User reviews

It is always hard to review a movie that is just so bad. Hellgate proves to be one of those movies. Starring Ron Palillo of "Welcome Back Cotter" and playing a smaller part in "Friday the 13th Part 6", this is absolutely the best this movie can muster, other than some nudity of the co-star Abigail Wolcott as Josie.

The story unfolds in classic manner: we start with a flashback of a biker gang coming into the town of Hellgate. They kidnap Josie and murder her in front of her father. Her father, distraught over the death of his daughter, finds away to bring her back from the dead using a mysterious stone that was found in a mine. Unfortuanitly, he goes mad with power and turns the town of Hellgate into a ghost town. 30 years later, two couples end up exploring into Hellgate to find out about the mystery and get more than they bargained for.

I saw this film about 10 years ago and couldn't remember whether it was any good or not to watch over. So, with a little bit of searching, I found a fairly decent copy of this flick. I will put it this way, this is a hard film to sit through. It starts off kind of interesting with its back story but just goes on a tangent of hopeless boredom, bad acting, and horrendous script writing. Most of the movie seems to be torn from a bad comedy or an old fashioned horror film and not melding together with pretty results. And the worst part is the ending just falls flat on its face with absolutely NO real climax. The only part I really liked was Josie's crazy father in the movie, who apparently can't speak a word of English.

Altogether, if you have a very high tolerance for movies such as this, go ahead and check it out. Otherwise, stay very VERY far away. 4/10

A group of college kids travel to the ghost town of Hellgate to find out the truth about a young woman who was murdered by a motorcycle gang in the 1950's.There,they are greeted by ghosts and walking dead."Hellgate" is a cheesy horror flick that will satisfy only the most undemanding fans of horror genre.The acting is terrible and the script is cheesy beyond belief.There is a fair amount of blood and gore including a nice decapitation scene,unfortunately the special effects are lame.The only reasons to see this stinker are a fish on steroids and re-animated turtle plus Abigail Wolcott as a hot zombie girl.4 out of 10.Only for fans of truly mindless zombie flicks.

Master thespian Ron Palillo, who you might remember far more as none other than Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter fame, stars as a young man embroiled in an urban legend about a ghost town where a man brings back those he kills with a rock crystal. Sure this is a cheapie. Was it a direct to video release? The story is absolute dreck and the performances are just as bad, but the film is not without some bright spots. I really thought the idea of the ghost town was interesting and even enjoyed the expository flashback in the beginning. What really goes wrong in this film is the use of that aforementioned crystal. It is just plain silly, especially when you see it used on a bat with obvious strings, a goldfish in a bowl, and a dead turtle. The acting is so preposterous as a girl, having just seen a horde of dead walk toward her and seeing her boyfriend lose his head, sits calmly in a saloon watching cabaret dancers. Who makes this stuff up? The dialogue is uttered with no conviction at all and is stupid to begin with. The budget may not have been plentiful, but the sets do look rather decent. Lead actor Palillo tries his level best to be affable, but let's face it - it is way beyond his means as an actor. The actress Abigail Wolcott is visually stunning, and it is no coincidence we see lots of her unclad. She is definitely the brightest spot...OK, spots, the film has to offer.

I really have to ask myself what I expected from a movie that has Ron Pallilio from Welcome Back Kotter as the male lead sex symbol. Not much, I guess and that's exactly what I got! Not much! When I popped the DVD of Hellgate on I realized less than five minutes into it that I had seen this movie over ten years ago. You don't forget acting this bad! So the movie starts with three friends waiting for their fourth friend Matt (Horseshack!) to show up at their vacation spot. They while away the time telling ghost stories. One girl deadpans the tale of The Legend Of Hellgate, which is apparently the next town over. In a flashback we see an attempted rape gone bad that happened in Hellgate in the '50s. A bunch of no-good-nick bikers are at the malt shop and they decide to grab the big cheese mayor of Hellgate's daughter Josie and drive away with her. None of the town folk try to stop them. They drive Josie to a secluded area and rip her skirt off and Josie runs around in black underwear, bobby socks and sneakers looking like she should be doing an 80s aerobics video. (I swear they hired Abigail Wolcott to play "Josie" because she had nice legs...She even "strikes poses" while being carried away and raped! ) Well, her father - who is a dead ringer for Gomez Addams- comes to rescue her and in the process Josie gets iced.

