Customer Reviews

Welcome to Spring Break

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

welcome to spring break is an instant classic. the viewer's emotional pitch is kept on edge as the tension rachets up incrementally, from the scene where the wide reciever asks "You want to get naked" and then states "You want to get sloppy," to the scene where the quarterback and his girl make out intensely for 30 seconds while doing 45 in a residential neighbohood. there are many fine touches added, such as the doctor who cannot go more than a minute without taking a slug from his hip flask. in conclusion, any movie that features a priest dressed as a biker who kills various oversexed and underdressed spring break revelers is all right by me.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before someone mixed together the spring break movie with a slasher flick. Or, should I say, a slasher flick with a spring break movie? That such a fusion took place in the late 1980s should come as no surprise since that decade saw the flowering and subsequent wilting of both of these cinematic genres. What is surprising, to me at least, is that none other than longtime Italian sleaze director Umberto Lenzi presided over this questionable hybrid. Lenzi, who made tons of memorable films from as far back as the 1950s, is probably best known for giving birth to the notorious cannibal craze with "Man From Deep River" and continuing the tradition with the nauseating "Eaten Alive." He also made the great giallo "Seven-Blood Stained Orchids," the over the top thriller "Violent Protection," and a bunch of micro-budget war flicks that have unfortunately not found their way to DVD yet. How did Lenzi go from gialli and cannibal flicks to "Welcome to Spring Break"? Because Italian film directors followed the money. If slashers made money, they made slashers. If movies about spring break made money, they made spring break movies. Easy, eh?

"Welcome to Spring Break" introduces us to several divergent individuals. First we've got college football player Skip (Nicolas De Toth) and his buddy Ronnie (Rawley Valverde) arriving in Florida to let off a little steam. Skippy botched a play during a big bowl game and constantly hears about it from people he runs into, so he's hoping some fun and sun will alleviate his woes. Second, local authorities including Sheriff Strycher (John Saxon), Coroner Willet (Michael Parks), and the Reverend Bates (Lance Le Gault) are dealing with the aftermath of the execution of Diablo (Tony Bolano), the leader of a local motorcycle gang called the Demons who went to the chair for murder. His body disappears from the local cemetery at roughly the same time a leather-clad dude on a motorcycle starts offing some of the local ladies. Third, the sister of one of Diablo's victims, Gail (Sarah Buxton), works as a mouthy bartender at one of the local watering holes soon frequented by Skip and Ronnie. Everyone starts to come together after Ronnie perishes in a dark alleyway after a confrontation with the Demons. Skip teams up with Gail to figure out who slew his friend, and both quickly end up asking the sort of pesky questions that make Strycher and his friends nervous.

It seems that the authorities have some explaining to do about the Bolano case. The Demons think that the cops framed their leader for murder in order to break up the gang, and they may well have a point. We soon learn that the killings before the execution and the ones going on now seem connected. But how could a dead killer rise from the grave to wreak bloody revenge on the community that sent him to the chair? Or is something more down to earth afoot? It soon becomes obvious that almost any of these characters could be the murderer. Why not Gail? The death of her sister provides more than enough motivation to try and frame the rest of the Demons for further atrocities. Strycher, too, seems a little strange. He goes out of his way to force Skip to leave town once he learns the young man is uncomfortably close to some deep secret. Further evidence points to Strycher when Skip and Gail find some rather embarrassing objects in his trailer home. The movie bandies about possible suspects with aplomb, only bringing us the truth in the final frames. Anyone familiar with Italian cinema knows what red herrings, multiple suspects, and a killer clad in black means: Lenzi's "Welcome to Spring Break" is a giallo film.

