Hellhole (1985)

Hellhole is a 1985 movie directed by Pierre De Moreo(*). It opens with a woman worrying in her kitchen. She has taken some incriminating documents from a powerful doctor, and her daughter Susan (Judy Landers) has hidden them for her. My wife was immediately confused and insisted that these two women were too close in age. I said Landers was probably the victim of unfortunate 80s hair and make-up. I guessed she was just slightly too old for this character, 27 or 28, which turned out to be exactly right when I looked it up. 

when you order Grace Zabriskie and Farrah Fawcett from Wish

A man in “Beat It” cosplay hired by the doctor breaks in and threatens and attacks mom. It cuts back and forth between mom fighting for her life as and Susan casually getting dressed, stretching, etc. The movie is obviously going for dramatic tension, but Susan’s listening to goofy royalty-free funk music every time it cuts back to her and it becomes a hilarious comedy beat. 

dooh dooby doo-wah!

Judy ends up coming downstairs just in time to see the intruder strangle her mother to death with a scarf. Susan runs out of the house (smart), runs to a nearby house under construction (questionable), and then runs UPSTAIRS in an unfinished building with nowhere to go or hide (fucking stupid). She is chased until she falls off the edge of the building.

Susan survives with a case of amnesia. The doctor still doesn’t have his papers, so he somehow uses his influence to have Susan shipped to a shady psychiatric facility. He sends Silk (the mom murderer) to pose as an orderly and watch Susan in case/until her memories come back. The psychiatric facility ends up being more like a Women-in-Prison movie prison, except it also has random cartoonishly “crazy” ladies giggling and gibbering and grabbing at everyone. The grounds also have an “abandoned” building where the twisted Dr. Fletcher (Mary Woronov) conducts experiments on patients. She is working on a new chemical lobotomy procedure (why?) that either kills the patients or leaves them in a mindless, zombie-like state (isn’t that a success then?). All the “zombies” are in a full-on prison area below the grounds. In between the facility proper and the prison area is the world's largest boiler room, where the movie spends more of its runtime than the average Freddy Krueger picture. The zombie prison is all harsh blue lighting, the boiler room is awash in red, and the area where they meet mixes the two. That at least helps give a little mood to the mostly uninspiring horror/thriller scenes.

The biggest problem here is the main character, Susan. The script barely gives Judy Landers anything to work with, as she spends most of the movie a passive amnesiac being told to not ask questions or do anything. Some performers can make a character who is mostly passive/blank compelling, but that is not in Landers' wheelhouse. The few times she is called on to express any extreme anger, fear, defensiveness, etc. she also brings nothing. The scenes where she shakes the prison bars and screams and where she tries to attack someone both have her looking like a wet noodle, limp armed and half-assed. The rest of the time the script calls on her to do nothing or do something stupid (like running upstairs in the half-built house). Another guy ALSO posing as an orderly (to investigate the place) who tries to “help” her is also a blank, his only defining characteristic is that every time he "rescues" Susan, he tells her "Wait here!" and wanders off until she ends up in danger again.

The supporting cast of B-movie regulars helps keep things watchable. The script doesn't give Mary Woronov a lot to work with, but she is a pro so she gets some juice out of it. The movie would have been more memorable if it leaned into her doctor's pervy-ness, like when she kisses a fresh corpse or gives an inmate drugs in her office-adjacent hot tub room (maybe the investigator’s “surprise inspection” should have checked out the Doc’s jacuzzi liquor bar!). With the premise I thought this would be more horror/thriller flavored, but much of the runtime is just hitting the notes of many Women-in-Prison movies (an extended shower fight with boobs everywhere, hidden lesbian trysts, pervy Warden/Doctor and guards/orderlies). A horror riff on WiP with this lurid name, poster, tagline, and Woronov as an evil doctor should have gone crazier. Even the climax with multiple murders and the mindless prisoners finally escaping (some previously contained only by good old fashioned breakable glass!) feels oddly muted. The man, the jaw, the Maniac Cop himself Robert Z'Dar plays the Doc’s head goon. Putting him and Woronov in the same frame is really pushing the limits of how much facial real estate the viewer can handle at once (pictured below with another big-faced beefy boy and Marjoe Gortner as “ineffectual doctor”).

Edy Williams (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) is also on hand to add some extra skin scenes. Amusingly, her performance as a patient/prisoner is basically the exact same as her over/undersexed porn star character in BtVotD 15 years earlier.

The most notable character/performance, the only thing that makes this movie standout, is Ray Sharkey as Silk. I thought it was weird that the murderous thug character gets top billing in the credits above Judy Landers, her white-bread white knight, and Woronov, but it made sense once I thought about how much more dynamic and dominant he was than every other character. He's a disgusting, sleazy, murderous misogynist pretending to be an orderly to commit more crimes, yet he acts like he owns every room he is in (including setting up his own personal sleep and sleaze stash IN the “hospital”!). 

Silk openly threatens or disrespects everyone regardless of their position, and somehow gets away with it (actually that might be more realistic than I want to think…). He sings fractured nursery rhymes when intimidating or attacking people, which gets annoying, but is more distinctive than any other characters’ traits. Silk is even the only one who actually “helps” Susan recover from her amnesia, as his plan of putting his Beat It cosplay back on and choking ANOTHER woman with his scarf in front of Susan actually works! I was curious about actor Ray Sharkey after this and looked him up. Turns out he was a real piece of shit, and I wouldn’t advise reading his wiki page unless you want to be bummed out.

(*) Pierre De Moreo’s only other directing credits seem to be family movies called Christmas Mountain and Savannah Smiles. Seems like an odd choice to direct a horror/thriller flick that leans into Women-in-Prison exploitation. That is why I am inclined to believe the imdb page that also lists Tom DeSimone as an uncredited director. DeSimone directed dozens of projects ranging from mainstream (Hell Night!), to exploitation, to full on porno. He has directed at least one previous extended shower fight (Prison Girls, 1972), a more typical WiP exploitation/drama (The Concrete Jungle, 1982), and an over-the-top and campy riff on WiP (the very fun Reform School Girls, 1986). DeSimone working on a horror/WiP combo in 1985 would be completely on brand for him.