HELLHOLE (1985)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

"I want you awake to hear your brain scream in your head!"

Such is one of the many ripe lines delivered with great brio by mad scientist Mary Woronow, and she does it so well that I wished she had been the headliner of this wild, cheesy chicks-in-chains effort.

Alas, HELLHOLE follows the by-then well-trod trope of focusing on an innocent "new fish" sent to durance vile. In this case, the innocent is Susan (deer-in-headlights actress Judy Landers). Susan's mother gets some evidence on a prominent doctor, so the doctor sends some hirelings to steal the evidence and kill Susan's mother. However, the murderous thug Silk (Ray Sharkey) gets the order wrong and kills the woman before getting the evidence. Susan witnesses the murder and loses her memory soon after, so that she's committed to an asylum despite the fact that she's not crazy, just amnesiac. But because Susan is the only one who knows where the vital evidence is, the hired goons want to both question her and then kill her. So Silk goes undercover as an orderly in an asylum devoted to female mental patients who all act like they're in a women's prison-- dealing drugs, having frequent lesbian affairs, etc.

If this was your ordinary faux women's prison, Silk would probably knock off the hapless Susan in the first half-hour. However, the asylum is ruled by queen bee Doctor Fletcher (Woronow). The doctor and her aide (a wasted Marjoe Gortner) are conducting illegal lobotomy experiments on many of the inmates, and some of their "rejects" end up imprisoned in a basement level called "the Hellhole." Prey Susan and predator Silk don't square off until the final reel, as the script focuses on Fletcher, on the terror she wields over the inmates, and on another fellow who enters the asylum under false pretenses-- Ron (Richard Cox), an investigator trying to get the goods on Fletcher. Still, I guess I have to assert that Susan's still the main character here, since her presence in the nuthouse is the main reason many of these characters cross paths.

Both the scripters and director Pierre de Moro try to crank up this pulp craziness up to the max, but they're not quite good enough to really exploit the madness as would a pulp master like, say, Russ Meyer. Thus what we get is a bunch of rambling scenes that don't cohere very well, though I certainly can't fault the filmmakers for giving fans of babes-behind-bars flicks what they really want-- lots of nude female flesh, and even a short but vivid catfight between Edy Williams and another chick.

Speaking of actors, I can't deny the dominant online opinions that Woronow and Sharkey get the utmost out of their meaty roles, though I think jobbing actor Richard Cox does well with the unrewarding role of the determined good guy. Other names of interest, however brief the roles, include Dyanne Thorne, Robert Z'Dar, and Terry Moore.

While HELLHOLE wouldn't make it to my top ten chicks-in-chains movies, it might at least rate a mention in the top twenty.