Hellbent (1988)

• Year: 1988
• Released: N/A
• Country: United States
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140137/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hellbent
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/hellbent
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 88 min
• Writer: Richard Casey
• Director: Richard Casey
• Cast: Phil Ward, Lyn Levand, David Marciano
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4.9/10

Hellbent Storyline

Director Richard Casey’s second feature is an ambitious and at times dreamlike Faustian story, set in the rough underworld of LA’s heavy metal and punk music scene. Lemmy (Phil Ward) is the front man for an unsuccessful band, who’s willing to do anything to make it. After a chance meeting with Mr. Tanas, a music promoter, Lemmy is offered the deal of a lifetime: fame for nothing more than his soul. The young singer doesn’t believe in such things and accepts the offer, but quickly learns that this sleazy promoter has more in store for Lemmy than just the stardom he’s dreamed of. Directed and photographed like a surreal documentary, and co-starring David Marciano and Darcy Nichols, HELLBENT is a blood soaked document of late 80s Los Angeles, as seen through the eyes of outcasts and derelicts.

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Hellbent Movie Reviews

Ah, the 1980’s…

Director Richard Casey made one of the most bonkers movies I’ve ever seen, Horror House on Highway 5. I’m pleased to report that this movie – which melds Faust and the Los Angeles music scene in a mix of the first two Decline of Western Civilization films to create a blast of pure strangeness. Imagine if the Dark Brothers or Rinse Dream made one of their films with no pornography, but after doing even more drugs and never sleeping. It’s that good.

Lemmy (Phil Ward, who shows up Horror House on Highway 6, as well as being the art department for Space Mutiny, if you can believe that) is the lead singer of a band that’s not going anywhere until he meets Mr. Tanas – pronounced tannis, like the root or spelled backward like…oh you get it – who offers him fame in exchange for his soul.

That’s the basic story, but this cough syrup drinking, drug abusing, machine guns in the recording studio affair is unlike any movie you’ve watched before.

David Marciano, who plays Mr. Tanas, would go on to appear on the show Homeland. Phil Therrien, who was Dr. Mabuse in the two Highway films, is also in this.

If you’re looking for a movie where a hobo screams “Black Betty,” where a mother looks for her son by killing everyone she comes near, where sound engineers act like a jerk to everyone near them, where singers proclaim that they are Satan’s son, a gang called Satan’s Cheerleaders and a cursed establishment called Bar Sinister, well, look no more.

It’s not great, but it’s awesome. If you understand that sentence, you’re going to love this movie.

Hell bent, hell bent for Lemsip.

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.

Offbeat 80’s punk obscurity

Struggling punk band lead singer Lemmy (a solid and likable performance by Phil Ward) makes a deal with sinister music promoter Mr. Tanas (smoothly played with slimy aplomb by David Marciano) in order to achieve the fame and success he desperately yearns for. However, it turns out that said deal comes at the cost of Lemmy’s soul.

Writer/director Richard Casey keeps the gloriously goofy narrative moving along at a constant quick pace, offers a vivid and vibrant evocation of the 1980’s West Coast underground punk scene (the sequence with a bunch of punks slam dancing and beating each other up at a seedy club is positively hysterical), maintains a quirky tone throughout, delivers several startling moments of bloody’n’brutal violence (one poor guy gets blown away in front of a giant plastic Santa Claus statue!), sprinkles in a satisfying smattering of tasty gratuitous female nudity, and tops everything off with an ambiguous “happy” ending. Moreover, it’s acted with considerable zest by a game no-name cast, with especially lively contributions from Lyn Levand as the zonked out Angel, Cheryl Slean as the feisty Sally, James Orr as smarmy lackey Spike, Phil Therrion as booze and cough syrup swilling thug Duke, and Leigh Lego as fed-up bassist Jane. Jim Gillie’s bright cinematography gives the movie a cool neon look. The groovy punk soundtrack hits the right-on rockin’ spot. A nifty curio.