Good concept, poorly executed.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

"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!

The leader of the biker gang "The Demons" is convicted for murder and is electrocuted in the electric chair. Before he dies, he yells that he'll take revenge on the town. But the beach community main focus for now is the truck load of college students making their way there for "Spring break". Although, things turn bad when the biker's body is now missing from its grave and a serial killer biker has hit the scene and is killing teenagers. This leaves a depressingly good-guy collage football player and a barmaid to figure out who's behind the killings, while the authorities try to cover it up so it doesn't spoil business.SPRING BREAK! Time to riot and be completely idiotic! When watching this, I was thinking that I was going to get mostly a slasher film, but Umberto Lenzi (who's going by Harry Kirkpatrick for the occasion) seemed more occupied with the pointlessly low-brow partying. I thought this aspect would be more in the background, but instead it came to the forefront. This costs the mystery element of the story with Porky's-Revenge of the Nerds II antics winning out.This low-budget, b-grade effort is pretty much a loudly obnoxious copy and paste slasher/goofball item that recycles the usual stereotypes, clichés and red herrings with less than desirable results. These tools are laid on thick… very thick. This goes for the token characters, which the camera seems to follow about. You got the thief, prankster, misguided girl conning older men out of their doe, loud-mouth lout, peeping tom, sex-crazed dope, mopey football player, trouble makers (bikers here), Rev.'s skank daughter and the list just goes on… and on. Random characters simply come and go in a stereotypical mish mash. I don't mind this, if it didn't uninterestingly drag, which I found it to do. These certain aspects and gimmicks involving these different characters do get tired, like the thief constantly stealing money and everyone believing the prankster's gags. In no time you're thinking how can they keep on falling for it? Everything about this side of the story was so heavy handed, predictable and one-dimensional in its build-up that when it came to "who-dunnit" slasher development it just falls flat on its back.The cardboard premise is chocker block with possibilities as it goes all over the place in what it wants to be and a tepidly dismal script offers very little help. The red herrings are poorly justified and unbelievable that you can see who it is miles before it's even revealed and there are coincidences' too many. Lenzi's statically lazy direction can hardly raise an ounce of sweat with weak attempts of suspense, but there are few effective touches amongst the dross and his pacing is quite stable. Make-up special effects are tolerable enough, but the gore is pretty much missing, as most of the violence involves victims being burnt to a crisp after being electrocuted by the killer/or bike. Yep, bike! They are quite original, but still these buzzing jolts are weakly handled and simply risible in the execution of the deaths. Most of the time he just happens to be there, just like many of the other characters. So there's a high suspension of disbelief needed. The smashingly uproarious rock score by Claidio Simonetti sticks in many heavy metal cues with plenty of impact and with the guidance of some striking cinematography works its way in.The acting throughout is mainly poor. Gladly the capable presence of John Saxon shines through. His snarlingly hard-ass and slimly performance as the police chief adds much needed class to the rest of the fumbling performances. Michael Parks is features briefly in an amusing alcoholically twitchy doctor/coroner and Lance LeGault scornfully chews up the scenery as the priest. Nicolas De Toth makes for a sluggishly vapid heroine and the foxy Sarah Buxton's fine performance adds the much need sparks in their pairing."Welcome to Spring Break" is averagely plain, which in the final product I didn't find to be as fun as it could have been. More mindless fodder to an overpopulated trend.

