"Welcome to Spring Break..the annual migration of the idiot."
A maniac in a biker suit and helmet is randomly murdering college kids visiting Manatee Beach on their Spring Break. Questioning whether or not the murders are being committed by a recently executed biker gang member, Diablo, the mayor(Fred Buck)wishes to cover them up and hopes that corrupt cop Strycher(John Saxon, playing a mean, brutish thug with an ugly backstory that surfaces for the viewer when our protagonists search his trailer)and Doctor Willet(Tarantino regular Michael Parks)can keep the crimes hush-hush. But, as the death toll mounts with most of the murders committed with the use of electricity, this task will become nearly impossible to prevent. The film follows a depressed college quarterback, Skip(Nicolas De Toth), who threw an interception which cost his football team the National Championship, searching for his murdered wide-receiver pal and joining forces with bartender Gail(Sarah Buxton)whose sister was supposedly murdered by Diablo(..she was there when he was fried in the electric chair, which is why many of the future victims are executed with the use of such methods as shocking bolts burning flesh). As a team, who are falling in love, they will seek out who killed his friend, discovering that perhaps her sister was not murdered by Diablo, but by somebody else. Making their search difficult is Strycher who wishes to keep his corruption hidden, threatening to kill Skip if he doesn't leave the county. Meanwhile Reverend Bates(..deep-voiced Lance LeGault, always looking angelic and sincere)continues without fail to convince his daughter, who has been partying with the visiting "sinners", to return to church and joining him in prayer for her "lost soul." Bates was also there at the execution reading Diablo's last rites, and offers the idea aloud that he may've returned from the grave to seek revenge against those responsible for framing him for a murder he didn't commit. With Diablo's body missing from his grave, Strycher will make the lives of an unruly biker gang, The Demons(..for whom Diablo was leader), miserable, believing they are maybe responsible for the removal. But, the bikers have a special plan for him. Skip also has run-ins with the bikers for his dead comrade had a series of altercations with them.
Umberto Lenzi's slasher flick features the excess of the 80's. Big hair. Loud rock music. Wet T-shirt contests. Bikini-clad babes. Horny males seeking sex. Over-the-top murders including several young women dying horribly from electrocution(..the effects which are rubber masks being burned, leave anything to be desired). A very attractive tourist prostituting out of her hotel room using a series of disguises(..mostly a student of some sort needing cash so that she can help the poor and needy)as a peeping tom(..the manager of the hotel)watches from a carved hole in a supply closet. At first, you might ponder why the leather-clad psycho, if it were Diablo, would murder such unrelated victims, many of them just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, like in a lot of these slashers, the unlikely candidate is the one responsible. It would make sense that the one responsible could commit such acts if motivated enough. Lenzi never wavers when it comes to showing the beach party atmosphere of kids enjoying their perverse thrills. The acting in this film will make your eyes and ears bleed, but Saxon almost rescues this with his evil cop routine, always a threat and causing friction with our protagonists and about everyone else in the story. The violence rarely is logical and the methods of electrocution(..using cut wires)are embarrassingly lame and ridiculous. There's even one murder using rising flame from a furnace which is simply laughable, but also effective when we see a burnt skull after the fire goes down. There's moments where Lenzi wishes to inject humor with a practical joker always pulling "death stunts" whose fate is an ironic twist. And, we spend moments with a thief who successfully lifts wallets from female beach babes who trust him. This kind of film will be embraced by those who have a love and appreciation for bad direction, script, acting, and gore-effects. And, I think those who have a love for those times of 80's excess as college kids live it up on the beach, will enjoy this as well. Others, beware!
