Search - Welcome to Spring Break on DVD

Instant Classic

kacman00 | Reno, NV USA | 04/28/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."

One of the best ever

jay hope | Reno, NV | 04/25/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Welcome to the Brain Dead

Jery Tillotson | new york city | 01/03/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"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."

Banal

Jeffrey Leach | Omaha, NE USA | 04/09/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"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.
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