Umberto Lenzi (the Italian exploitation director who gave the world the incredibly gruesome CANNIBAL FEROX) spawned this entry into our beloved stalk and slash cycle under the amusing ‘all American' alias of Harry Kirkpatrick. Unleashed in 1988, I don't think that WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK ever got a UK release, so I had to hunt down a NTSC copy. I was kind of looking forward to receiving my print and didn't quite know what to expect. Knowing the work of Lenzi, I thought that this could either be a cheap bargain basement flick or a gruesome gore filled monster. I hoped that the latter would be the closest to the truth as I opened the jiffy bag in which my shrink rapped VHS arrived in and placed it into my video recorder…It opens with a menacing looking guy – whom we later find out is named Edward ‘Diablo' Santor – being escorted to the electric chair for being found guilty of the murder of a beach bunny named Mary. He protests his innocence by shouting things like ` I've been framed' and `I didn't kill your sister bitch!' to a young attractive teen – Gail (Saran Buxton) – who's in the box viewing the execution. The convict gets strapped in and asked if he has any last words. He swears that he'll return to seek revenge upon those who wrongly accused him. The lever gets flicked and the unlucky inmate gets fried. Cue a cheesy eighties pop atrocity named ‘Don't take my heart', and on roll the credits… We are now introduced to a few of the residents of a sunny, sandy beach. You've got the Demons, a trouble making biker gang who terrorise all the local youths that are not a part of their group. Diablo - the guy sent to his death – was the leader of this rebellious pack and lets just say that the surviving members are not too pleased that he's not here to lead them astray anymore! You've also got a group of randy party loving teens who seem to enjoy nothing more than pulling dumb pranks upon each other, attending the beach wet T-shirt contests, chasing the opposite sex and drinking copious amounts of beer in the local bar. Gail (the sister of the pre-plot murder victim) pours the liquors in this seedy drinking establishment; and it's there where she meets Skip (Nicholas De Toth) and the two strikes up a romantic relationship. All these wild and fun filled nights are watched by an over zealous police chief named Striker (John Saxon) and a commandment abiding sinister minister (Lance LeGault) who warns the enthusiastic youngsters that they shouldn't sin! Before long a maniacal killer disguised in biker leathers and a helmet complete with tinted visor begins holding his own executions among the unsuspecting townsfolk. Each slaying becomes far more grisly than the next. The authorities try to keep the vicious murders under wraps, but when the bodies begin turning up in public places, it becomes incredibly difficult to keep the chilling fact a secret. So has Diablo kept his promise and returned from the grave to raise hell among the living?To describe this flick to you in the best possible way, I'd have to say it's like a late night Baywatch complete with a psychopathic killer working his way through the lifeguards! If that takes your fancy then this may well be the movie you've been hunting for! It's blessed with some genuinely original death sequences, including one unlucky female getting chained to a post before she's, well, how shall we put it, ‘Flame grilled' by a large incinerator! It's also hilariously cheesy in a number of places and fans of bad cinema will find a few laughs scattered around freely here and there. It's pretty gory in a cheapskate kind of way and the killer's identity manages to remain quite well kept secret until he is unmasked in the closing five minutes. I was pleased to see John Saxon made a welcome appearance as the sadistic cop. Fond memories of his career best performance in Bruce Lee's ENTER THE DRAGON always allow him to hold his own in a movie. It's all located around a beautifully sandy sun splashed beach and we get some decent and inviting shots of the clear blue sea. Suspicion is chucked at everyone and the killer is hardly camera shy, managing to electrocute quite a few jocks and beach bunnies. The lead characters are likeable enough, giving you enough time to relate to them and hope they avoid getting slaughtered. Lenzi is also successful in keeping things interesting and has added all the relevant clichés without overdoing them to the point of becoming annoying. Sadly however, WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK can't help but feel shamefully average, at best. The cast don't give us any memorable performances. And even the once charismatic Saxon looked bored. Likeable as he is, he seems to have lost his charm somewhat since the rapid decline of his once promising career. Things are also a little too predictable. You just knew all the way through what was going to happen next and the director doesn't even try to create any sense of fear or suspense. The kill scenes are painfully rushed without any stalking or effective build up. Our psycho just turns up when an unsuspecting victim is alone and then he quickly kills them! There isn't even a decent showdown when his identity is revealed. Although his motives for the murders are resolved and explained things still couldn't help but feel somewhat halfhearted and incomplete.If I were to put this flick on a double feature, I'd pair it up with Ruggero Deodato's BODYCOUNT. The two are similar in many ways, if not for the fact that the two directors have a great deal in common. All in all this isn't excellent but it's not a complete waste of time either. Just a relatively simple ‘by the book' slasher, no less and certainly no more!

~Spoiler~Welcome to Spring Break is an uninspired effort from Umberto Lenzi. It's a tame slasher entry that's pretty bleak and uneventful. It's also horribly dated, just listen to that soundtrack and look at those shorts. Not even John Saxon and Michael Parks (two great actors you may recognize from From Dusk Till Dawn) can save it. I agree with the other reviewers about the loose ends. After the finish of the film (which you should have seen coming from a mile away if you're not an idiot), I was wondering what happened to the thief, the priest's daughter, and John Saxon. I guess you can shoot a cop, drag him around town behind your bike, and get away with it. I won't say it's terrible because it is at least tolerable and has some laughable moments (the Go Gators Guy is hilarious). However, that still doesn't mean you should go looking for it. If you're a fan of the eighties slasher, you might enjoy it. If not, stay away. Movies like this make me smile because someone produced this. Why not just give me the money and I'll put it to better use.