BELL FROM HELL

Bell From Hell Movie Review

After being released from a mental institution, John (Renaud Verley) returns to seek revenge on his aunt and cousins for having him sent away. Why did they do this? If you are a fan of early 1970s Spanish horror films, you are probably guessing there is an inheritance involved...and you are correct! My review of this film is the version found on the Chilling Classics: 50 Movies DVD set.

THIS set, to be exact

I don’t know if there is a better transfer of the film out there somewhere, but the version included in this set is rough. The picture is very shaky for most of the movie—this is especially hard to handle when you have a splitting headache while watching. The sound was absolutely awful as well. This is the English version, so the dubbing was also poor--yes, this movie has a lot against it right off the bat. Could it overcome all this? Not even close. The movie crawls from the get-go. We sit through a LOT of nothing happening before John finally decides to go for his revenge. One of his four would-be victims gets killed by bees.

But which one will it bee?

We think this is going to be awesome, but we are disappointed.

It's nowhere near as memorable as this scene bee

We get some sort of weird, almost torture scene with John's cousins that features some nudity but no gore...or even a drop of blood. We almost get a rape scene. We almost get John having sex with his cousins. We almost get to see the aunt stung by the bees. We almost get to see a hanging. Noticing a pattern here?

"I think maybe I notice...no, I lost it"

Surrounding the scenes of things almost happening is lot of horrible lighting, irritating angles, and unnecessary zoom shots. Sadly, this film is probably most known for the director, Claudio Guerin, falling to his death while shooting a scene at the bell tower. Bell From Hell seems a movie that wanted to push the envelope, but shied away when it got to the edge; had it actually gone through with the scenes it teased, this may have been a decent film. As it is, this one is just a bore.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 3

Bell From Hell Movie Trailer