You could say "Hellmaster" is one of those forgotten, daft on-the-cheap b-horror films, which gains ones interest with cult actors like David "Flyboy" Emge from the original "Dawn of the Dead" and the always suave John Saxon. The premise sounds like it can be fun, but you don't expect a good film. You just hoped to be entertained. It does that
well not at all times. What starts off rather interesting and ghastly (as I was thinking it's like something out of Clive Barker's mind), despite its randomly crude handling soon it becomes a boring muddle of aimless occurrences, a real lack of exposition shows from its clumsy script and fragmented editing only confuses even more. Then tack on its preachy religious subtext. The drearily hellish activity takes place on a campus with a terrible history, as Saxon plays the demented professor Jones who tests out a drug on the homeless which genetically disfigures them turning each homicidal as they follow him back to his university in their bus of doom. They serve him, as his known as Papa (???) to them. Waiting for him is a reporter (Emge), who did the story on him that unmasked the horrific experiments he was doing on the students on the campus in the past. Now Dr. Jones is back, he plans to experiment again on a new lot of students while his army simply loiter around injecting themselves or having some fun with a use of sickle but Jones might have met his match as one of the co-eds has psychic abilities. It's completely nonsensical and choppy (Jones has projectile powers?), but where it stands out is its competent use of make-up effects and there's some creativity within some sequences. I liked the campus setting, where the director tried to install Gothic atmospherics with his use of neon lighting or at times a lack of it amongst dark, shadowy corridors. Does it work? Not all the time, but some attempts have effective visuals. Jolts are cheaply done. Performances are mainly lousy and forgettable. Saxon seems to be sleepwalking through it, Emge looks all lost and Amy Raasch is capable enough as the heroine. While it seems to cop a real shellacking, this quickly made production has few, if clunky thrills.
"They're coming."
