so daft that it unintentionally borders on parody.In the prologue, Susan is seen brandishing a large knife, only to reveal that she is about to cut a cake; later, what looks like blood drips onto Susan's shoe but which turns out to be ketchup; an unscheduled lift stop on a deserted floor results in Susan being startled by men in masks, who are then revealed to be fumigating the level; and a human shape under a sheet turns out to be a mannequin: Hospital Massacre is absolutely littered with such dumb contrivances that really grate on the nerves.Also serving to irritate are Susan's inability to keep quiet when being stalked by the killer (she drops her lighter, knocks over reports, and clatters metal instruments at the most inopportune moments), the complete absence of any other people when the murderer strikes, the ridiculous manner in which the hospital staff treat their patients (can anyone say 'lawsuit'?), and the score, which mimics not only Harry Manfredini's music from Friday the 13th (which is understandable, I suppose), but also Jerry Goldsmith's choral chanting from The Omen (???!?!).On the plus side, there's the occasional spot of reasonable gore (including a severed head in a box, an axe in the head and a pointed thingy through the neck), an enjoyably exploitative moment where Miss Benton strips to her panties for an unnecessary all-over examination by a pervy doctor, and one incredible, must-be-seen-to-be-believed scene in which Susan runs into a room full of people covered from head-to-toe in plaster who all proceed to flail their limbs in an uncontrollable manner.
Sure there's gratuitous Barbi Benton nudity, but it's really creepy and the whole movie just drags because the director thinks that by doing something slow it builds suspense when it just makes you want to fast forward.
Hospital Massacre a.k.a. X-Ray is a light, goofy slasher offering that's not discussed or mentioned very often, even though it's probably one of the more fun examples of the genre.Barbi Benton stars as a recently divorced woman trying to pick up some routine x-rays from the hospital.
Barbi Benton plays a grown-up girl that witnessed her boy friend killed on Valentine's Day as a youngster by a mad boy named Harold who just wanted to be loved.
She comes in to a hospital that recently housed a psychopathic killer to see her doctor and pick up some routine medical work only to enter the portal of some kind of deathcamp as doctors, orderlies, nurses, receptionists, and patients begin getting stabbed, drilled, decapitated, injected, forced into a sink of corrosive acid, and the beat goes on.
Yet, there's something so bizarre about it that it almost feels like one of those strange Italian horror films from the 70's or 80's where it seems like aliens from another planet have made the film and are trying to recreate the human experience as best they can.The story involves Barbi Benton who goes in to pick up some routine test results, but someone from her past switches her results so that she'll have to stay for more test and they can get close to her...and kill off half the hospital.Much like Halloween II, this hospital feels dimly lit - with hallways filled with dust and smoke - and a bit underpopulated (not as much as in Halloween II, though).
It's very strange.Hospital Massacre is perfect for rainy day or late night movie watching, especially with friends..
The plot centers around Susan, when she was a young girl she rejected a boy who sent her a valentines card and then the boy kills her brother and then years later Susan arrives at a local hospital for a rountine check up unaware that someone dressed up as a surgeon is killing off docters and nurses and is hell bent on keeping Susan trapped for his own personal revenge.Well a slasher set in a hospital is certainly different, kind of an odd setting, but in my opinion it's no different from other slasher movies during this era, The movie is quite slow and even though it has its good moments.I ultimately didn't think that this was anything special.
All in all, not a bad movie but not great, could have been a lot better and a little far fetched, I mean how come no one notices that doctors and nurses are getting killed off in a big hospital as well..
"Hospital Massacre" has a derivative plot outline, a familiar setting, clichéd situations and largely uninspired murder sequences  and yet still it's an above average and engaging little 80's slasher film that even is – do I daresay it – a little bit underrated!
Back in the early eighties, hospitals were quite the popular setting for horror movies ("Visiting Hours", "Halloween II") and they incidentally also loved holiday-themed slashers ("Happy Birthday To Me", "Silent Night Deadly Night").
He/she kills nurses and doctors to change Susan's X-ray test results – making it look like she's terminally ill – and sadistically sends her the decapitated head of her new boyfriend in a box of Valentine's Day pastry.
"Hospital Massacre" is a fairly well-scripted and suspenseful 80's effort, benefiting from the skillful direction of Boaz Davidson and the agitating charisma of Barbi Benton.
This is the type of film that seems to think that some (shamelessly gratuitous) nudity and a few bloody gore effects can fully compensate for an illogical script (almost every doctor is portrayed as a sadist) and some of the most ludicrously conceived "false scares" ever seen in a horror flick (just check out the early elevator scene).
Among the small sub-subgenre of horror movies that are the hospital slashers - also including "Halloween II" (1981) and "Visiting Hours" - is this kooky story of murder.
