Hellbent

A reimagining of Faust seen through a lowly bandleader trying to help his money-strapped band to break through by making a deal with a mysterious club owner. Sadly, this rolls the life of the band down the pits until a 'hellbent' night of murders and payback.

An interesting film.

Been watching a lot of those 80s cheap B to Z films and a lot of them have concepts and earnestness BUT lacks that certain sharpness that can lift up the material. This film is a good example of that. It has a fine concept BUT the execution feels a lot to be desired.

The acting in particular feels B- at best. Its a bit TV movie level acting. No one can emote range AND it puts down the film all around. I wished that they could have gone full camp BUT that is already too much to ask.

The direction/cinematography is typical for this type of film, that weird color range and defiantly cheap looking vibe. Not particularly bad though. The writing has interesting concepts BUT could have been definitely sharper AND add more plot beats. The ending is also very confusing too.

Overall, not the best but watcheable.

Hellbent (1988)

* (out of 4)

A band member sees that his career is going no where so he approaches a bar owner to manage him. The manager agrees to do so but in return what the man's soul.

HELLBENT comes from director Richard Casey who had previously made HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY 5. That film there was one of the worst slashers that I had ever seen yet it was so darn weird and strange that you couldn't help but be somewhat entertained by its crudeness. This film here is certainly much better made than that one but there's no question that it's not nearly as entertaining.

There are a lot of issues that I had with this film but the biggest was the fact that all of the characters were rather bland and for the life of me I couldn't care less about what they were doing. This here is the biggest issue with the film. Whenever you can't root for or get into the characters then it's really hard to feel anything else throughout the movie. It's easy to see what the director was going for but it just didn't work at all.

None of the situations that the bad go through are dramatic or contain any suspense. The madness that's scattered throughout the picture adds up to very little. The performances range from decent to poor and there's not enough sleaze or anything else to make you really pay attention to it. HELLBENT just doesn't have anything going for it.

Hellbent is, primarily, a punkified retelling of the Faust legend, in which down-on-his-luck singer Lemmy (Phil Ward) makes a deal with devilish promoter Mr. Tanas (an anagram of Satan... how clever!) and becomes hooked on cough syrup with whisky chasers; the film also features a sub-plot that sees young mother Sally (Cheryl Slean) taking drastic action to rescue her kidnapped baby from Tanas's henchmen. The two plot threads come together for a bullet-riddled finale.

This is one weird movie... so strange at times that one wonders if the cast and crew weren't chugging back the Robitussin and whisky themselves whilst filming. While some may enjoy the film's offbeat 'do-whatever-the-hell-we-want-how-we-want' approach, I found its punk attitude extremely tedious, the bizarre dialogue, aimless direction and awful acting almost having me reaching for the Tixylix and Wild Turkey myself (the film has got to be less painful while under the influence).

Writer/director Richard Casey definitely makes some bold, nay, head-scratching choices: a guy smashes a watermelon with his forehead for no reason; a wild audience beat each other up; the kidnapped baby is made to huff industrial solvent; Lemmy is mistaken for a performance artist; and, strangest of all, Tanas's right-hand-man Duke (Phil Therrien)-who is holding Sally at gunpoint-puts down his weapon to have an impromptu hand shandy, allowing Sally to pick up the revolver and shoot him in the chest.

A curiosity, for sure, and definitely a product of its time, which sometimes is enough for me to have a good time, but on this occasion I wasn't feeling it.

A minor, if sometimes inventive spoof, Hellbent is given some class by the likeable Phil Ward in the lead. His funny performance is low key but very effective. Other than that, this is for fans of straight to video obscurities only.