Hellhole

Hellhole is one of the silliest films I've seen. It's camp, but bad camp at that. It waste's a good cast, but does have one asset, Edy Williams. She pops up here and there, one scene involving a naked cat fight in a shower block, amongst a lot of other women void of their clothes. Two other scenes with her are my favorites. One in a spa with Edy and her lesbian lover making out, then we have an intrusion. Bad guy, Ray Sharkey (a fine actor, who's not among us anymore) who whips off his clothes and gets in the spa with our two lovelies. The other scene involves Edy coming into Sharkey's room, on the grounds of this sanitarium. His walls are adorned with pictures of naked women. He starts taking photos of Edy in naked poses, before they end up on top of each other. It's actually a highly erotic scene. Basically the story concerns, Judy Landers, who at least doesn't come into a room, and start getting older guys, hot, where they either end up running out to cool themselves down, or their blood pressure goes sky high. Unfortunately our poor Judy, whose character is one of ill fortune is knocked out, after Sharkey murders her mother. He's after these certain documents. Landers mistaken for the killer ends up in this prison sanitarium, where Sharkey now resides, for reasons obvious. And if you're really lucky folks, you may even graduate to hellhole, the base stayings of this loony bin, where experiments are performed, some of it's results ending in death. The picked cast in this film is interesting. Richard Cox (the killer in Al Pacino's 'Cruising') is the good samaritan/prison inspector who tries to help Landers with her innocence. He highly suspects somethings off with the runnings of this prison. Mary Woronov plays the sadistic doctor who also likes to a naked lesbian lover on standby. She's the evil bitch who performs experiments on the prisoners, using them as lab rats. It's one of Woronov's better performances. Good solid stuff. Fine actor, Marjoe Gortner, who pops up in a movie here and there, plays her disapproving assistant who's not really aware of her real motives. Hellhole does have nudity a plus, something I like a lot about this movie. But the fact remains, this is an ultra bad movie. A ludicrous movie. Something's really off about it. The performances from the score of mains are good, especially Sharkey, with Gortner runner up. The late Sharkey, who incidentally died, three days after my twenty third birthday, another victim of descent in B grade, was an actor I'd really admired seeing him in The Idolmaker. With this flick, he should of just walked away. Tasteless crap. Evade this movie at all costs, before it costs you.

Judy Landers plays Susan. She jumps out of the shower, puts a pink aerobics outfit on, walks downstairs to seeing her mother strangled to death by Ray Sharkey(playing a killer named Silk). She runs out of house and into a construction site, meets up with Sharkey and falls. The fall doesn't kill her but gives her amnesia, so with some strings pulled by the man behind Silk's deeds - Susan is put into a sanatorium till she recovers her memory. Unfortunately for Susan, she is admitted to a mental institution run by Dr. Fletcher - the sultry Mary Woronov - who enjoys being sado-masochistic and experimenting on patients in a basement called Hellhole. The hospital is like no other. Most of the wards are playboy playmate caliber-looking girls. All of them disrobe quite freely. In fact this film has a lot of nudity in it with a cat-fight in the showers and a mud bath as standouts...anyway,...ah the mind wanders...Susan is being stalked by the man that killed her mother all the while learning about the atrocities committed by Dr. Fletcher. I found this film somewhat interesting for a number of reasons. It is outwardly a sleazy picture in many ways. It has a spin on the women-in-chains motif. Nudity and shock effects override storyline through much of it. The acting ranges from weird and bizarre(Sharkey) to competent(Richard Cox as the hero) to camp(Mary Woronov doing her best Dyanne Thorne impersonation) to less than credible(Judy Landers((but hey who cares right?))). There are a number of cool cameos by genre notables from the past. Terry Moore from Mighty Joe Young fame has a nice role, Marjoe Gortner has an intriguing yet thin role as a doctor in league with Woronov, and the aforementioned Dyanne Thorne has a brief cameo as a patient that thinks she is an actress. Director Pierre De Moro even has flashes of talent here and there. The opening sequence is somewhat chilling and the settings of Hellhole are very well-utilized in terms of atmosphere, lighting, etc... The ending is wholly predictable but somehow satisfying for a film of this ilk. But make no mistake, while outwardly a horror film, this is also a sexploitation film equally. Watch for Renee Vicary as Silk's girlfriend. Just lovely!

source: Hellhole

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