Slasher fanatics may be disappointed that the body count isn't larger, but some of the murders are effectively gory and sadistic, and lead actress Barbi Benton, the Playboy icon and companion to Hugh Hefner for several years, shows off the goods in a pervy examination scene.The story begins with a child named Susan who reacts with laughter to receiving a Valentine from admirer Harold.
And 19 years later when Susan (now played by the luscious Ms. Benton), a mother and divorcée, heads into a hospital to pick up her test results, he contrives a way to make her stay, by falsifying her results and making it look like she's terminally ill.
Susan Jeremy (a pretty clunky, yet still appealingly sincere performance by gorgeous brunette knockout Barbi Benton) goes to the hospital for a routine check-up.
Directed with astonishing all-thumbs maladroitness by Boaz Davidson, with loads of laughably obvious red herring probable suspects (skeevy drunk, weird janitor, sinister physicians, and so on), a ludicrous script by Marc Behm, clumsy attempts at suspense, an absurd heavy-breathing maniac, uproariously over the top murder set pieces, an overblown hum'n'shiver synthesizer score by Arlon Ober that comes complete with a campy shrieking chorus screaming up a storm during the more intense ooga-booga moments, and a colorful assortment of oddball patients (the trio of hideous old hags in Susan's hospital room are positively hysterical!), this hopelessly ham-fisted clunker plays like an unintentionally hilarious send-up of the slice'n'dice horror sub-genre.
Susan (Barbi Benton, highly memorable from "Deathstalker" released the following year), at a hospital for a check-up, must deal with a lunatic that she has spurned the advances of decades before as children.This film is quite ridiculous.
Our heroine, Susan, is just swinging by the hospital for a few minutes to pick up test results, but after a few hours of wandering around, acting upset, getting thrown into beds, yelled at and slapped by doctors, she ain't going nowhere.And it's because someone in the hospital keeps making others believe she is worse off than she is.
***Final thoughts: My friend, Dustin, described this movie's lead as: "No one exemplifies the height of sophistication like Barbi Benton in 1981's hospital-set slasher X-RAY." But, I might add: She also had some weird- ass nipples.
Meanwhile something, possibly someone, is slowly murdering people in the hospital and hiding the bodies.Susan finds the hospital very annoying and incredibly creepy, especially Doctor Saxon, who acts very pervy during her routine check-up and begins groping her while outside the door, a drunk patient watches since she is naked.
Could it possibly be the psycho Harold, who killed a friend of Susan's on Valentine's Day 19 years earlier.........Cannon horror movies.
One could say that all movies distributed by this glorious company were 'horrors', but for me, they were the epitome of the eighties, and released some brilliantly bonkers movies throughout that decade.And here, it's bonkers business as usual, just not brilliantly bonkers.Firstly, you have to throw comprehension out of the window, followed closely by happenstance, and actuality.Then you have to believe that out of all of the hospitals that Susan goes to, the boy from the flashback sequence works there, and happens to be a doctor, and is working that particular day.It's a slasher movie, with the old 'when we were young, I dismissed a valentine card from the local weirdo, and he killed my friend' trope, and go from there.The acting is decidedly dodgy, there is a sub-plot involving her ex looking after her child that never gets elaborated, and everyone in the first ten minutes has such shifty eyes, you'd think that Davidson went to an opticians for the casting call.It's a poor movie for sure, but it's still fun in that dodgy Cannon way.The victims find themselves in the strangest of situations, and the killer even uses a bed sheet to chase someone down a corridor.Funny, but for all the wrong reasons.An essential bad movie..
Hospital Massacre starts in Los Angeles in 1961 where a young boy named Harold (Billy Jane) leaves a Valentine's Day card for the girl he fancies Susan (Elizabeth Hoy), however she does not return the sentiment & laughs at Harolds card before ripping it up & throwing it on the floor.
Jump forward '19 Years Later' & Susan (Barbi Benton) is due to collect the results of some routine medical tests from a local hospital, however her doctor Dr. Jacobs (Gay Austin) seems to have disappeared & Susan is growing impatient & ask's resident intern Harry (Charles Lucia) to help.
Hospital massacre had promise I suppose but nothing really ties the individual aspects of the script together, why has the killer gone to such elaborate lengths to fool Susan & the doctor's into thinking she is ill?
The setting doesn't look much like a hospital most of the time with dark corridors & lots of wooden doors, there doesn't seem to be any wards or many doctor's about.Probably shot on a fairly low budget Hospital Massacre was filmed in Los Angeles & is quite well made for what it is, it's certainly no worse looking than any other slasher from the period even if it's not as good as many of them.
Former Play-mate & country singer Benton gets to strip for her examination but otherwise makes for a forgettable lead.Hospital Massacre is a pretty average 80's slasher with a lack of gore & a plot that tries to be suspenseful & mysterious but just ends up being a bit of a random mess with various killings thrown in.