Pesadilla en la playa

Actually, no, this is not Porky's 4. The clichéd title (Welcome To Spring Break) makes this sound like an '80's T&A teen comedy, but it's not. A biker is juiced in the electric chair and soon the teens on Miami Beach on spring break start dying, at the hands of a maniac riding a motorbike and wearing a helmet to hide his/her identity (Night School?). The villain(s) do become apparent at the 45 minute mark, and after a while the mystery killer story basically becomes secondary to all the other sub-plots. Slasher fans should look elsewhere. Mystery fans would be more at home watching one of those Perry Mason TV movies. Fans of '80's B-movies might enjoy this on a viewing, but otherwise it's useless. The slasher story set up it offers for a while is hampered with a dim-witted killing spree of useless characters, offed with electricity, which defeats the whole purpose of this being a slasher movie. The mystery angle the movie offers is supported with horrible characters and a story that goes nowhere. The movie has average production values, but scenes of real spring break action which is shown frequently is distracting, and the beach the thing takes place on is always cloudy. A waste of time. '80's B-movie fans might wanna look once. One And A Half Stars.

First things first - many have considered this film to be a 'Giallo'. It has some features of a giallo plus an Italian director, but it's a full-fledged slasher. And an entertaining one.

Being a slasher fan, I really enjoyed it. Sure, it's dumb as hell, the characters are just stereotypes, plot is as unoriginal as it gets, yet this movie is still fun to watch. It has all the elements right - a bunch of read herrings, a touch of supernatural, a twist ending, Spring Breakers and nudity a plenty plus John Saxon. The killer is easy to figure out, but that's the case with many slashers.

If you're a fan, don't hesitate and grab a copy.

Nicolas De Toth and Rawley Valverde play Skip and Ronnie, a pair of college football players who, along with thousands of other like-minded youngsters, head to the beach for spring break in search of sun, sea, sand and sex. The pair's fun is interrupted, however, when they get on the wrong side of the town's local biker gang, and a mysterious killer begins to bump off the Easter revellers in truly shocking style.

Hiding behind the pseudonym Harry Kirkpatrick and shooting on location in Fort Lauderdale with an all-American cast, Italian horror director Umberto Lenzi is clearly intending to pass off this 80s slasher as a product of the US of A; to complete the illusion, he sets his sexy spring break shenanigans and murderous mayhem to a suitably loud hair metal soundtrack (he's not fooling me though: with a Claudio Simonetti score that sounds like leftovers from the Demons and Phenomena soundtracks, a really silly motorcycle that electrocutes its pillion passengers, and a daft denouement that could have come straight out of a giallo, this film's Italian origins seem only too apparent).

Whenever Lenzi's attention is focused on either the wild antics of the sex-mad teens (wet t-shirt competitions, drunken zany pranks etc.,) or the gruesome activities of the psycho killer (best death: the roasting of a young woman in front of an open incinerator), Welcome To Spring Break is reasonably enjoyable trashy fare. Sadly, the plot frequently wanders into territory far less likely to entertain, the business with the bikers soon getting tiresome and a ridiculous sub-plot about the town's corrupt officials (which sees John Saxon slumming it as a sleazy sheriff) only serving to add to the tedium.

All in all, this is a pretty uneven effort, one for those who have already seen the slasher classics and wish to explore lesser known examples of the genre, or who simply enjoy their 80s horror extra cheesy.

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for all those lovely, big-haired, 80s beach babes.

Over-aged "Spring Breakers" are being terrorized by a biker who enjoys electrocuting his victims. The "acting" is atrocious! The hair is big! The music stinks! The heroine/bartender is puffy-faced & stiff. Lots of loose ends. What became of the sun-dried "breaker" (who looked about 45!) who was stealing everyone's money, the Reverend's slut daughter, & the redneck cop dragged off by a motorcycle? Did I miss something? Not very scary (a few fried corpses) & not much fun. (Spring Break films worth checking out, minus the "horror": "Where The Boys Are", "Where The Boys Are '84", "Girl Happy", "Revenge of The Nerds II:Nerds In Paradise").

First, the movie istelf starts pretty well because it has all the ingredients to be cool; 80's vibes, cars, girls, parties, drinks, gore and a little of Sci-Fi.

Second, I really enjoyed the first 60 minutes. Good memories from the 80's and some nostalgia from here and there. What it really worked here are the mistery aura from the killer, the gore and the main characters as acceptable actors.

Third, the settings are cool and the bikers gang and music are the best probably. The Sheriff is a classic actor from Horror movies. Don't want to spoil anything.

Last, the bad. The last 20 minutes are terrible. It ruined almost everything and everything ends really fast. Poor. Really poor. Not to mention some characters "disappear" and we don't know anything about it.

So, overall a horror entertaining b-movie with 80's vibes.