Hellhole: La clinique de l'horreur

This somewhat entertaining garbage stars Judy Landers as Susan, a young girl who witnesses her mother's vicious strangling. Following this, she comes down with amnesia(of course)and is sent to a mental sanitarium for women(of course) headed by the mad Dr. Fletcher(played with loads of much-needed camp by cult icon Mary Woronov),who likes to perform unorthodox drug -induced lobotomies on some of the more out-of-control inmates. There is plenty of stuff in this flick to please any die-hard camp or exploitation fan: pointless lesbian scenes, gratuitous shower scenes & nudity, camp dialogue , horrid performances(with the notable exception of Woronov), & a cast that also includes Marjoe Gortner, Dyanne Thorne(of "Ilsa" fame), Ray Sharkey, & Terry Moore. All in all, a classic midnight movie.

HELLHOLE begins with the murder of a woman by a madman named Silk (Ray Sharkey), who is dressed in Rob Halford's pajamas and sports an electrocuted Elvis hairdo. The victim's daughter, Susan, witnesses the crime, and survives an attack herself, while Silk slips away like a studded, leather-clad shadow.

The ordeal puts Susan in the Ashland Sanitarium for Women, where she meets the odious Dr. Fletcher (Cult goddess, Mary Woronov!). Susan soon sees Fletcher's sadistically eeevil side! By some astonishing coincidence, Silk works at the hospital too! Luckily, a wondrous shower scene breaks out, culminating in a miraculous Greco-Roman style, kickboxing catfight!

Uh oh!

There's trouble in the cafeteria! Here comes Fletcher and her goon squad, including the halfhearted Dr. Dane (Schlock god, Marjoe Gortner!) and iron-jawed Brad (Cult, Schlock idol, Robert Z'Dar!)! Soon enough, a patient is whisked away, and we are shown Dr. Fletcher's maniacal view of modern medicine! Meanwhile, pointless nudity erupts, and Brad leers a lot. How will Susan ever survive this loony limbo of the lost?

THIS MOVIE CONTAINS: #1- Mad science! #2- Mind-twisting torture! #3- Drug-induced mutations of madness! #4- Heavenly mud therapy! #5- Unnecessary, uncalled-for, unholy nakedness every few seconds! #6- Nurses in big, paper hats! #7- An actual rubber room! #8- The most epic finale since REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS!

Exploitation film fanatics need look no further! You have reached the promised land! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!...

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!

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?

Hellhole (1985)

** (out of 4)

Susan (Judy Landers) witnesses her mom murdered due to her having some papers, which could lead her boss to prison. The young woman takes off running and the killer believes he has finished her off but she survives and in order to cover up the crime she is sent to a mental hospital. Once inside the hospital Susan realizes that the evil Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov) is doing bizarre experiments on the women.

Pierre De Moro made three films in his short career and this here was his final credit. Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff wanted to make a WIP movie and the end result is something that isn't nearly as raw as the Jess Franco films of the 1970s like BARBED WIRE DOLLS and ILSA: THE WICKED WARDEN but at the same time it's a tad bit sleazier than the majority of the American films from the genre.

As you'd expect, when one makes a WIP movies there's a checklist that the screenwriter goes down. This includes an innocent hot woman. There's also the nudity. There are the drugs. There are the lesbian scenes as well as the lovely shower scenes. There's also the butch-type warden/leader doing the bad experiments. There's also the sweet guy who tries to save the innocent woman. All of that stuff is included here and for the most part it's mildly entertaining as long as you're not expecting an Orson Welles type of film.

The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this, although I found Landers to be a bit too bland in the lead. Woronov is certainly the best thing about the picture but there's plenty of nice eye-candy as well. The biggest problem with HELLHOLE is the fact that it runs way too long at 95-minutes. The film certainly could have used some editing and the "plot" tries to do way too many things.