Review
When four costumed Alpha Sigma Rho sorority pledges are compelled to spend the night in Garth Manor, an imposing, abandoned manse where a family massacre took place twelve years prior, they encounter a big, malformed, and tunnel-dwelling survivor (Andy Garth)─a hermit who hunts those who trespass on his property, including the Alpha Sigma Rho members pulling cheesy terror pranks on the pledges.
The pledges: quiet, smart Marti (Linda Blair, THE EXORCIST, 1973); nice guy Jeff (Peter Barton, FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER, 1984); funny, smart May (Jenny Neumann); responsible, heroic surfer Seth (Vincent Van Patten).
HELL, despite its solid budget and talent (in front of and behind the screen) is a generic, occasionally suspenseful film─scenes that should be suspenseful, given its production value, come off as tired and thrill-less in the second half of HELL. The actors, whose characters are given a few defining character traits and backgrounds, are largely wasted in their briefly promising, SCOOBY-DOO gang roles (they spend most of the film running around the manor and its grounds, lacking the imagination to stick together and figure out how to escape the grounds). That said, Seth, an action-oriented surfer, has a short, well-written third-act section where he’s a surprisingly effective character. Unfortunately, this is a brief segment, and the film quickly resumes its run-round-in-circles silliness.
The ending is solid, several of its end-shots memorable (Marti, leaning by the broken gate). If this no-explicit nudity, hour-and-forty-minute flick had been twenty-to-thirty minutes shorter and had a little more character development, it would have been a less generic work. (On the plus side, the production employed future screenwriter and director Frank Darabont as a production assistant.)
Unless you’re a fan of any of the actors or looking to watch something to fall asleep to, you can skip HELL.
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