La gabbia infernale

This is one of the best chick flicks out there. No other film captures the essence of love, drama, and the feminine mystique as hellhole. The drama unfolds in a insane ward of a prison. The lovely ladies light up the screen in romp after romp. The wonderful Dr. Fletcher gives a command performance of a lifetime. This film has to be seen to be believed. Drop everything you are doing this very minute and rent or purchase this film.

There is a lot of nudity in this film. There is a mud bath and a girl on girl fight in the asylum showers. As far as the horror goes, the lobotomized victims do act like zombies. The leather and studs killer, named "Silk" leaves something to be desired. After a slow start the film picks up the pace only to have a drawn out ending where far too many characters need to be killed off. Some familiar B-movie stars on this not very common tape. I did not care for the ugly 80's make-up that the main character always wears, even too bed. Still, there is no real reason to pick at the plot details in this kind of film. At least it does not try to be too socially conscious.

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!

Objectively speaking, this B flick is a mess, with a sometimes incoherent screenplay by Aaron Butler. Judy Landers stars as Susan, a young woman who's forced to witness her mother being killed by gleeful thug "Silk" (a scenery chewing Ray Sharkey). While fleeing him, she has a bad fall, gets amnesia, and ends up confined to a mental institution for young women. And it just so happens that the mad doctor in charge, Fletcher (Mary Woronov), is up to no good, performing insidious lobotomy type experiments.

"Hellhole" is not without the charms common to such exercises in pure sleaze. This exploitation-melodrama-horror film comes complete with all of the girl ogling / female nudity that a trash lover could want. There's even a pointless mud bath sequence that one must assume was in there because the producers demanded it. There is some decent atmosphere, but there is practically no gore to speak of. Some viewers will have to prepare themselves for the fact that some story elements are introduced and then pretty much dropped: the "papers" that the bad guys controlling Silk want so badly come off as a MacGuffin.

Making it all worth watching is a B movie cast to die for. Woronov gives easily the best performance in this thing, camping it up in her turn as the female villain. Sharkey is blatantly comical and offbeat as the psycho goon. She may be very sexy, but the less said about Landers' acting, the better. Also turning up are Marjoe Gortner, Richard Cox, Edy Williams, Robert Z'Dar (in his first film), Cliff Emmich, Lynn Borden, Dyanne Thorne, and Carole White. Cox is the nominal hero, a nice guy orderly who sympathizes with Susans' plight. Z'dar is amusing as a sadistic guard. Thornes' cameo as an inmate who thinks she's an actress is a highlight.

Executive produced by A.I.P. legend Samuel Z. Arkoff, and co-produced by his son Lou.

Six out of 10.

In Hellhole's pre-credits sequence, the mother of busty blonde Susan (Judy Landers) is insistent that her daughter takes a shower; mother clearly knows what kind of trashy film this is and exactly what the viewer wants, but Susan doesn't seem to understand, her ablutions proceeding without any sign of nudity.

Somehow, Susan remains fully clothed throughout the entirety of this film, even after she is carted off to Ashland Sanitarium for Women, where almost every other patient is good-looking and frequently naked. Susan is taken to the institution suffering from amnesia after a serious fall following the murder of her mother by vicious thug Silk (Ray Sharkey, who looks like he has just sauntered out of the Blue Oyster Bar). Silk is looking for hidden papers that can incriminate his boss Dr. Monroe (Martin Beck), and believing that Susan knows their whereabouts, he takes a job as an orderly at the sanitarium.

But Silk isn't the only danger at Ashland: troublesome patients are sent to the Hellhole, where wicked lesbian Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov) uses them for her lobotomy experiments. Will nice-guy orderly Ron Stevens (Richard Cox) be able to prevent Susan from being Silk's next victim or becoming a drooling zombie at the hands of Fletcher?

Judy Landers fans hoping for the actress to show some skin might be disappointed by her reluctance to strip, but anyone into cult/trash films will still find much to enjoy about this sleazy little B-movie, the film including most of the ingredients to be found in similar women-in-prison films: we get catfights, communal showers, drug-taking lesbians, crazed lobotomy patients, and even a gratuitous mud bath scene, lucky Silk slipping into the muddy tub with two naked hotties ("Double the pleasure, double the fun, a mud bath with two broads is better than one"), proving that you shouldn't judge a man by his leather-boy outfit.

The film also introduces us to the inimitable Robert Z'Dar as a vicious guard, stars Marjoe Gortner as Fletcher's partner in crime, and features exploitation favourite Dyanne Thorne (Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS) as a patient who looks like Cruella DeVille. All that's missing is a decent plot, quality acting and a competent director, but since when were they necessary for a good time?