I first saw this Eurotrash/art flick on a cheap-o cut-to-crap DVD under the more common title of BELL FROM HELL and it didn't make any sense. It seemed visually interesting enough though so when I got the chance to check out an uncut version recently in the theater I figured I would give it another shot. Well come to find out it still isn't all that coherent. The story concerns a fellow(Renaud Verley) who is wrongly committed to an insane asylum by his shitty family for their financial gain. When he gets out it's revenge time. Seemingly simple enough premise it's runtime is filled with enough weird bits that things are never what they seem. Is our protagonist actually insane now or just acting? Why is he really into the idea of incest with his cousins? There are elaborate sequences of him faking gory acts like plucking his own eyeballs out and at one point he builds a completely life-size dummy of himself just to be a little prankster. This serves to throw off the audience as well as the film's characters. If you're a fan of obtuse European art-flicks, where the main character is a pretty unlikable sort of fellow, this might be better appreciated by you than myself who was expecting more of a straightforward sleazy horror film. Oh, and I guess you would also have to be ok with random slaughterhouse scenes of cows being bloodily butchered.
More interesting than the movie itself, to me, is that the director, Claudio Guerin, fell of a belltower while filming the final scene resulting in his death. It's a shame because judging from this film he seems like a guy that could have done something worthwhile, or at least somewhat interesting, if he continued on.
VHS!:
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