Hellgate (1989)

You know how sometimes the genre lines are blurred in certain movies, like in Die Hard for instance, hell yeah it's a kick ass action flick but you also shed a tear when McClane and his wife get back together at the end. Or like how in Die Hard 2, after most explosions McClane says the most hilarious one-liners ever. I might even go so far as to cite Die Hard 3’s action/comedy as an example. Sometimes however, those lines are crossed unintentionally and hilariously, and that’s where Hellgate comes in.



Now with all the ridiculousness on display, it’s possible that director William Levy knew exactly what he was doing with Hellgate, because I’ll be damned if he didn’t find this as funny as I did. There’s so much awesomeness that happens with flimsy explanation, like the magic crystal, crazy muscle dudes, hot dead ladies, a dude even gets decapitated with a store sign! And best of all, Horshack!! And even better than best of all, Hellgate comes on a double feature disc with The Pit! I mean come on!

So let me outline the story briefly, and probably in the wrong order since I’m writing this from memory. Some crazy mean biker dudes bust into a bad diner set and are jerks to everyone. They end up kidnapping and killing a young girl outside said diner. Her dad loses it, and at some point in the future, he finds a weird crystal that makes some things blowup and dead things come back to life. That scene is one of my faves actually. Naturally, dad goes to bring his daughter back to life. So meanwhile, there’s a group of kids who recount the story I just recounted to you, and one of them, Matt, Horshack, picks up a lady hitchiker, crazy dad’s dead daughter, and she tries to seduce him. He leaves her and meets up with his friends, They end up in a graveyard and find the tomb of the girl he just saw. Matt’s freaking out at this point, and he tells them he needs to figure out who she is, much to the dismay of his girlfriend. Anyways, they make it to Hellgate and, well, all hell breaks loose. One of the original biker dudes is there and is hilarious, there’s a weird carnival and senseless killing. The production values were so low on this movie, as some buildings tumble in the finale, it’s so obviously cardboard, that I’m not sure the crazy dad really died. Papercut maybe, but not dead.

Check out some other clips below:





Buy It with The Pit / Rent It