Later on a guy in a mine finds a strange crystal that has the power to reanimate dead things. Here is where the cheesy special effects ("done by the people who did the effects in Hellraiser and Hellbound " the box trumpets!) debut as we see a very fake looking bat, a very fake looking fish and a very fake looking turtle spring back to murderous mutant life. (The turtle scene is actually pretty funny). Josie's papa goes to Josie's shrine (even her headstone has breast implants!) and reserrects Josie so she can lure people to the ghost town for him to kill. Why? I don't know why! Josie picks up Horseshack on the side of the road and seduces him. The seduction scene is a laugh riot! the music is insane! And I had never realized what a bad actor Horseshack is until I saw this: Even his sex scenes are unconvincing! And he's a pretty small guy. When he's lying in bed with Josie naked he's so small compared to her that he looks like a doll! Hahaha! Matt meets up with his friends and drags THEM to Hellgate . Why? I don't know. But they go. And of course they run afoul some zombie ghost town people who chase them around and try to kill them. Josie falls in love with Matt for reasons unknown and Matt's girlfriend is not amused.

Will Matt stay with the living dead girl or go home with his plain Jane girlfriend? Or will the zombies and John Astin's doppelganger kill him? Hellgate is a terrible film all the way around with bad acting, bad script, bad special effects, etc. but there was something FUNNY about it that kept me watching so if you like bad movies like I do you might actually find some entertainment in watching HELLGATE. I will watch it again one day just to watch Josie strike strange Vogue-like poses, a dead turtle bite someones face off and to see Horseshack in the raw again. Comic gold all three!

Speaking of bad movies, if you are lucky you will get the two disc set that not only has Hellgate but also has The Pit. The Pit is even funnier than Hellgate, a real laugh riot! So check that one out! Peace!

I admit it...I made a terrible rookie mistake when I bought this VHS ten years ago. I was a young enthusiastic horror fan and the cover showed a nasty, aggressive skull. Above that, written in bloody letters was the title : HELLGATE !! This must be sooooo cool, I thought and I bought it. OK, now I'm a bit grown up ( physical, that is )and I know now that these kinds of covers are an indicator that the movie will be a terrible 80's cheesefest without a plot, laughable terror and annoying characters. And Hellgate fits right in to this category ! We're talking bats on strings, flashy blue stones of mystery and that sort of stuff...That's the whole basic idea, by the way. In an old ghost town ( called Hellgate...duh!) a rich guy discovers a blue stone. This stone can make the dead come to live again but if you aim it towards a creature that already lives...it dies in a gruesome way. This is found out because they test the ray on a goldfish ! I tell you, that's one of the cheesiest scenes ever. Anyway, the story goes on a couple of teenagers bla bla bla bla...the usual stuff which you already know and have seen many times before only better. The acting is hilariously bad, the tension is nowhere to detect and the opening scene ( which is some sort of flashback ) looks like an evil version of Grease. In conclusion : You'd rather visit you're mother in law and give her a foot-massage instead of watching this...

It's become a classic. The film has a recurring catchphrase that I don't know whether I like or loathe:

"You're an asshole" "You really are" "I mean it"

I'm guessing that this was the filmmakers secret weapon.

But the BEST bit about this film was the big guy that was working in the diner and decided to follow the "baddies" to the ghost town.

We only see him in three very short, but very, very crucial scenes from here on in.

Scene I: He is seen modifying his hammer

Scene II: Some time later, he is sharpening a sickle or something (I don't know, maybe he was a commie)

I mean these two scenes would not be included if he had a minor role to play, right?

