Our story begins by introducing us to our main characters: a bunch of teenagers in the late 20s. They are going to play 'hooky' and go out to see a concert. Of course, said concert is far away, forcing them to drive through the 'boonies' to get there. They stop at a gas station and act like typical 80's horror movie jerks. This is where the movie works in a cameo by the star of The Living Corpse. In case you don't get it, they show the man watching the film as well. Do you get it? Do you get it?!? Anyhow, they go out for a drive, which is when everything goes to hell! When they get out into the woods, the group runs into zombies. Wait, what? Did another group of scientists fail to cure cancer and call down the wrath of a giant, black man? They actually never explain this as far as I could tell. Wikipedia says that it may have something to water contamination, but your guess is as good as mine. They manage to get away, so who cares? Maybe you guys should get some help.
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Unfortunately, taking advice from me proves to be a bad idea. Wandering into a village, they pick up a local shaman who starts to act a little wonky. You may notice how this is similar to the crazy man getting picked up in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You would be right. They kick him out of the car, which he takes badly. He attacks the car and our heroes do the only logical thing: run his ass over like he was worth 50 points! This turns out to be a bad idea in hindsight, which is odd considering how many problems that vehicular manslaughter tends to solve in my daily life. Our heroes decide to seek out some shelter, which is good considering that one of them was bit by a zombie earlier and will spend the remainder of the movie leaking some strange black fluid. They run afoul of a weird witch woman who is about two steps removed from putting a curse on their jacket buttons. Since they are out of gas, they prove to be easy prey for a masked killer with a giant, spiked-ball mace. If you are going to kill someone, that is one sure-fire way to do it. This can't get worse, can it?
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Our heroes turn into horror movie cliches, which does help them fit in quite well here. A couple of them leave the van, they get attacked and more people decide to leave the van. One of them wanders around and runs across a house. They get their just in time to see one of their friends being cut up by the mysterious killer. After we get our sufficient gore for the scene, the idiot makes too much noise and gets chased by the killer. This ends about as well as you might think. Meanwhile, one of heroines finally figures out the reason for all of this. Well, everything except the zombies. The crazy guy they ran over- that's the old witch's son. The crazed killer- her daughter. What a family! Who's their cousin: Chop Top?!? The whole thing ends in an orgy of blood and stabbing. Did you expect anything else?*
This movie is good, but certainly ridden with cliches. That said, the movie is fun and paced pretty well. There is gore, murder and make-up work aplenty. If you are looking for a nonsensical good time, you could do a lot worse. This is a Mondo Macabro DVD, so you get good production value, background information on the film and the classic trailer reel. That's the best thing about these DVDs. Even if the film is not that good (Seven Women for Satan), you get the trailer reel to make everything seem alright. Yes, I really do love it that much.
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Up next, a long-delayed review finally gets done. Britain's attempt at courting the Satanic crowd gets looked over. Stay tuned...
I look at it this way: considering how "forbidden" much of film is in that part of the world, it's amazing that HELL'S GROUND got made at all. I'm pretty forgiving of the cliches, though I'll agree this movie is more of an homage to American standards than anything...but still, 'A' for effort. On the flip-side, it would be like if I turned around and, having almost no concrete knowledge of Middle Eastern customs or religion, imitated some of their stuff and turned out a pretty good film about the Qur'an...
ReplyDelete(fuck, I even had to Google it to make sure I even spelled it right)
I'd rather have a good, but cliche-ridden film than a completely original film.
ReplyDeleteCase in point: 'Growing Out.' A very original film, but it sucks.
To be completely fair, this is only my second Urdu film so far. There is not a lot to compare against.