Director: Kevin J. Lindenmuth
Year: 1994
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Hell's Belles
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Setting out on their nightly patrol, paranormal detectives trying to keep the city free of various creatures meet up with several women out on the party trail and realize that they’ve been intertwined to stop the hordes of Hell from escaping into our dimension bringing them together to save humanity.
Review:
This turned out to be a rather fun shot-on-video feature. One of the finer features here is the intriguing setup that has far more going on than expected and comes together quite nicely in the end. The initial setup of the detectives going around on the bust and managing to free the victim held captive by the creature and managing to get the story that they do is a pretty intriguing bit of interlocking connections with how it brings in the girls out looking to party. Being his daughter and her friends, this allows everyone to come together in a pretty fun way with the interlocking stories being handled so that the detectives can follow up their lead while the girls out for a night of fun get dragged into everything in a logical enough way. Also, the ability to get enough character development along the way with the various backstories and bits of personal information we get on everyone to allow for some intriguing connections in the second half is quite fun here to make for a solid storyline.
On top of that, there’s a lot to like here with the setup generating a series of fun and likable encounters with the creatures. Not just making use of the vampire creatures at the center of everything but including practical effects for the majority of the creatures, the film’s setup allows this to go for a rather different setup involving the various creatures appearing to them. With the taunts and torments include the creatures using demonic skulls on the walls, fantastic creatures interacting with each other, and the distinctive touch afforded to it so that there’s always a hint of knowing who each one is, there’s quite a lot to like here with the way this one brings about the action featuring these creatures. This type of action carries over throughout the finale where the underworld scenario allows the type of cheesy scenarios to take place involving the quest to stay alive which is quite fun and gives this one quite a lot to hold it up overall.
This one does have a few drawbacks that hold it down. The main factor with this one is the generally lackluster pacing that takes place in the middle where its series of massive info-dumps about the storyline and various world-building pieces result in the film being essentially the same thing over and over again. Basically being just endless scenes of the characters standing around in one room talking about what’s going on, discussing their past histories, or just focusing on the girls trying to act tough in front of the cops to no avail, these scenes are repetitive and not all that enjoyable to see play out. The other real issue here is the general sense of cheap low-budget filmmaking on display, which is to be expected given its origins as the setting, action, and overall production value are all added together to present a pretty cheap and cheesy effort that might not be for all out there and should be treated accordingly.
Overview: ***/5
A really enjoyable genre effort with a lot to like, this becomes quite an overall enjoyable effort with only a few small issues bringing it down. Those who appreciate this kind of low-budget feature or are fans of the creature crew will have the most to like here while others who aren’t fans of the style or approach taken should heed caution.
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