The Horror of Tripadvisor: Horror Locations Given the Review

Horror’s worst places to stay, rated by the guests who got out

The Horror of Tripadvisor: | Feature | Ginger Nuts of Horror

Horror film locations make dreadful places to stay, and this Halloween their guests finally leave their reviews. Ginger Nuts of Horror rates nine of horror’s most famous hotels and locations from one star to five, with the stars handed out completely at random. The guest list runs from Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel in The Shining and the Bates Motel in Psycho to Amity Island in Jaws, the Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf in London, the Argonautica in Deep Rising and the jungle temple in The Ruins. The reviews are invented. The films, and the real places behind them, are not. Pack light and read on.

The stars have been handed out at random, which puts this guide on a level with most hotel booking sites. A place where everyone dies can score five stars. Read the reviews, not the stars. To a horror fan, a review is not a warning. It is directions.

The Horror of Tripadvisor: Horror Locations Given the Review

One Star: Never Again

The Ruins, Mexico

One star. “The flowers are lovely. The flowers are the problem.” Posted by Amy, who made it back to the car.

We went to see a Mayan temple well off the tourist trail, which is the first mistake in any guidebook. The locals were waiting at the bottom, armed, and they would not let us back down. At first we thought they were rude. Then we worked out they were scared of the vines. The vines are everywhere, and they get inside you. At one point we heard a mobile phone ringing from deep down a shaft, and we all got very excited. It was not a phone. Even the signal at this place is trying to kill you. No wifi, no shade, no way out.

The Ruins (2008) was directed by Carter Smith, from a script by Scott Smith based on his own 2006 novel. It is that rare thing, a horror location where the danger is the garden. Two American couples on holiday in Mexico join a German tourist looking for his missing brother, and the trip ends on top of a temple that nobody is allowed to leave.

The cruelty of it is that the locals are not the threat. They are the warning. Like Crazy Ralph, they tell the visitors exactly what is wrong with the place.

The Slaughtered Lamb, the North York Moors

One star. “Cold welcome, warm beer, full moon.” Posted by David K., an American backpacker.

My friend and I came in out of the rain on the moors, and the whole pub went quiet. There is a star painted on the wall, and when my friend asked about it, nobody liked the question at all. The darts stopped. The landlady was the friendliest person there, and even she let us walk out into the dark. The parting advice was to stay on the road, keep off the moors and beware the moon. We managed about a third of it. My friend has visited me several times since. He looks worse every time, and he will not stop talking about the next full moon.

John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (1981) puts the Slaughtered Lamb on the North York Moors, though much of the moors footage was shot in the Black Mountains in Wales. The film’s transformation scene won Rick Baker the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup. The second half then gives London Zoo, the Underground and Piccadilly Circus some of the worst nights in their history.

In fairness to the regulars, it is the only venue in this guide that gave its guests clear instructions on the way out. Stay on the road. That is all they had to do. They lasted about ten minutes.

Two Stars: Would Not Recommend

Camp Crystal Lake, New Jersey

Two stars. “Lovely lake. Do not get in it.” Posted by Alice H., who was there for work.

This was a summer job, not a holiday, but I’m reviewing it anyway because nobody else from our group can. The lake is pretty. The cabins need work, which is why we were hired. The cook never turned up. The locals call the place Camp Blood, and one of them told us in some detail that we were doomed. We took this as local colour. It was local information. First night: a storm, the phone dead, the generator failing and a visitor with a very old grudge. Canoeing is not advised, least of all on your last morning. The second star is for the view.

Sean S. Cunningham’s film is the plainest case of a review being ignored on screen. The warnings come early and from more than one mouth, and the counsellors carry on fixing up the cabins. Crazy Ralph is a one-star review on legs. Nobody asks him a follow-up question.

The real Camp Crystal Lake is Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, a Boy Scout camp in Hardwick, New Jersey, that is still in use. Outside the scouting season, fans can book tours of the cabins and the lake, and some of those tours run overnight. People pay to sleep beside the very lake the film spends its whole running time warning them about.

Summerisle, Scotland

Two stars. “Dinner, bed and a bonfire.” Posted on behalf of Sgt N. Howie by his colleagues on the mainland.