So here is his big moment in scene III...

Scene III: The guy turns up in the heat of the battle between good and evil. With his hammer in one hand and the sickle in the other he is about to deliver the final blow.....

But is wiped out by one of the zombie cronies that was hanging about.

All that suspense built up... and for what?

And to cap it off, watch the credits roll, with names like The Priest and Animal guy going on and on.

where were THESE people?

Seriously, though. This is one film you HAVE to watch.

"Hellgate" is a definite curio. It's not exactly a good movie, far from it, but it's an odd enough one to keep viewers watching out of pure bafflement. It's short on sense, plodding, and awkward, but also pours on the weird atmosphere, especially in its final third.

Its oddest touch may either turn people off or intrigue them: the casting of the late Ron Palillo, always to be best known as Horshack from 'Welcome Back, Kotter', in the main role. Adding to that is the fact that we see far more of Palillo than most of us probably ever wanted to see, as he doffs his duds for a sex scene.

Palillo plays Matt, one of four college students who get caught up in an urban legend. It seems that back in the 1950s a degenerate biker gang had abducted the daughter of a ghost town operator and caused her death. *Then* a strange crystal is discovered that can either mutate the living or reanimate the dead. So the dad uses it to bring back his girl so she can seduce unlucky travellers and he can kill them. Josie (Abigail Wolcott), the gal in question, falls for Matt, while the now insane dad (Carel Trichardt), looking like a cyborg, tries to get rid of Matt and his friends.

Overall this is extremely cheesy and silly stuff, with lots of bad dialogue and performances that, to put it charitably, aren't the best you'll ever see. For the most part, it's a dull, uneventful movie that can't even come up with a decent conclusion. Still, like lots of bad movies, it has enough W.T.F. moments that just might give the viewer some mild chuckles. Still, mildly amusing is all it can claim to be. Tolerant and forgiving horror lovers who enjoy discovering obscure B movies may derive entertainment from the settings, not so special effects, and Wolcotts' very nice body, but slogging through "Hellgate" is still a bit of a challenge.

Directed by William A. Levey, who'd previously directed Palillo in "Skatetown, U.S.A." and who has a cameo as the man in the fridge.

Five out of 10.

Three teens are sitting around in a cabin telling spooky stories when one tells the back-story of the Hellgate hitch-hiker, a girl, living in the '50's whom a motorcycle gang kidnaps and kills. Her father resurrects her with a magic stone to lure men to his house and kill them. After the story is finished the three are joined by a forth, the hero of the film (it says so on his license plate) Mattt (yup Ron Palillo, Horshack himself) who had a run-in with the fabled girl on his way there.

This movie strives to be a horror-comedy but sadly falls on it's face in both those genres. It's not funny as the humor is way too cornball, and it's most certainly not scary in the least. In fact it teeters between the boring and banal side of the spectrum. I don't even think I'd have watched this movie if it wasn't on the same disc as "the Pit" (a much better 'bad' film that's actually enjoyable in it's awfulness)

Eye Candy: Joanne Warde goes topless, Abigail Wolcott shows T&A multiple times

My Grade: D

Anchor Bay DVD Extras: nada, zilch (on a double-bill with "the Pit" on this flip-side DVD)

Ron Palillo (from Welcome Back, Kotter), who was nearly 40 at the time, stars in this bats#!t insane teen horror movie with a plot that makes so little sense that even explaining it becomes a messy string of confusing words and ideas. It concerns two young couples who become embroiled in the mystery of a desolate ghost town, Hellgate, where a young woman was kidnapped and murdered by a biker gang in 1959. Many years later, the girl's father finds a magic crystal that can bring the life back to dead objects and uses it to bring her back. Pretty soon the town is overrun by zombies and ghostly can-can dancers and a weird English guy who cuts his fingers off and other random nonsensical stuff that only throws you even further off the plot. The film was shot in South Africa and almost all the cast consists of South Africans trying to do American accents. It was released in the United States and United Kingdom directly-to-video.

