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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 4^th 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.

Sign Your Soul To Satan for the “Hells Bells” on Blu-ray!

A sadistic carny ringmaster and his troupe of malicious clowns put on a traveling circus act through the America midwest. When an unfaithful lover challenges the powerful lout, he and his painted-face company exact a punitive act against her for all the crowd to see and enjoy and in bitter return, the scorned woman invokes a witch’s spell to summons evil forces to pluck the ringmaster and his clown lackeys up into an unordinary whirlwind. Trapped inside a super storm, the clowns use their newfound and unintentional given powers to funnel a tornado for spreading massive destruction through their cyclonic path of vengeance, terrifying a handful of ensemble midwestern survivors to fight back against the merciless and murderous clowns.

Clowns are so hot right now. From the success of Stephen King’s “It” remake and the subsequent sequel to the re-emergence of Batman’s notorious foe, “Joker”, in a controversial origin film, the carnivalesque buffoons are at the height of their inhuman malevolency since the late 1980’s saw Jack Nicholson donned the makeup as a crazed lunatic with a penchant for nerve gas and extraterrestrial clowns invaded Earth to harvest people and snack on their blood. Adding director Todd Sheets into this era of clown renaissance and outcomes the carny carnage gore fest, “Clownado,” straight from the big top. As an obvious pun on the “Sharknado” franchise, the “Dreaming Purple Neon” and “Sorority Babes in the Dance-A-Thon of Death” director pens and helms another blood drenched, apocalyptic, cine-schlock of callous proportions and unparalleled in content funded by Sheet’s production company, Extreme Entertainment. With a production company tagline of Movies with Guts, Sheets makes good on his delivery with an up close and personal spew of geysering blood sprays, severed gushing limbs, and guts, lots of guts, that’ll run any clown’s makeup red while dousing each feature with action and fun.

How do you hire a cast to garb themselves as maniacal clowns, have them portray being supernaturally charged with meteorological phenomena, and wreak havoc down from the heavens with a tornado vessel just to rip people to shreds all the while laughing their heads off? Easy. You employ the entourage familiar with your brand of Mccobb! John O’Hara, Antwoine Steele, Dilynn Fawn Harvey, Rachel Lagen, Jeremy Todd, Millie Milan, Nate Karny Cole, Douglas Epps, and others have worked previously with Sheets in these flicks, but not limited to: “Sleepless Nights,” “Dreaming Purple Neon”,” “Bonehill Road,” and “House of Forbidden Secrets.” Mix to blend some well churned budget horror talent, such as “Return of the Living Dead’s” Linea Quigley as an angst-y bar/strip club owner and “Brainjacked’s” Joel D. Wynkoop as a fearless flyboy, an already colossal cast becomes an gargantuan cogency of tacit talent and to top it off, how about an former porn star amputee? Jeanne Silver, or better known in the industry as Long Jeanne Silver of “Debbie Does Dallas Part II”, bewitches the screen as the spellbound caster and she didn’t even have to penetrate anyone with your missing fibula of a leg. The one actor that really sought the affable nature in us all is Bobby Westrick with the charming redneck Hunter Fedelis. Westrick, who hasn’t been in a movie since Todd Sheets’ “Goblin” back in 1993, returns in 2019 to be one-time alcoholic lowlife to a world savior from clown devastation; Hunter’s an overall gentlemen despite his straggly, rough appearance and beat up old straw cowboy hat and doesn’t live one person behind while also befriend a black man impersonating Elvis Presley in town has unexpressed racial prejudice. The cast also includes Sierra Stodden, Eileen Dietz, and a Cayt Feinics who seemed to just love caressing her blood soused breasts more than the next woman.

I get what Todd Sheets has erected here being the ringmaster of a dementedly dissension in the circus of blood. The capitalizing idea of clowns twirling and terrorizing through a maelstrom flash of fluorescent, like of SyFy sharks in that popular six installment franchise, is indie kitschiness at it’s finest and couldn’t be more perfectly timed after the release of Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker.” “Clownado” is a fun windstorm of gore and carnival surrealism. Sheets continues to deliver as promised per his production company and is still able to sustain relationships with his usual clowns – such as my stoic favorite, Antwoine Steele, and his role dressed arbitrarily as the King of Rock and Roll – while providing chuckles, sparks, and bimbos galore and, no, I don’t mean clown names. With any Todd Sheets production, the practical effects are innovative and dastardly with highlights including breasts with teeth instead of nipples, heart replacement surgery with a block of ice, and head explosions!

MVDVisual and Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t clown around with Todd Sheets’ “Clownado” that lands onto DVD home video in a widescreen, 1.78:1 aspect ratio. In light of microbudget limits, the digitally shot film has some issues, such as color banding, and then there’s also the visual effects that come straight out of the stock footage file and then matted over with assertion on the first run; however, Todd Sheets been doing this for decades and I’m sure if the director wanted his production and post-production to be first rate, he’d be like Picard and make it so. Yet, disappointments are a part of life and the biggest disappointment by far is the over saturation of purple tint to lay down an ominous killer vibe throughout the night scenes of the 99minute run and the tint completely dilutes the vivid face paint, or in the clowns’ case war paint, and also turns blood into a black and magenta farcical gas. The English language audio 2.0 stereo track, complete with closed captioning available, has great clarity and often doesn’t seem as tumultuous as would be expected. The mic had on point placement to hone in on every wisecrack and pun known to clown-kind. Bonus features include a commentary track with Todd Sheets, behind the scenes, a featurette entitled “The Human Hurricane, and Wild Eye Releasing trailers. From a meteorologist standpoint, weathering through “Clownado” might be a downpour of rubbish, but for those who live vicariously through Todd Sheets’ repertoire of campy, no-budget, gore films, “Clownado” is a beautiful black-comedy day for a stroll.