Hostel: Part III

Sometimes a movie series comes along and tells a grand, overarching story that ties all the movies together and makes one big mega-adventure. And then there are movie series that take a theme, and beat the hell out of it (see Saw, Friday The Thirteenth, etc.). And then there are those series that have ridiculously little to do with each other outside of the same name. Hostel: Part III falls into this last category. Oh, and it sucks.

After a brief scene in a local hostel where a foreign couple are drugged by an unassuming young man and soon find themselves locked in cages to await their demise, the scene shifts to Scott and Amy, a soon-to-be-married couple as Scott leaves for his bachelor party. Under the guise of going golfing in Palm Springs, Carter, Scott's friend, instead takes him to Las Vegas where they meet up with two of Scott's other friends. After a night of clubbing the guys end up at a "freaky" party with a couple of escorts. After Scott rebuffs one of the escorts, he ends up outside and passes out.

This is actually a professional latex
appliance you can buy...and I guess
make your own Hostel: Part III.

The next morning, one of the escorts and one of Scott's friends, Mike, are missing. Mike awakens in a cage across from the foreign man from earlier. Shortly after awakening, Mike is taken to an empty room and strapped to a chair. A set of curtains open to reveal that Mike is in front of an audience. It turns out the audience is there to bid on what sort of pain will be inflicted upon Mike and how he will die. A man enters the room, and after a bit of contemplation, proceeds to cut Mike's face off.

» So What Happens? «

Still having heard nothing from Mike, the rest of the bachelor party breaks into his escort's trailer looking for clues. Instead, they run into the other escort that came on to Scott, who's upset that they haven't heard from the escort either. Said escort awakens in the same room Mike died in, strapped to a table wearing a cheerleader outfit. A man enters and with little fanfare proceeds to spray her face and mouth with what is assumed to be cockroach pheromones. He then dumps a tank of roaches on her who proceed to race down her throat, suffocating her.

After receiving a text message from "Mike" to come to a local hostel where he and the escort spent the night, the group are ambushed, gassed, and awaken in the cells across from the foreign guy. Justin, Scott's other friend, is taken away and Carter informs his captors that a mistake has been made and displays his tattoo as a member of the Elite Hunting Club (the underground group from the Hostel series responsible for setting up the tortures). Scott is shocked to find Carter is behind what's going on. Meanwhile, Justin is killed by a woman in a rather elaborate costume who shoots him repeatedly with a crossbow.

Scott at last is taken away to meet his fate, dressed in a tuxedo. As it turns out, Carter set out to kill Scott with the intention of comforting and then taking Scott's fiancé, Amy. Scott is released from his shackles and a fight with Carter ensues where Scott cuts the tattoo off of Carter to escape.

Meanwhile, the foreign guy escapes his cell, but is killed in the process of killing another guard. Scott returns to the cells and frees the escort, who is then shot by the young man from the beginning scenes. Scott kills the young man. Meanwhile Flemming, the head of the Club, sets a timer to blow the club up. While attempting to leave, Flemming is stabbed to death by Carter. Carter then uses Flemming to cover some spikes that would have prevented him from driving away. Carter sees Scott attempting to flee the Club, and locks the gates so Scott can't escape.

Fast forward, Carter is consoling a distraught Amy. She invites him to stay the night. He accepts, sensing his grand plan is coming to fruition. When Amy returns with a bottle of wine, she tells Carter that Scott survived the explosion and skewers his hand with corkscrew. Carter is taken to the garage, bound, and killed with a garden tiller by a somewhat crispy Scott.

I believe the first Hostel is usually credited as the movie that kicked off the torture porn movie renaissance. And its not hard to see why. Hostel had some gruesome moments, and with its somewhat believable premise, was all the scarier. Hostel: Part II took the same tack, with a bit of a twist ending. Hostel: Part III takes a great big steaming dump on the franchise. I suppose its worth noting that Eli Roth, the director of the first two films, does not appear to be involved with this one at all, which probably explains its utter crappery.

(Spoiler alter: plot points follow) The shock deaths from the first films are pretty much gone. With the exception of Mike's face getting cut off, most of the deaths are either not very exciting (suffocation, arrows, etc) or are done off screen. According to Wikipedia, the budget for this movie falls between the budgets for the first and second movie. That's pretty sad. It seems some of the budget should have been put towards making a better film instead of being set on fire, doused with toilet water, and flushed down said toilet. The acting isn't terrible, and really for a horror film, one can't expect Shakespeare. But there are so many plot points that either don't make sense, or don't add jack to the film.

• The foreign couple are captured, the woman is apparently killed (although there's no death scene, she's just taken away) and the guy pretty much sits in his cell for the rest of the movie making ominous statements about people going off to die until he escapes and is killed.

So we've got this great movie,
you'll love it. You've heard of Hostel...
It's direct-to-DVD. That's OK, right?

• The Elite Hunting Club has apparently been turned into off-track betting instead of pay-for-kill. So now instead of spending money to torture another person, 20 people lost money guessing incorrectly that someone was going to be killed with a screwdriver. I suppose the EHC makes more money, but these rich folk need the Internet. A quick visit to a 4chan gore thread would be cheaper and definitely gorier.

• The guy that drugs the foreign couple appears to be some sort of right-hand man/protege, but the relationship is never really discussed. So it appears that just a douchebag delivery boy. I hope he didn't waste money going to college for that...

• It turns out the killing of the escorts and Scott's friends was an accident. Apparently, in addition to changing business plans, the EHC has also gotten ridiculously sloppy. Oops.

Hostel: Part III really was a let down. With as good as the first two movies were, its a shame this turd had to roll along and ruin things for everybody. As a direct to DVD release, the movie claims to be "Unrated." I can only assume that this was a marketing call because had it actually be rated, it probably would have been PG-13 and people would have known from the get-go that it was not worth watching.

Ron Perlman narrates the TV show "1000 Ways To Die" on Spike TV. They've decided to dedicate an episode to the creative ways people have killed themselves after watching horribly bad movies. Luckily, I'm sure Hostel: Part III will give them a good 6 or seven segments.

When people get tired of hearing about dumb ways other people have been killed, they can always turn the show into a movie review show and call it "1000 Movies That Make You Want To Die." That title's not very catchy though, might need some work.

From My Playlist
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