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BEASTS
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Aka: Get Well Soon,
Terreur à l'hôpital central (Canada:
French title), The Fright
Director: Jean-Claude Lord
Writer: Brian Taggert
Cast---
Michael Ironside ...  Colt Hawker
Lee Grant ...  Deborah Ballin
Linda Purl ...  Sheila Munroe
William Shatner ...  Gary Baylor
Lenore Zann ...  Lisa
Harvey Atkin ...  Vinnie Bradshaw
Helen Hughes ...  Louise Shepherd
Michael J. Reynolds ...  Porter Halstrom
Kirsten Bishop ...  Denise

Runtime:105 min | USA:103 min
VISITING HOURS (1982)

I love a good slasher movie. The problem is that it is really, really hard to find a good slasher movie
anymore. Everything new is slick and bastardized into product, which doesn't always mean bad but
rarely means memorable. I decided to dip into my favorite decade, the 80s, and wade through the slush
to find a great, unsung slasher epic and my friends I've found it. This film is not only a great slasher flick,
it is an intense serial killer thriller as well.

The always creepy Michael Ironside is perfectly cast as Colt, an abusive husband who somehow
managed to get his wife thrown in jail when she fought back against his vicious behavior. Deborah, a
newscaster, is championing her retrial and does so publicly on the air. Well, Colt ain't having any of that
shit and goes to her house. He kills the maid and dresses in her jewelry for some crazy reason and waits
for Deb to get him. She arrives and finds everything in order, except the fact that the faucet and the
shower are running and no one is using them. Suddenly, Colt jumps out and slashes her arms. She
barely escapes through a dumbwaiter and a neighbor arrives in the nick of time. She is rushed to the
hospital and treated, but she knows she is no safer there. She makes friends with a nurse who assures
her she'll be fine. Colt knows he has to finish the job so he sneaks into the hospital to kill Deb in her
sleep, but kills an old woman by mistake. They had moved Deb in the night and he had the wrong room.
As he exits, a nurse enters and he stabs her to death in order to make his escape. Colt never says a
word, either. He is a cold and calculating killer determined to finish off his prey like a shark, or Michael
Myers without the Captain Kirk mask. Speaking of which, Shatner appears in the film as Deb's boss at
the TV station and the one man she can count on to always be by her side.

Angry that he couldn't finish the job, Colt picks up a hooker in pink pants and rapes and bites her. He
tries again and again to get to Deb, but is thwarted by the myriad cops roaming the halls. In the
meantime he kills a handful of innocent victims along the way and fixates on the nurse who's become
Deb's unofficial protector. He follows her home one night and starts to get obsessed with her. Later we
find out she works part time in a free clinic and who should come in to get some nasty wounds treated
but the hooker in the pink pants. Meanwhile we find out that Colt's dad is in a home for old folks and his
face has been severely burned. It all happened when Colt was a kid and his father tried to beat his mom
around. The mom wouldn't take any shit from her abusive husband and through a pot of boiling grease
in his face. His mother's horrible disfigurement of his father is the reason Colt hates women who talk
back...well, hates all women really. Makes sense...I guess. Anyway, the pink pants hooker returns to
Colt's apartment with some friends to mess it up and finds the nurse's picture.

Colt returns to the hospital and finds it swarming with even more cops so he decides to pay the nurse's
kids a visit. Pink pants hooker arrives at the hospital and tells the nurse that Colt knows her and is
keeping tabs on her. She receives a creepy ass phone call almost immediately from Colt, which pretty
much spells out that he's at her house. She rushes home and finds her kids safe, but Colt, cleverly
hidden, jumps out of nowhere and stabs her. Pink pants hooker tells the cops about Colt's apartment
and they rush to his place. Colt has gotten there first and injures himself severely to get himself admitted
to the hospital as a patient. Colt is treated and he escapes into the maze of hallways until he finds Deb
and so begins a tense cat and mouse game through the bowels of the hospital that ends the film as
suspensefully as it began.

This is as solid as slasher films come, and it works as a dark, psychological serial killer film, too. The
script by Brian Taggert (Of Unknown Origin, Poltergeist 3) offers non-stop thrills and inventive shocks.
The direction by Jean-Claude Lord (The Vindicator) is clear and pulses with a sense of urgency. But it’s
the acting that really hits this one out of the park. Ironside (Scanners, Total Recall, Watchers) usually
plays weirdoes but here he is the brooding, single-minded personification of the evil in men. His silent,
cold-blooded Colt is memorable because just like Jason and Myers he doesn't mince words into the
dicing of his victims. Sure, he likes to wear the occasional leather wife-beater, but when he's so
amazingly cool as the film's crazed yet intelligent killer who cares? This is truly an undiscovered gem in
the slasher genre. I recommend this taut, full-blast thriller to any fans of Giallos or serial killer cinema,
it's a definite must watch.

                                                                                                          - Jose Prendes
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Visiting Hours (1982)
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