WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK (1988)
aka NIGHTMARE BEACH Directed by Harry Kirkpatrick (Umberto Lenzi)
Artisan DVD
THE FILM
Ya know, I keep starting this review and erasing what I’ve written. This is my fourth attempt at an opening. That can’t be good. So, I’ll give you a little plot and see if it sorts my mind out.
Spring Break. Miami Beach, circa 1987 or 1988. Thousands of young folks storm the beaches and bars ready for a rowdy week of yelling at cameras, listening to bands with big hair and drinking. At the local penitentiary, a rough biker named Diablo is executed for murdering a young woman. His gang says he was framed. The Mayor, Sheriff and local doctor don’t care about what they say. They’ve got all those spring breakers to worry about. But, someone on a motorcycle begins electrocuting the rowdy college kids. Is it Diablo returned from the dead? Or is it someone else?
My God, where you as bored reading that as I was writing it? Welcome To Spring Break is the most innocuous film I’ve seen in a long, long time. Things happen and I’ll be damned if I could keep interested. The first half of the film has a sort of minimal interest. It sets up all the characters and the situations and there is a vague whiff of mystery. But then, about halfway in, there is a really dumb scene in the doctor’s car with the hero in the back seat. From that moment on, the plotting takes on the pitch of a 4-year-old explaining to you the way Santa Claus gets down a chimney.
More things happen but in order to get to the pre-ordained ending about 1,001 dumb things have to be shoehorned in to get there. I’d need some sort of spreadsheet to delineate all the goofballery that happens here. Scenes are filled with characters speaking perfunctory and rotten dialogue while doing things that make no sense. It gets where it has to be by the end but why? What’s the point?
There’s no energy to the film. No drive. No life. I almost believe that this is the first film ever made by people who were sound asleep. Is it a slasher? A biker film? A T&A party film? A film about city corruption? A love story? It could have been all of those and been brilliant. But, it’s none of those and it hurts a little.
Even the music by the normally excellent Claudio Simonetti is tiresome. Whenever the heroine is being threatened, the drum machine and synth solo kicks in and is so inappropriate to the mood that I’d laugh except I couldn’t stop sighing. (Oh, is there anything worse than a mid-80s pop tune that is going along OK and then -- suddenly -- a saxophone solo bursts out of nowhere? If my suicide has a soundtrack, it features one of those solos.)
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I don’t normally go off on things that struck me but this film made me tired so I’m amusing myself.
Spring Break. Miami. Why does there only seem to be one doctor? “Oh there’s the doctor.” Doesn’t Grey’s Anatomy have about 32 doctors on it? Surely they don’t get as busy as Miami Beach on Spring Break. “The doctor’s a very busy man.” Hell yeah he is! It’s got something to do with the 1:4000 doctor to patient ratio.
The Sheriff (played by someone who looks like John Saxon*) leaves his trailer home door unlocked but he has a big dog watching it. The couple who break in spray mace at the dog and it takes off running. Is that a good security system? Why not lock the door and have the dog as a secondary defense?
I just realized that they’re trying to do a Jaws thing with the covering up of all the killings except that this isn’t a small town. Did I mention it was Miami? The logic behind it almost makes me say “That’s Italian!” but the sort of plotting and logic that worked in the classic Italian horror films feels really weird here. I think it’s because everyone’s speaking sync-sound English in Miami. If we were in Europe on strange locations with constant dubbing, it might be charming.
I’m not a biker so maybe I’m missing something here. When people see the killer biker, several of them believe it is Diablo. Why? Every member of the gang rides big, loud, classic “hogs”** that kick ass. The killer rides one that has little compartments attached to the back of the seat and is shiny and plastic and looks like the sort of thing that a gang of Grammas might ride around on. Why do people think this is Diablo returned from the dead? Why wouldn’t he be riding his old bike? Why the conservative stance after his electrocution? It didn’t make sense at all and it makes less sense when you think that the filmmakers may have thought that we thought it was Diablo returned from the dead. Give us some credit. Or buy me a sandwich.
Last one: When a film has a completely unnecessary plotline that only vaguely touches on the main plotline, the main person in that is probably the killer. It’s been said before but I thought I’d mention it again.
This Plotting! It’s so fresh!
AUDIO AND VIDEO
I could see the pictures. When the music kicked in, it was big. Zeta is the best rock band ever. I’m glad I could hear them, loud and proud. The singer in the skintight red jumpsuit pulls it off. God bless her.
EXTRAS
You want to get in and get out as fast as possible. Like using a port-a-potty at a State Fair after REO Speedwagon has played.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I like Ghosthouse. That’s a much better film that Umberto Lenzi made around this time. He even uses a funnier pseudonym. Watch that one. Really, there’s nothing here, not even on a “weird” level or a “so bad it’s something or other” level. It’s just indifferent and bland. Too bad.
* It really is John Saxon. He seems as bored as I was.
** I apologize to bikers if that is a rotten term to use. It gets the point across quickest. Call a bike a “hog” and most folks conjure up the image I’m after.
***My Polish Grandmother eats pickled pigs feet.
— Dan Budnik, 07.12.07 | 
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