Hellinger

The start of the movie showed promise. I was expecting a brilliant psychological and theological horror, sort of the Hellraiser. Hellinger's theology was somewhat based on Buddhism. That is impressive for a low budget, gore-mongering, sex laden horror flick. But there were two major problems with this film. 1) That scene where the rapist brutally murdered and raped that woman had nothing to do with the plot and was so disgusting I have spent weeks trying to remove the image from my head, it won't go away. This should have been left out of the movie all together. 2) All that imagination building up a great plot and it fell apart in the end. That is one of the worst endings I have ever seen, but I won't spoil it for you.

I don't say this often, but if you haven't seen this movie, don't! For the love of God don't! It is not worth it due to reason number 1 stated above. I gave this movie 3 stars only because it could have been good. What a waist!!!

It's hard to convey your feelings in written form over the Internet. You could use a hundred different words and still end up falling short of what you're trying to tell the reader. What I'm getting at is, I can in no way accurately describe the.. acting in the first 5 minutes. You could run through every synonym in every language in the world and still come nowhere near the awfulness of this scene. It's between a man and a little girl, and you couldn't find two worst performers if you tried. Thankfully, the bloke is quickly disposed of, and the kid grows up into the main character of the film.. actually, scratch the "Thankfully" part, because everyone else is almost as bad.

My God, this is a stinker. It lets off such a putrid stench it would even kill the flies and dung-beetles. Hellinger is a guy covered in white make-up who speaks in a stupid voice. He eats his own skin, which is made out of rubber. When he kills people, he lets off blood packs in his hands. Scared yet? I certainly am, when I realise that there are actually people loose in our community who consider it a horror rather than a comedy. I'm not one for unintentional laughs, but there were so many clunkers here I was rolling on the floor begging for mercy. A lot of them involving the heroine's bearded cousin, who sports possibly the most ridiculous OTT tattoo of a dragon known to man. It covers the whole of his body up to his neck, and is so distracting it is actually more fun to watch than anything else in the picture. Go on, pause when he's taking his shower, and check out the amount of detail in the illustration. AMAZING.

Finally, after the minuscule running time of just over 70 minutes, the movie is over. We can discuss all the highlights, such as Shannah Betz rubbing red food dye over her tits and a nasty chap stabbing a girl in the vagina repeatedly. You people must be really proud of your agents. Especially with the ending, that features the dismembering of a Spitting Image puppet complete with chopped liver. Yes I know it's supposed to be Hellinger, but COME ON. The fact that this isn't the worst film I've seen this year is the most depressing part. Sigh.. 0/10

This is a documentary regarding Pinhead's brother, who was made redundant from the cenobites for having a crap voice and wandered the streets of New York, claiming benefits and doing Uncle Fester impressions for loose change. This is his story.

Which isn't saying much. Basically there's this girl who's scared of Hellinger, and her dad, right, he's given her gip about this and that and taunts her about Hellinger, who then appears behind her dad and rips his eyeballs out. Now Hellinger looks like someone fell into a bucket of light blue paint and is now standing under a spotlight shouting about it. You know how Pinhead was covered in pins and was menacing and had a weird voice? Well Hellinger can't even afford safety pins, looks like a bad actor, and sounds like he's suffered some sort of head injury.

Years after the dad-eyeball pulling incident, and the child is all grown up and still banging on about Hellinger. There's also some religious guys, one of whom is her boyfriend, who seem to have some connection with Dillinger. I wasn't paying that much attention as a lot of the film contains bad actors jawing at each other.

There's also a cop/cousin of the girl trying to get to the bottom of some sort of murder (I can't remember if he solved that one) and he also gets caught up trying to figure out who Hellinger is. I've never been to New York but I'm guessing all the cussing and threatening is basically how they talk to each other there.

There's also a bit where this serial killer steals Hellinger's giro and they all have an awful time trying to get a replacement at the local jobcentre, forcing Hellinger to become homeless.

The Village Voice calls it a masterpiece. A young woman's strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk. It's a story about life. And love. And becoming a woman. "Hellinger," now playing at Paradise 2.

I'm really upset that this movie wasn't better, because the antagonist's origin story was really interesting and a lot could have been done with it.

Additionally, one could argue that the true villain of this story escapes justice entirely. The movie ends when you would expect the third act to begin, making the ending unsatisfying. In fact, given that they introduce a new character in the last 15 minutes of the movie, I wonder if funding ran out and they just decided to end it there instead of actually finishing the production?

Shana Betz and Veronica Bero have wonderful chemistry. Betz is especially good. I think the movie would have been far better if the focus were solely on her character, as Betz is more than capable of carrying a film on her own. She exudes charm.

If you like nudity, Betz is topless for a sex scene. The male lead, played by Artie Richard, has an utterly gratuitous love scene with an unnamed character who appears topless. You also see his butt in a shower scene. (He has full body tattoos, so tattoo lovers may really appreciate this.)

Dialogue is not great, story is not great, Richard's character seems irrelevant to the story, sex scenes dragged into soft core territory--which made them feel out of place in a horror movie.

My rule with bad movies is that nudity and/or campy violence has to take up the slack--or that the cast has to have exceptional chemistry and charisma. Betz has the latter, but she's the only one. There is not enough of the first two to offset this movie's negatives.

Wasted potential here, which is a real shame. For such a short movie, it felt like an eternity.

Also: the cover art and title make you think they're going for a Hellraiser rip off, but that's a red herring.

Rating: 3/10

1-3 Don't waste your time 4-6 Good 7-9 Great 10 Outstanding.