David Marcos Hospital Massacre a.k.a. X-Ray is a light, goofy slasher offering that's not discussed or mentioned very often, even though it's probably one of the more fun examples of the genre.Barbi Benton stars as a recently divorced woman trying to pick up some routine x-rays from the hospital. Her x-rays are switched by a psychotic madman and Benton's night turns into a full fledged nightmare.If there's one thing Hospital Massacre can be commended for, it's the wackiness factor. Benton encounters everything in this hospital from an entire floor filled with smoke and guys in gas masks, cackling old crones, decapitated heads in hat boxes, sinks full of acid, rooms of shrieking patients in full body casts...it boggles the mind. It teeters the line of camp several times, but usually just comes across as nightmarish and bizarre.Benton isn't too bad as our heroine and the rest of the acting isn't awful either. The smokey hospital (is it on fire?) adds some nice atmosphere and our heroine's predicament is nicely paranoid like dime store Kafka.Slasher fans should find a lot to enjoy here.

gavin6942 While receiving a routine check-up, a beautiful woman (Barbi Benton) is stalked by a maniac (Charles Lucia) out to avenge a childhood Valentine's Day humiliation.I see another reviewer called this Kafkaesque, and I am glad I was not alone in thinking this seemed in many ways like "The Trial" or other such works. The lead character keeps getting passed from doctor to doctor with test after test, but no one ever bothers to tell her what is wrong (and the audience does not know either beyond some really bizarre x-rays).Writer-director Boaz Davidson has an impressive list of credits under his belt, primarily as producer (he is most recently involved with the "Expendables" franchise). His writing and directing is a bit more spotty, and from the interview featured on the Scream Factory disc it seems his specialty was comedies. This shows in "X-Ray". While obviously a slasher film, it is more silly than the average one and for every suspenseful or tension-filled moment, there is a humorous bit not far behind.I would not say this is one of the great slashers. Most people probably forgot it existed or never heard of it. But it is not the worst, and I am glad it has been brought back on DVD and Blu-Ray. A cheesy 1980s horror film beats the new stuff any day of the week.

BA_Harrison When the Valentine's Day card he sends to pretty Susan Jeremy is greeted with laughter and derision, young Harold loses the plot and impales Susan's playmate on a hat-stand. Nineteen years later, a now fully grown Susan (played by Playboy playmate Barbi Benton) attends a hospital appointment only to find a still-rather-obsessed Harold waiting there to try and steal her heart once again—only this time, he intends to do it literally with a variety of nasty surgical implements!!Chock full of ridiculous red-herrings and annoying false scares, and displaying zero originality from start to finish, Boaz Davidson's Hospital Massacre is a derivative piece of slasher garbage that, at times, is so daft that it unintentionally borders on parody.In the prologue, Susan is seen brandishing a large knife, only to reveal that she is about to cut a cake; later, what looks like blood drips onto Susan's shoe but which turns out to be ketchup; an unscheduled lift stop on a deserted floor results in Susan being startled by men in masks, who are then revealed to be fumigating the level; and a human shape under a sheet turns out to be a mannequin: Hospital Massacre is absolutely littered with such dumb contrivances that really grate on the nerves.Also serving to irritate are Susan's inability to keep quiet when being stalked by the killer (she drops her lighter, knocks over reports, and clatters metal instruments at the most inopportune moments), the complete absence of any other people when the murderer strikes, the ridiculous manner in which the hospital staff treat their patients (can anyone say 'lawsuit'?), and the score, which mimics not only Harry Manfredini's music from Friday the 13th (which is understandable, I suppose), but also Jerry Goldsmith's choral chanting from The Omen (???!?!).On the plus side, there's the occasional spot of reasonable gore (including a severed head in a box, an axe in the head and a pointed thingy through the neck), an enjoyably exploitative moment where Miss Benton strips to her panties for an unnecessary all-over examination by a pervy doctor, and one incredible, must-be-seen-to-be-believed scene in which Susan runs into a room full of people covered from head-to-toe in plaster who all proceed to flail their limbs in an uncontrollable manner. Weird.

noahbbrown Forgive the pretentious summary, but i thought this film was effective precisely for all the elements other reviewers seemed to criticise. It IS fairly well shot (the dark bits are hard work) and the editing's sharp. With a big bombastic orchestral score and lots of OTT moments, this is a cheesy film with plenty of daft false scares and the like, but it's quite nightmarish too. The clichéd parts are tensely handled. Maybe I'm desensitized to bad cinema at the moment, having consumed plenty of terrible 80s slashers recently, but I thought this was pretty good. Little touches like the horrible old women sharing Barbi Benton's hospital ward, cackling like the witches from Macbeth, added to the absurd bad-dream quality. The murder scenes are well handled, violent and rough but not that splattery.This film has a similar feel to something like 'Don't Answer The Phone!' or 'The Centerfold Girls', serious in intent and not really 'camp' in any way. It's obviously 'bad cinema', but artfully done.