I flew in by seaplane on police business. The harbourmaster made it clear that the island does not welcome visitors, then rowed out to fetch me anyway, which in hindsight was the tell. The Green Man Inn is warm and the landlord is a character. His daughter sings through the wall at night, so sleep is not an option. The pub wall has photos of every harvest festival except last year’s. The locals are friendly, open about everything except the one thing you ask them, and very keen that you stay for May Day. On arrival my seaplane was in full working order. Future guests should note that this did not last. The second star is for the apples.

Response from the owner, Lord Summerisle: We thank the Sergeant for his visit and his prayers, and we look forward to a fine harvest.

Summerisle is made up, but Scots will know its parts. Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) used the harbour at Plockton for Howie’s arrival, Kirkcudbright for much of the village and the bar of the Ellangowan Hotel in Creetown for the Green Man. Plockton really does grow palm trees in its mild climate. That should have been the first warning. Nobody on a Scottish island gets weather that good without something being owed for it.

It is also the only venue here that went out and found its guest. Summerisle sent for one man in particular, with a missing girl as the bait. GNoH has covered why we are still arguing about The Wicker Man half a century on, and this is part of the answer. It is a booking that goes exactly to plan.

Three Stars: Mixed Feelings

The Overlook Hotel, Colorado

Three stars. “Husband took the job. The job took the husband.” Posted by Wendy T., who stayed the whole winter.

We came up for the winter caretaker job and the mountain views. The views were lovely. Everything else needs work. The lift delivered something other than guests, and a lot of it. Two little girls in matching dresses kept asking my son to come and play. My husband sat at his typewriter every day and wrote one sentence, over and over, for hundreds of pages. The bar was shut for the season, yet he still found a barman. I will not discuss Room 237 or its bath. The hedge maze has no map and no mercy. We left in a hurry, in the snowcat the cook came up in. Three stars, because the carpets really are something.

The Overlook was born from a real stay. In 1974 Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent a night at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, just as it was closing for the season. They were the only guests. They slept in Room 217. That room made it into the novel. It did not make it into the film.

Stanley Kubrick shot his exteriors at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, and the lodge asked him not to use Room 217, in case nobody would sleep in it once the film came out. Kubrick switched to 237, a room Timberline does not have. The lodge now says 217 is its most requested room. The fear was sound in every way but the one that mattered.

GNoH has already made the case that The Shining is hospitality in the dead season. Read as a hotel review, it has one rare twist. The worst member of staff is the reviewer’s own husband.

Four Stars: Nearly Perfect

The Argonautica, the South China Sea

Four stars. “Lovely ship. Shame about the sea.” Posted by Trillian, who was not on the passenger list.

I came aboard for the jewellery, and I won’t apologise for that. The ship was brand new and on its maiden voyage, and the casino was everything I’d hoped. Then something came up from the deep and took everybody: the passengers, the crew, the band. When a gang of mercenaries turned up later to loot the place, there was nothing left but blood. The fittings were still spotless, so the cleaners deserve a mention. I took a star off when I found out the owner had planned to sink his own ship for the insurance. The monster got there first.

Stephen Sommers’s Deep Rising (1998) puts Treat Williams and Famke Janssen aboard the Argonautica, a luxury liner attacked in the South China Sea by the Octalus, a giant creature from the deep with a great many tentacles. Sommers made The Mummy next, and you can see him warming up. The survivors finally reach an island, where something large roars in the jungle.

It is the only venue in this guide where the management was a bigger danger than the monster, at least until the monster turned up. Most cruise lines promise you’ll never be bored at sea. The Argonautica kept its word.

Five Stars: Would Die Here Again

The Bates Motel, California

Five stars. “Plenty of rooms free, and I know why.” Posted by Lila C., visiting on family business.

My sister stopped here on a wet night and never checked out, so I came to ask a few questions. The owner is a polite young man. I’m told he makes a decent sandwich and serves it in a parlour full of stuffed birds, which watch you eat. He talks about his mother a great deal. The shower is a lot. There is a swamp out the back that the motel does not advertise, and I can see why. The state moved the highway years ago. The highway knew something. I meant to give one star. The site would not let me change it.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), from Robert Bloch’s novel, gave the motel its first problem. Nobody stops any more, because the new highway passed it by. It is the rare horror venue that fails for a dull business reason before it fails for a frightening one.