While I enjoy gialli, and still express surprise when I stumble over one I've never heard of before, "Welcome to Spring Break" is a rather inept film. The acting is atrocious, absolutely cringe inducing stuff that has the capacity to melt your eardrums if you don't take a break every twenty or thirty minutes. And it isn't just the no-names shouldering the blame: Michael Parks, a veteran actor of some repute, goes way overboard as the coroner tormented by a tragic secret. Moreover, the kills leave a lot to be desired. The motorcycle psycho usually dispatches his victims by means of a miniature electric chair strapped on his bike. Ridiculous? You bet, and cheesy as all get out, too. But the film's biggest flaw is its inability to successfully integrate spring break elements with the slasher theme. Lenzi throws in a bunch of stock footage of kids partying, plenty of girls strutting around in bikinis, and even has a running gag concerning one young female college student earning money for her tuition the hard way, but all of these elements don't really fit in with the rest of the film. One soon suspects they serve a more sinister purpose: padding the movie out to an acceptable runtime. The DVD contains no extras.

The Italian film industry began to decline by the early 1980s, and had one foot in the grave by the time "Welcome to Spring Break" came out in 1988. Lenzi's film shares similarities with other Italian hackfests that came out around the same time, namely casting preppy type jocks in starring roles while still allowing the cult actors of yesteryear the opportunity to earn a paycheck. I kept thinking about Joe D'Amato's "Killing Birds" while watching Lenzi's picture. Preppy actors who can't act? Check. Cult actor slumming for a paycheck? Check (Saxon here, Robert Vaughn in "Killing Birds"). Oh well, if you're a Lenzi fan you'll take the good with the bad, and this one definitely falls in the latter category.

Heads bursting into flames, vigilante priests, and John Saxon. What do these things all have in common? Cinema gold! This film includes such memorable scenes as the overweight, drunk college football fan who jumps into the backseat of the Florida star quarterback's convertible yelling, "Yeah, gators!" Also, one cannot omit the exceptional scene in which the Florida wide receiver attempts to pick a fight with the psycho priest. The wide receiver touches the priests motorcycle and his head instantly bursts into flames. To anyone looking for quality thespians in a cinematic gem, let "Welcome to Spring Break" be your repartee.

This movie is alot of fun. Unfortunately it's in 4:3 fullscreen and it was shot in widescreen , I bought the pal region 2 version called 'nightmare beach" which is in widescreen (it's the same movie.)This is a giallo/slasher flick that has roots back to the truly classic giallos like (by every critics standard) 'what have they done to your daughters?" (1974) and the great giallo "strip nude for your killer" (1976) those movies featured a helmeted motorcycle killer as well. And they are way above this one in every aspect. That being said this is a fun movie that transports you back to spring break in the late 1980's. The music is great hard rocking fun and the clothes styles were definately interesting. Much more fun than the sad baggy looking and bland styles of today. Umberto Lenzi did make some great movies and this is far better than his 1990's 'black demons" but it is not as good as 'eyeball" or the great
giallo "seven blood stained orchids" in which lenzi did everything right. This came out a year before lenzi's 'ghosthouse' which is alot of fun too. If you don't expect greatness then you can sit back and just have a fun ride from the 1980's as the killer finds ways to off the spring breakers. It's nothing new and at the time was among the many average horror movies out there but it's still well shot and the acting is not that bad as others claimed. This can't compare in bad acting to the many horror movies that have come out that were shot by someguy and his friends with no money. Even many of those are at least entertaining though. This is above them and not as good as the older giallos from the seventies.

this movie was so horrible in every department that it made me think the movie makers grabbed a camera, zipped down to some beach during spring break, hired some of the skanky kids and made this movie. There was no acting involved--just amateur college kids who vamped and hammed it up.

I was amazed to see cult actor, John Saxon, in this hideous mess. He played a cop and was so out of place with his professionalism that he made the rest of the amateur cast look like retards.

There's plenty of girls flashing their chests, especially during the wet-shirt orgy. They are so skanky looking you wonder if they later went into X-rated porno--especially the blonde who obviously reveled in being totally naked in front of thousands of her hard-drinking co-horts. Curiously, the movie makers showed no male nudity--not even a naked rump is to be found and guys usually go wild at these events, too, so many of us admirers of male bods were denied even this fleeting excitement.

I never saw what became of the so-called villian. After seeing the upteenth girl flashing her assets with glee, I hit the eject button.

