Originally broadcast on May 21, 1979 on ABC, A VACATION IN HELL is about five
vacationers (a hip swinger dude, a blond airhead, a lonely feminist, a washed up
mom and her sixteen year old daughter) who wisely leave their ocean side resort
on a small crappy looking boat (that I'd be afraid to float across a swimming
pool in) to go off in search of a private beach. Wonderful idea! They
eventually find the private beach, but when they come in for a landing they fuck
the boat all up. Idiots. So now instead of just hanging out,
building a large signal fire and waiting to get rescued they decide to wander
off, climb a jagged hill then trek across a big ass jungle filled with all kinds
of dangerous bullshit like alligators, big cats, waterfalls and native warrior
dudes.Being a network TV movie, A VACATION IN HELL is very tame, but what it misses in violence and nudity it makes up for in tiresome soap opera level drama! The feminist blames everything on the dude; the dude just wants to get laid; the mom is sad and pathetic; the twenty-five year old teenage daughter is flirty and the blonde airhead, well, she just kinda stands there looking pretty (in an funky 70's body kind of way). I love this kind of stuff up so I enjoyed AVIH, but I imagine most people would dislike it for being boring and wish Predator, a heroin wookalar possessed by an ancient jungle god or some cannibals would show up and kill everybody. Maybe they would find a long-lost tribe of nudists. Or maybe a long-lost tribe of nudist Predators.
Worth a watch if you're into this sort of thing.
