Sign Your Soul To Satan for the “Hells Bells” on Blu-ray!
A pair of middle-aged best friends and rockers named Arthur and Herb have minimum waged jobs, no ambitions, and two level-headed wives on the brink of divorcing them if nothing changes. All the friends have is their band, Devil Music, and their glam rock music. Out of the blue, a music talent agent signs them in a heartbeat and before they know, Devil Music is rocking out to a packed-full arena full of adoring fans and obsessed groupies, raking in money beyond their capabilities of higher counting. What they’re oblivious to is the band’s collective souls now belong to the Devil under the contract terms with the servile music agent doing the Devil’s fear-based bidding and whose life and soul hangs in the balance. When the Devil comes to collect, sending his demonic minions to slay each member of the band, Arthur and Herb must find a way to save themselves from the Devil cancelling their life show forever.
For over a decade now, filmmakers Jim O’Rear, who’s minor zombie role in George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” has launched a career in indie horror in front and behind the camera with “Hayride Slaughter,” “Three Tears of Bloodstained Flesh,” and the “Cruel Summer” trilogy,” and Scott Tepperman, who’s more recent filmography into the indie market also saw highlights of horror, have been in business together ever since co-starring in the 2013 haunted hospital flick, “Hospital.” From then on, the two had formed their own production company, Los Bastardz Production, specializing in low-budget horror with a select entourage of talent. The devil and his contract film, underscored with a rock-n-roll fame theme, released in 2020 is duo’s “Hell’s Bells,” a horror-comedy built around if it seems too good to be true, it probably is narrative. “Hell’s Bells” is also produced by the two filmmakers.
Like most of their produced product, it comes to no surprise that the Los Bastardz themselves, Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman step in the principal leads of a Beavis & Butthead or Bill & Ted type of heavy metal music centric duo who are daft beyond repair. Any innovation aimed for the setup is instantly dissolved by the derivative tepidness as we’ve seen these characters before over the decades now, but O’Rear and Tepperman make for a good dimwitted and guileless pair with a gullibility and an innocence that makes them appear sympathetically simpatico, even when their levelheaded wives (Rebekah Erb, “Death Care,” and pornstar Layla Dawn. “Slumber Party Slaughter Party”) use threatening divorce language to motivate their one-track mind toward another desire in life. The jokes are a bit long in the tooth and there are a handful of needless fart jokes, but the overall gags do land even if the terrain they contextually touch down on is rocky at best as they play to their individual character strengths of being a grocery bagger enthusiastic about making it big and a loafer who actualy has some intelligence underneath his Jesus hairstyle. Their band mates, the cocky loudmouth drummer Vic (Paul Van Scott), the butch backup singer Shirley (Lisa Kirk), and the catatonic bassist Gary (Cameron Scott), all have their own quirks, and all are played by actors familiar with El Basterdz having donned roles in previously produced films from the company, such as the “Cruel Summer” series. As the band Devil Music, they are targeted for soul reaping as a part of a contract byproduct against their music agent Caleb (Tom Komsar), drawn up by the devil himself in Marc Price (“Trick or Treat”) by duplicitous means with deceitful promises. Without the horns, pitchfork, and red skin, Marc Price makes for a good Devil in human skin with only the economized visual effects fashioned glowing eyes. Harold McLeod II preludes the story as a victim of contract, Cayt Feinics draws attention with a show of toplessness as Shirley’s lover, Jerry Reeves plays the demon x many going after Devil Music, and a sorely underutilized Jimmy Maguire, as the exasperated grocer manager tired of Arthur and Herb’s lack of common sense, fill out “Hell’s Bells” cast.
To preface with my previous experience with El Basterdz films, “Cruel Summer” didn’t do it for me with a dowdy slasher that’s didn’t leave impression. Yet, “Cruel Summer” has two sequels plus a 4th soon to be on home video, making this series their most popular commodity. What can I say? Cinema is subjective. That bad taste didn’t deter “Hell’s Bells” from the ever-growing review pile and a second chance to get this long-time horror fan aboard with Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman’s blithe outlook toward the horror genre, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. With that understanding, going into “Hell’s Bells” was rather easy with no expectations for commentative material and top-notch gags and laughs, but what El Basterdz provides has been long appreciated and continuously favored in genre films: decent VFX, decent practical effects, and, of course, the provocation of nudity. There may be times when films can get away with having only one of those key elemental pieces present with great immensity and intense projection that the film can’t be denied it’s due right to seen and heard as a well-made film but have all three and the formula works like a charm amongst genre fans no matter how bad the storyline gets and no matter how bad the acting is portrayed, leveling up a mediocre production to potentially the penthouse of the independent skyscraper. To be fair, neither the story nor the acting in “Hell’s Bells” is atrocious but the technical aspects during principal photography and post-production throw the film off-balance into slapdash hogwash and that can be rather off-putting right out the gate for most audiences.
“Hell’s Bells” finds itself being a story having been told before, many times over in its airheaded budding duo faced with great task none think possible to complete, but O’Rear and Tepperman manage to befit themselves satisfactorily in archetype with a rock-n-roll nightmare by sticking to their character quirks and incorporating the backbone preferences of shoestring genre filmmaking. SRS Cinema is a distributing house built on shoestring films and “Hell’s Bells” is another brick in its schlock-sturdy foundation with a Blu-ray release. Encoded with AVC compression, presented with 1080p high-resolution, on a 25GB BD-R with the purple underbelly, “Hell’s Bells” looks pretty good for commercial grade encoding and minimal capacity. Details are sharp enough to cause no concern to capture skin variations, the contrasting wardrobe textures, and the shifting compositions between reality and fantasy stemmed from visual effects and fade-in/fade-out montage sequences. Scenes are mixed bag of grading, some more intense than others that are set with a brighter natural veneer, but all retain their intended quality without any substantial issues from compression. The English language LPCM 2.0 stereo renders a mix of feeble commercial equipment and green technical knowledge that permits a large noticeable swing in all areas of principal sound recording with most of the pain points affecting dialogue with retreated vocal presence in certain scenes while robust in others, and even an in-moment change of the same scene at times. Post sound design isn’t marred by the same scenarios that’s a clear as crystal with the added rock soundtrack, crowd cheers, and demonic gutturals. No English subtitles are offered. Special features include a commentary track with writer-directors Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman, a behind-the-scenes featurette, Arthur and Herb’s Devil Music music video, blooper reel, the feature trailer, and SRS Cinema catalogue trailers. SRS Cinema’s Blu-ray mirrors their limited 100 count release without the director’s signatures, retailed with a regular Blu-ray Amaray case with illustration composition artwork of mostly the chief principal characters, and as always, the graphic artistry SRS uses is always 100x better the film. There are no other physical accompaniments. The not rated release has a runtime of 80 minutes and has region free playback.
Last Rites: Throw up the sign of the devil horns for “Hell’s Bells’s” comedic contract with a hair metal Satan, but don’t let this narrative fool you by hawking new something old and done before.
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