Writer & director Umberto Lenzi appropriated the spring break beach movies, the slasher movie, and the murderous animal movie and came up with the imaginative but ghoulish Welcome to Spring Break. Students arrive in Manatee Beach by the hundreds to party hardy and a collegiate footballer Skip (Nicolas De Toth of The Stuff) and his best friend Ronnie (Rawley Valverde of Made in America) are among those who have come in search of beer and babes. The local authorities electrocute an unsavory biker for the murder of a teenager, but the biker did not kill the girl. Sleazy Police Chief Strycher framed the biker for the murder at the insistence of the paranoid mayor who did not want the town to acquire a bad reputation that might dissuade spring break students from populating their sunny beaches. Although they fried him in the electric chair, Diablo (Tony Bolano of Invasion U.S.A.) appears to return in a snazzy leather outfit with a special motorcycle decked out with equipment that enables the driver to electrocute his passenger. The mayor wonders if the spirit of Diablo is not wrecking revenge on the town for his death. It seems that the body was stolen from the cemetery. Indeed, this string of unsolved murders is just what the local authorities do not want in the headlines because it will do for their tourist industry what the shark in Jaws did to that resort community. The hero is a brooding football quarterback who botched a championship game so his brain is not entirely into beer and babes. Later, after Chief Strycher (John Saxon of Enter the Dragon) has run him out of town, Skip teams up with Gail (Sarah Buxton of Today You Die) to learn who really committed all the murders. Gail earns her living as a bartender at a local bar. She is not the typical bimbo type. Initially, Skip suspects that a biker gang called the Demons may have been responsible for the murder of Ronnie. One of the biker chicks wears a medallion around her neck that belonged to Ronnie. Eventually, Skip discovers the body of his best friend hidden and the Strycher surprises him and orders him to get out of town.

Lenzi does not spare anything on the murders. The killings are particularly gruesome. One girl has her head burned off, while other is electrocuted while riding on a motorcycle. The biggest stars appear in the supporting cast (though their names are billed above the title. Umberto Lenzi adopts the pseudonym of Harry Kilpatrick, but he need not have concealed his identity because Welcome to Spring Break qualifies as an above-average whodunit. John Saxon delivers the best performance, while A-Team co-star Lance Le Gault will surprise everybody with his man-of-the-cloth performance. Michael Parks plays an alcoholic coroner, but he gets lost in all the mayhem. There are moments when Lenzi develops what could be called a Robert Altman ensemble. Principally, we have a kid who stages death scenes, another kid who snatches purses, and an appealing hooker who claims to be earning money to pay for her college tuition. Lenzi scatters this characters throughout the narrative for maximum impact. Clocking in at 90 minutes, Welcome to Spring Break is not the best Lenzi movie, but it boasts a mystery, a genuine surprise, red herrings galore and several interesting characters.

What is John Saxon doing in this ridiculous exercise in film making for morons ???

Granted Saxon was never a star, but this stinker is even worse than a lot of his other bad choices ! Anyone giving this turkey five stars must be suffering from dementia...Hey Folks, If you only miss one movie this year, make it this one !!

I'm still trying to get the stench out of my VCR......

This movie is a joke, right?. What is John Saxon doing in this?. It's a good thing no one has ever heard of this movie. They should stay uninformed.

Welcome to Spring Break is the best movie put out in nothing short of forever. I don't understand how others can degrade such a cinematic achievement. Think of when Ronnie Rivera dumps condoms on Skip Banacheck while telling some inapplicable parable about Easter (hiding some eggs perhaps). Think of drama like this, and realize the error of your ways. Think of the horror that springs into all hearts when the chilling heavy metal of the killer sounds. I most politely suggest that anyone who dislikes this movie think of the extended wet t-shirt contest. How can anyone resist the beauty of Welcome to Spring Break? Skip the others and get to the movie right chea, as it is better than the disturbingly passionate twist put on marriage by Hemingway in The Garden of Eden. It's a good book, but come on, reading!

this movie is good. i like it. so it is good, and i like it. that means that you should see it. because it is good.