The cover of my VHS copy of HellholeHellhole (1985)
Director: Pierre De Moro
Format: VHS (Hoyts)
Hellhole is a nifty little women in prison exploitation flick, transplanted from the usual prison setting to a mental hospital, produced by b-movie auteur Samuel Z Arkoff and his son Lou.
Susan (Judy Landers - who looks damn recognisable but I can't place where I know her from, even with the help of IMDB) witnesses her mother being murdered by a sleazeball called Silk (Ray Sharkey) and ends up in a mental institution with amnesia. Silk disguises himself as an orderly to try to find out the location of discriminating papers, but he's not Susan's biggest problem.
The mental hospital is run by the evil Dr Fletcher (Mary Woronov, DEATH RACE 2000), who is turning patients into zombies for her own sexual perversion in a hidden dungeon the patients call Hellhole. Coming to Susan's aid is an orderly (Richard Cox, THE VINDICATOR), and together they try to uncover Dr Fletcher's secret and expose it to the world, while avoiding Silk, some of the nastier patients and Dr Fletcher's corrupt security guards (including Robert Z'Dar from the MANIAC COP series, in one of his earliest roles).
Hellhole is full of the standard WIP fare, with bucketloads of full frontal nudity. There's a topless fistfight in the girls' shower room with a dozen or so naked girls cheering, two lesbian scenes and even a threesome in a mudbath.
The horror elements are minimal, although the "zombie" patients make for some nice, chilling moments. Woronov is in great campy form as the deviant lesbian boss woman and Sharkey oozes sleaze while looking like the lovechild of Freddie Mercury and Bowser from Sha Na Na.
For a movie with a great title like Hellhole, I would have liked to have seen more gore, but it delivers as a WIP sexploitation flick, with an abundance of naked chicks with 80s hair.
Previews on my VHS: American Ninja, White Nights, Santa Claus: The Movie
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