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Poster for Motel Hell
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Released
1980 · FILM

Motel Hell

A reclusive farmer and his sister run a remote motel where they trap travelers, fatten them, and butcher them for their infamous line of smoked meats, until a group of determined guests turns the tables on the twisted operation.

“It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters!”

Directed by
Kevin Connor
Written by
Robert Jaffe, Steven Charles Jaffe
Runtime
102 min
ComedyHorrorThriller
Streaming on
  • MGM+

Synopsis

Farmer Vincent Smith and his sister Ida operate a motel connected to a farm where they lure unsuspecting travelers, bury them alive, and fatten them before harvesting their bodies for use as ingredients in Smith's well-known line of "smoked meats."

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 17

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Bernard GribbleShot by Thomas Del RuthScored by Lance Rubin

Box Office

1980 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$6.3M

Budget$3.0M
Worldwide gross$6.3M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $1.9M — 30% of its US run.

Peak 757 theaters

Also known as

  • Hotel zur Höllede
  • Nuits de cauchemarsfr

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