Yes, fellow lovers of bad cheesy films - HELLGATE is one of the masters. Wow - where to begin - this movie has everything and everything is done badly. First, let's cast washed-up sitcom actor Ron Palillo (famous as the nerdy annoying Horshak on Welcome Back, Kotter - which made Travolta famous as the sexy Vinnie Barbarino). OK, so let's take this weird looking nebbish and cast his as the hero - OK, fine - go against type - but the script was written for an obvious stud because ALL the women in the movie flirt and gush over him. He even does a nude scene - yes, that's right - he is totally nude and straddling the actress who play his steady girl - she is also nude and she is hideous to look at as well - she kind of has a MacKenzie Phillips look only harsher. They try and show scenes supposedly taking place back in 50's but the hair and the clothes and lingo screams late 1980's. There's a 1890's ghost town full of actual ghosts - at one point a magic potion creates a large turtle - who is taunted by someone and the turtle bites a huge chunk of flesh out of the guy's face. The special effects are bad, the fight scenes look like two little brothers fighting over the remote, the thing just swerves off into other scenes that makes you go "WTF???" An absolute trainwreck of a film - but a fun trainwreck - one of those horrid movies that you cant stop watching cause it keeps on surprising you with it's incompetence. Wowee!

A motorcycle gang kidnaps a young woman, Josie, from a diner and brutally kills her. Many years later, the girl's father finds a magic crystal that can bring the life back to dead objects. He uses it to re-animate his daughter.

This film has a low rating and has generally been forgotten. And yeah, I can see why. It is no masterpiece and is definitely not a horror gem. I like the reanimation aspect, and the 1950s bit... and we have zombies, ax murders, and more...

If nothing else, the film is good for the very, very corny humor and the slow motion shot of a topless woman getting blown through a window by a shotgun blast. That is an incredible stunt, and by going in slow motion it is even more spectacular.

No budget ,Bad acting ,Bad plot , badly made but still fun to watch The thing i like about this film is everything that is bad about it . I grew up in the 80s and a lot of the films are like hellgate I like it because it reminds me of this cheap cheesy era of horror Head being cut off , sexy girls with bare boobs , bad jokes etc. But honestly if you want to watch something with a bit of depth dont watch this

Yes, this is a horrible movie. But look at all of the *good* things. Gratuitous sex. Random psychopaths. Gratuitous slow-motion action sequences. Similar visual effects as Hellraiser (the really cheesy Hellraiser effects, granted...). Gratuitous exploding things for no particular reason. It's b-horror at its best. Laughed the whole way through it! Though, I have to admit, the final body count was a bit of a disappointment...

Hellgate is an old Californian mining town that is now populated by ghosts, zombies and a creepy looking guy that owns a glowing magical crystal. He uses this for things such as reanimating the dead, causing living things to drastically change physically, create explosions, etc. Four college friends (two couples) find themselves trapped there. Hellgate was filmed in South Africa and the first thing that becomes apparent is the bad acting, the "American" accents are terribly fake. Another thing that is obvious is that the "kids" are played by actors older than their characters, the leading guy was 40 when he appeared in this! The movie has plenty of special effects some of which are quite gory, for example an axe in a head kill, another sees fingers being cut off, etc. We get plenty of sex and nudity plus for atmosphere the fog machine works overtime. This movie obviously wasn't intended to be taken seriously, a goldfish expands into a large hideous fish that bursts its glass bowl before exploding, there is a talking decapitated head in a fridge, and so on. Best looking chick award goes to Abigail Wolcott for playing the sexy blonde ghost Josie, at one point she goes for a nude stroll across a ballroom dance floor. Part of the plot is set in the 1950's so we are treated to some old rock and roll records, the soundtrack also features classical music, a ghostly performance of the Can Can being a "highlight". I first watched Hellgate in VHS many years ago and recall being disappointed, however having just watched it again, this time on DVD, I found it entertaining but in the trashy sense. Booze helped!

