HALLOWEEN HELL (2014) **
Very few things in a movie’s opening credits make me as happy as seeing the words “With Eric Roberts as Dracula” pop up. Dracula, as it turns out, is the host of a horror-themed reality show. The funny thing about this is they never confirm or deny if Roberts is supposed to be the real Dracula or not. Whether he is or isn’t the real Dracula, at least Roberts looks like he’s having fun dressed in a vampire cape and cribbing lines from Bela Lugosi.
Dracula’s reality show features contestants who are locked inside a house for 24 hours with a devil doll (nicknamed “Devil Danny”) that was “carved from lava straight from Hell”. Before long, they start dying gruesome deaths at the hands of the devil-faced killer (who only appears to his victim just before their death). Meanwhile, Dracula invites viewers to bet on which contestant will live or die.
This is all well and fine for about 45 minutes or so, but once the contestants start zapping the demon with electromagnets to keep him at bay, it becomes increasingly goofy, not to mention repetitive. Still, the gore is good enough to keep you watching. We get gut ripping, throat slashing, face removing, self-inflicted knife to the eye, and heart ripping. Some of the CGI effects (like the decapitation scene) are chintzy, but all the practical work is fairly effective.
The contestants are all predictable multi-ethnic stereotypes, but the funniest guy is the country western singer who sings horrible songs and taunts “Devil Danny”. At one point he says, “They call me longhorn, and not just because I’m from Texas” when he gets naked during a game of strip poker. Unfortunately, the hot Russian chick never gets to show off her assets during the game.
Directed by Ed (Bloody Birthday) Hunt, his first effort in 26 years (his last one was The Brain, which was fun), Halloween Hell is a mixed bag. As bad as the reality game show horror subgenre can be, this is really one of the more tolerable ones out there. I mean even though the pacing is often sluggish and a lot of it looks pretty cheap, you still have Eric Roberts playing Dracula and some pretty juicy gore effects. Because of that, I’d say it would be worth a watch.
Halloween Hell is available now on DVD from the good folks at Cinema Epoch. Head on over to www.cinemaepoch.com to pick up your copy.