Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Hellhole
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Hellhole
Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: July 26th, 2016.
Director: Pierre De Moro
Cast: Mary Woronov, Robert Z'Dar, Edy Williams, Marjoe Gortner, Richard Cox, Terry Moore, Judy Landers, Ray Sharkey
Year: 1985
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Directed by 'Pierre De Moro' and produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, Hellhole begins with a scene where an assassin named Silk (Ray Sharkey), who looks like he just walked off the set of Judas Priest's Hot Rockin' video, breaks into the home of a young woman named Susan (Judy Landers) unaware that she is in the shower. Why? So he can get some papers from her mother (Lynn Borden), papers that would put his employer away for a long time. The papers are hidden, the mom gets killed and Susan makes a break for it. Silk corners her at a construction site and she falls - he assumes - to her death.
Only she's not dead! She wakes up in an insane asylum - it seems she's suffering from amnesia. But Silk? He's still out to get her. He poses as a worker and makes his way in, spending some quality alone time with his female contact on the inside, Vera (played by Russ Meyer's ex-wife, Edy Williams). He likes it when she calls him daddy and she's not above getting up to some tricky lesbian highjinks in the shower room to get him the information that he needs.
As Silk takes an unusually long time to track down and take out Judy, she learns the hard way that Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov) is a sadistic lesbian that is using some of the female patients as guinea pigs in her mad experiments. Her associate, Dr. Dane (Marjoe Gortner), doesn't approve but the guards, let by beefy Brad (Robert Z'Dar credited here as Robert Darcy) don't mind so much. It gives them an opportunity to get rapey with the poor women. These horrible experiments, which seem to really just involve Fletcher injecting something into the neck of her patients, are conducted in the basement of the facility nicknamed the 'Hellhole.' A nice guy named Stevens is out to help Judy, but will it be enough?
Essentially an ultra-trashy women in prison movie, Hellhole brings nothing new to the genre. It's formulaic and riddled with one cliché after the next. It plays to stereotypes. It's not got much going on in terms of plot and the pacing is kind of terrible. But you know what? Despite all of this it's pretty entertaining if you're in the right mood for it. Those looking for a horror picture could be setting themselves up for disappointment as there's nothing frightening about this movie at all save for a few bad boob jobs and Z'Dar's mighty chin. But fans of cheap, trashy exploitation? This'll deliver.
The cast is pretty killer. Z'Dar's role is a supporting one but he makes the most of it and roughs up pretty much everyone that he comes into contact with. Marjoe Gortner is also here in more of a supporting capacity but he's fun in the part. Edy Williams spends most of her time in her birthday suit, so there's that, and look for none other than Ilsa herself, Dyanne Thorne, cast here as one of the crazy patients! Judy Landers is fun to look at but more than a little wooden as Susan. She's likeable enough, and really the material doesn't ask much of her so her work here is fine, it just lacks a bit of range is all. The real starts of the show are Woronov and Sharkey. Woronov has been type cast in roles like this over the years but that's because she's good in them. She does the stern thing well, you can buy her as a lesbian (she cover this in her interview in an amusing way) and she definitely puts plenty of diabolical enthusiasm into the part. Sharkey is… awesome. He's over the top more often than not and he struts about in some pretty nutty costumes. This guy was born to play a sleazy bad guy and that's exactly what he does here.
On top of that, the 'Hellhole' itself is interesting. Given that this is the basement the facility it makes sense that there are lots of pipes and Freddy-esque boiler room props kicking about. What you don't expect, however, is some seriously dope colored lighting effects. For reasons never really explained, much of this area is bathed in orange, red and blue - you can't quite called it Bava or Argento-esque, but there are times where it gets pretty close! On top of that there's nudity aplenty - we get shower scenes, a weird mud bath scene, a naked cat fight in a locker room and some good old fashioned sex - and a fair bit of depravity too. This isn't deep, it isn't really even all that original, but it is good trashy fun.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Shout! Factory brings Hellhole to Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p 1.78.1 widescreen high definition transfer. To do this they had to use two sources - the interpositive and a theatrical print. The bulk of the footage comes from the IP and it looks quite nice. There is a slight drop in quality when footage from the theatrical print is used, but it's slight. For the most part the two sources actually jive pretty well. Some print damage shows up here and there but for the most part the image is pretty clean. Color reproduction is great, there are a lot of bold, bright primary colors used throughout this movie and they look awesome in high definition. Detail is decent enough, and there's a reasonable amount of texture and depth here. This won't win transfer of the year but it looks decent. The image is free of obvious noise reduction and there are no compression problems to note.
The English language DTS-HD 2.0 mix is fine. Dialogue is easy enough to follow and the levels are properly balanced. There aren't any issues with hiss or distortion and this is a perfectly fine mix. Optional subtitles are provided in English only.
The main extra on the disc is a five minute interview with Mary Woronov, who looks back on this one reasonably fondly and with a good sense of humor. She knew exactly what kind of movie was being made with this project and doesn't seem to have any regrets - at least she had fun working on it!
A theatrical trailer is also included, as are static menus and chapter selection. As this is a combo pack release there's also a DVD disc included inside the Blu-ray case alongside the Blu-ray disc. Extras on that disc mirror those found on the Blu-ray.
The Final Word:
Hellhole is pretty trashy stuff, but entertainingly so! The film might rely really heavily on a lot of genre clichés but at least it's never dull - and what a cast! Shout! Factory have done a decent enough job bringing this one to Blu-ray in its full strength cut and the interview with Woronov, while on the short side, is a lot of fun. If sleazy, cheap thrills are your thing, this one will scratch that itch.
-
#1Mike DiRomaSenior MemberFind all postsView Profile07-17-2016, 04:06 PMEditing a commentGood review, good movie. Probably the first WIP movie I rented and pleased by the high sleaze factor.Sharkey died way too soon. Now we have to wait for a BD of Du-Beat-E-O. :woot:
-
#2Jason CSenior MemberFind all postsView Profile07-18-2016, 11:09 AMEditing a commentEnjoyed the review. Sounds like I'll love it.
Posting comments is disabled. -
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Cinématographe
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
Goin’ South – Movie Review:
Made at the height of his career as an actor, 1978’s ‘Goin’ South’ sees Jack Nicholson once again in the director’s chair, seven years after his directorial debut, ‘Drive, He Said,’ failed to set the...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:29 AM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -
-
Released by: Grindhouse Releasing
Released on: March 12th, 2024.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: William Shatner, Jennifer Bishop, Ruth Roman, Harold Sakata
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Impulse – Movie Review:
Directed by the one and only William Grefé, 1974’s Impulse is one of those rare films that allows you to witness what it would be like if a really sweaty William Shatner got mad at a lady carrying balloons. Before that...-
Channel: Movies
04-15-2024, 01:20 PM -