Don't get me wrong. I like bad films, but they have to be enjoyably bad. This isn't. From the bad script to the bad sets to the bad directing, this is a poor excuse for a horror movie. There aren't even any of the standard jolts. Even the aesthetically pleasing Abigail Wolcott can't redeem her part as she's as wooden as the rest of the cast.

What a strange one. It had me compelled throughout, but I wouldn't call it great or even good... maybe not average. Still you must give credit to something that holds your attention, even if you're in a state bemusement. One thing that will keep your eyes glued to the screen would be that of radiantly breathtaking actress Abigail Wolcott (who goes topless at times) in her one and only role so far. The low-budget b-grade horror "Hellgate" is a muddle of a film, blending in a whole range of horror staples (ghosts? Zombies? Psychos? Supernatural slasher?) and comedic touches. The humour was kind of odd and stale, as after starting off serious (though it can be unintentionally funny) it seemed to mock itself, especially with the dim-witted dialogues. Some things were just randomly insane and nasty, but while the sets looked low-rent and the special effects sloppily executed it still managed to create a polish look from its crisp cinematography and eerie atmospheric visuals. I didn't feel it to be a complete botch, as I seemed to expect by its reputation (although the use of a dangling rubber bat could be inexcusable). Another draw-card would be that of "Welcome back, Kotter" TV star Ron Palillo who looks rather bewildered at first and then warms up to the part with a smug attitude. So when he's not baring his naked ass, he's trying to figure what he had just experienced after picking up a strange young lady on his way to meet up with his friends and girlfriend. So he takes the traumatised girl back home, in which he drives through a ghostly town and then encounters her father who bestows a crystal which shoots laser beams. You're probably thinking huh… but the movie kind of moves through the past and present where it explains about the legend of the hellgate hitchhiker in flashbacks. The teenagers tell us of the story like some sort of campfire tale and then encounter the legend for themselves. This is where we get the full story about the girl Josie and her father Lucas who likes to kill strangers that venture into his town. The nightmarish concept is somewhat imaginative, but it's messily plotted with its ever changing tone and sluggishly directed. Some questionable story arches, pointless padding or decisions are delivered with a variable bunch of gaudy or banal performances. A weird, if poorly conceived low-grade shocker.

Unrelenting in its intensity and breathtakingly overwhelming in its terror, William Levy's Hellgate is a horror film that has magnificently stood the test of time. Michael O'Rourke penned a screenplay that is unusually intelligent, suspenseful, and horrific indeed. The atmosphere of fear and dread is almost too much to bear and there is a surrealistic environment created by the director that defies description. The characterizations are rich and well developed, resulting in much more than the stick figures that routinely run for their lives in these sort of films. As the story progresses, we realize these are real people about whom we care deeply and we find ourselves fearful for their safety. Ron Palillo gives what is nothing less than the performance of a lifetime as Matt, a young man that must garner the courage he never knew he add in order to protect those he loves and defeat the evil of a town possessed. An extraordinary horror film that remains one of the most frightening ever made, there is no denying the powerful imagery and devastating terror that is Hellgate. (This review pertains to the much superior Director's Cut that truly fulfilled Levy's artistic vision)

Hellgate started off looking quite promising with an easy-to-follow plot. Three young people are reading stories about a girl who was killed, and her father brings her back to life using a crystal. The story starts to get confusing at this point. It involves the group visiting Hellgate, where the re-animated girl seduces men for her father to kill. I fell asleep at some point during the film (not something I usually do) and woke up near the end. The ending actually wasn't too bad, but nothing to wet yourself over.

The scene where the fish grows and bursts out of its tank, and when the tortoise becomes a monster are cool. Watch this if you collect 80's horror films, but be warned: it has nothing going for it and is extremely dull.