Blu-ray Review: HELLHOLE

SHOCK reviews lurid thriller HELLHOLE’s Blu-ray debut.

Why more exploitation film fans don’t worship at the shrine of director Pierre De Moro’s 1985 snake pit shocker HELLHOLE is beyond me. It’s an outrageously nasty slab of sick cinema with a cast to die for and wall to wall sleaze.

But as co-star Mary Woronov (EATING RAOUL, NOMADS) says in the interview on Scream Factory‘s sexy new Blu-ray release, “I didn’t think anyone had seen or would see HELLHOLE…I’m surprised you even know about it!”

And not many do.

A decade ago, a great pal of mine (actor Jason Tannis, from the Canadian indie flick LATE NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE) stumbled across the film via clam-shell RCA/Columbia VHS and laid it on me, gushing about how insane and lurid it was and how the central performance by late actor Ray Sharkey had to be seen to be believed. He was right and I became a fan, instantly. But ours was a lonely fanbase and eventually, I even forgot about the film. Here’s hoping this re-release wins the film the love it so richly deserves.

In what is the most despicable character from the ’80s since Wings Hauser’s Ramrod in Gary Sherman’s unbelievable VICE SQUAD, Sharkey’s leather-clad assassin Silk is too much for the screen to contain. The film opens with the sniggering, mustached goon breaking into a woman’s house and murdering her to keep her from ratting out his employer. But unbeknownst to her, her daughter Susan (Judy Landers, whose hair is almost as big as her bosom) is home too and witnesses the killing. Silk tries to tie up this loose end, but Susan escapes, falls off a building and is stricken with amnesia while her attacker flees.

Susan wakes up in a sprawling sanitarium, where she meets a kindly doctor (Richard Cox, from Friedkin’s CRUISING) who offers some kindness in what is otherwise a sexed up, violent all-female facility that makes the psyche hospital in Sam Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR look like The Mayo Clinic. Women run around in blue gowns and beat the shit out of each other. Often, they do the same but without the gowns. The nastier patients are dragged away to a neighboring facility dubbed Hellhole, where Marjoe Gortner (FOOD OF THE GODS) and Woronov subject them to hideous experiments and chemical lobotomies.

Meanwhile, the malevolent Silk masquerades as an orderly, creeping around and having S&M sex with the patients while trying to get to Susan and draw out her memory of her mom’s murder. Oh, and ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS legend Dyanne Thorne appears as well, looking like Phyllis Diller and going almost as over the top as Sharkey does. MANIAC COP star Robert Z’Dar also shows up as a mean guard.

HELLHOLE is insane and tries so hard to be sick that it ends up being almost sweet. Almost every female gets naked and acts insane. Almost every character is vulgar and sadistic. The art direction and lighting is pure comic book and Jeff Sturges’ music is absolute soap opera tackiness. It’s totally trashy and breathlessly awesome.

And Sharkey (who died of AIDS in 1993, sadly) is a force to be reckoned with.

Scream Factory offers HELLHOLE in a classy, simple DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, reproducing the garish poster art on the cover and going light on the extras, save for the R-rated trailer and that absolutely wonderful interview with the immaculate Mary Woronov. The film looks as good as a film of this vintage and budget can look. And hey, it;s HELLHOLE so it shouldn’t look TOO good…

Find this movie and love it off. You won’t be sorry.