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In Hell
Released by: One 7 Movies
Released on: October 8th, 2013.
Director: Niko Papatakis
Cast: Olga Karlatos, Roland Bertin, Philippe Adrien
Year: 1976
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The Movie:
Written and directed by Niko Papatakis, In Hell (or Gloria mundi, if you prefer) takes about thirty-five minutes worth of interesting material and stretches it out to a tedious hundred minutes of film but despite the obvious pacing issues inherent with such padding, this is one that Eurotrash fans might want to pay attention to. Not only has this one been pretty rare until this release… it's also very odd.
The movie follows a woman named Galai (Olga Karlatos), an actress who winds up being cast in a lead role for a film being made by a sadistic producer named Hamdias. There's more to this than a simple business relationship, however, as soon enough the actress gets involved in some bizarre sadomasochistic activities under the pretense that it's going to help her get into character. See, Hamdias is making a film about torture and Galai is committed to giving a great performance. When the producer turns up dead, Galai picks up where he left off and proves her dedication to his film by finishing the project herself. Despite the fact that there is no money to do so, she will go to whatever means necessary to completely it…
You've got to give Olga Karlatos credit: she's a glutton for punishment. While she's probably best known to Eurocult fans for getting her eye poked out with a giant splinter in Lucio Fulci's Zombie, here she almost suffers a worst fate: near constant torture and degradation. Her character's Algerian background is played for some sort of political statement but whatever it was that Papatakis was trying to express through his picture within a picture gets lost pretty quickly. There's an interesting bond between Galai and Hamdias, you do get the impression at certain times that they are even in love, but then he puts her through Hell and after he passes on, she does it to herself presumably as some sort of revolutionary statement that ties into her past. This isn't just a little bit of slap and tickle, either. Galai is used as a human ashtray, she's electrocuted, and then there's the overtly sexual side of things.
Throughout all of this, Karlatos sobs which convincing realism. She looks hurt, she looks upset and she looks tortured. Obviously quite committed to her part, this is never the less pretty much an atrocity exhibition wrapped up in the guise of a political statement. Where Passolini was able to create something cerebrally interesting with his horror show Salo, Papatakis' is content to simply bombard us with nastiness. To his credit, the nastiness is effective in making the viewer uncomfortable. The seediness isn't confined to just the acts we see the participants involved in either, it spreads to the look of the film. Everything here seems unclean, dirty, as if you might catch something if you touched the wall or nicked your finger on a piece of paper on set. Again, there's obviously something that Papatakis was trying to say here and it likely stems back to Galai's past ties to Algerian revolutionaries. It was only a decade before this picture was made that Galai's ancestors and possible family members would have been fighting a brutal war against the French for their independence and no doubt torture was involved in the real world version of the conflict. Given that Algerian women did play a role in the active combat of the revolution, is Galai working out her demons, trying to clean the scars left from her time in that conflict? That's an interesting idea but the film never really makes it entirely clear.
Ultimately, In Hell is… interesting. It's disturbing and consistently unpleasant but watching Papatakis, obviously with Karlatos' consent, try and turn a near constant barrage of nastiness into a political statement and miss the mark by such an obvious margin offers its own sort of morbid fascination.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.66.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer was taken from elements that appear to have been in fairly rough shape and presented without any sort of restorative efforts. As such, the image quality isn't anything to write home about, though it's watchable. Dark scenes are muddy, detail wavers from scene to scene and color fading is obvious. Print damage and dirt are noticeable throughout the transfer as well.
The only audio option on the disc is an Italian language Dolby Digital Mono mix with subtitles in English only and it sounds fine. There is some mild hiss here and there but the levels are reasonably well balanced. This isn't a fancy track by any stretch, the limitations of the source material used are obvious, but it gets the job done.
There are no extras on the disc outside of a quick still gallery, just a static menu offering chapter selection.
The Final Word:
In Hell is a gritty, sleazy little rarity and while One 7 Movies' presentation isn't going to win any awards, it wins simply by being the only game in town. The transfer is grimy but the movie itself is worth seeing, despite its weakness, as it's a fascinatingly bizarre mix of arthouse style and flat out base exploitation.