It has done far better since. The Bates Motel stands on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot, where it has long been part of the Studio Tour. An actor playing Norman has been known to wander out as the tram rolls past. Visitors now queue to go by it on purpose, which is more than Marion Crane ever did. She only stopped because of the rain.

The Evil Dead Cabin, Tennessee

Five stars. “Rustic, remote, and the cellar is occupied.” Posted by A. Williams, from the porch.

Five of us drove down for spring break. The bridge on the way in did not inspire trust, and by the time we tried to leave it was gone. The cabin has character. There is a porch swing that bangs against the wall and a trapdoor to the cellar that flies open during dinner. Down there we found an old book, bound in something I won’t guess at, and a tape recorder left by a professor. Do not play the tape. I cannot stress this enough. Do not play the tape. My friends arrived as friends and left as something else. It is dawn now and things have finally gone quiet, so I’m just going to step outside and

Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) was shot in a real cabin near Morristown, Tennessee. That cabin had no cellar at all, which is the most comforting thing anyone has ever said about it. It later burned down, and fans still seek out what is left of it on private land.

Britain gave the film its own one-star review. The Evil Dead became the best known title on the video nasties list and was briefly banned on video here, months after it played in UK cinemas. Few things sell a horror film in this country like being told you can’t see it.

Amity Island, New England

Five stars. “Amity is open for business.” Posted by the Mayor’s office.

Amity is a summer town, and we need summer dollars. Our beaches are safe, our water is clean and our Fourth of July weekend is the best on the coast. Recent talk of a shark has been blown out of all proportion. One incident was a boating accident. Another was a misunderstanding. Our new police chief, who is from New York and does not like the water, has asked us to close the beaches. We have not. Please ignore any billboards that have been drawn on. Come on in. The water’s lovely.

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) turned Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, into Amity Island, with the streets of Edgartown and its bank playing the town. The island has lived with it ever since. In 2005, fans gathered for JawsFest to mark thirty years, and shopkeepers hung Amity signs and cut their prices to 1975 levels.

Best of all, the boy killed on the crowded beach, Alex Kintner, was played by a local lad, Jeffrey Voorhees. Horror’s other famous Voorhees spent his summers at Crystal Lake, two stars above. The family clearly cannot pick a holiday spot.

In Fairness to the Management

Anyone who books hotels knows the rule. Read the bad reviews, then read the replies. Most of the owners here have a case.

Marion Crane checked into the Bates Motel under a false name, carrying $40,000 she had taken from her boss’s client. Sergeant Howie turned up uninvited, lectured the locals on their faith and dug up a grave. The Evil Dead five went down into a cellar that opened by itself and played a tape they found there. The Crystal Lake counsellors were warned by the locals and treated it as a joke. David and Jack were told to stay on the road and went straight onto the moors.

And Jack Torrance was never a guest at the Overlook at all. He was staff. Staff complaints go through a different process, and at the Overlook that process involves a bartender and a quiet word in the gents.

Not every owner gets a defence, mind. Amity’s mayor knew about the shark and kept the beaches open for the holiday trade. Simon Canton tried to sink his own ship for the money. In horror, the guests break the house rules. Now and then the house breaks its own.

Why the Stars Never Matter

Here is what every one of these stays has in common. The warning comes before the booking, the quiet pub, the armed villagers, the grumpy harbourmaster, the dead highway, the shaky bridge, the hotel that shuts for the winter. Horror has always had a review system. Its characters just never read it.

Its audience reads every word, and then books. Timberline’s most requested room is the one Kubrick was asked to leave out. Fans pay to sleep beside the lake the film begs them to leave. Tourists queue to pass the Bates Motel on purpose. Martha’s Vineyard threw a party for the shark. One star or five, it makes no difference. The bookings keep coming.

Horror is the only genre where a one-star review works as an advert and a five-star review works as a warning. Leave yours by all means. To a horror fan, a review is not a warning. It is directions.