Just for the Hell of It

H.G. Lewis' films are not for everyone. He uses amateur actors that he finds in the cities he films in and the sets are probably houses that the actor's parent's own. But his films are so out there and so bizarre that I can't see how you wouldn't get a kick out of them. "Just for the Hell of it" centers on a large group of white-bred kids who, for no reason whatsoever (hence the title) decide to engage in pranks ranging from fairly harmless (hiding a blind man's cane) to truly evil (raping a girl on a beach and putting her boyfriend in a sinking boat). If you want to know what a stereotypical late '60's drive-in film was like, this would probably be your best bet.

Shot back-to-back with SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS, JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT is almost as good. Filled with amazing scenes of mass destruction and devilish deeds, HELL may be the ultimate j.d. film. Too bad it came a few (10) years too late!

Destruction Inc. is a leather-jacket, bike-riding teenage gang who, for the duration of the film, cause trouble for law-abiding citizens and the law. That's it. There really is no plot here, just scene after scene of crimes committed by boys AND girls.

HELL is obviously the sister of SHE-DEVILS. The cast, almost all having appeared in SHE-DEVILS, includes Rodney Bedell, Nancy Lee Noble, Ruby Tuesday, Pat Poston, a number of the men from the stud line, two of the biker chicks, and the heroine's mother! Ray Sager, who plays one of the gang leaders, later played Montag in WIZARD OF GORE! Nancy Lee Noble really deserved more roles in these types of movies. She's great in SHE-DEVILS and is good here, too. I have yet to see her in THE GIRL, THE BODY & THE PILL, but she has already become one of my psychotronic favorites. On another note: the music is all from THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, with the exception of the two songs performed by the Florida garage band. I wish a CD would come out of music that Larry Wellington supervised for H.G. Lewis' films. He really aided the 60s feel of movies like this one, GRUESOME TWOSOME and SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS.

JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT is, like I said, scene after scene after scene of mass destruction. This gets a little repetitive, but never gets dull. The main gang leader (I'm hazy on the name of the actor) seems more apt to play the good-looking hero and I would love to have seen him try that role. Not H.G. Lewis' best, but JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT is full of scenes that only Lewis would film and that 60s Florida feel that makes it indescribably fun to endure.

A group of crazy, violent teens makes life a living hell for a town of babies, handicapped people, blind men, and single women with nary a cop in sight when anything happens, shortly after anything happens, or even after that. Herschell Gordon Lewis tries his hand at making a teen gang violence picture with some kind of social commentary. But the result is a film with a very sadistic side and loads of intentional(I think they were at least) and many unintentional laughs. Acting, a far off feeling in most Lewis films, is fairly decent here. The youthful leads convey menace enough to hope something terrible happens to them. The group plays all kinds of pranks...some harmless at first but then work their way up to murder and rape. The Lewis touch is clearly evident in the relentless, unfeeling tone of the film. It has no heart at all. Because it has some laughs and shows some situations of intended violence hitherto unseen in any of Lewis's works, I would take a moment and see the film....just for the hell of it!

For entertainment, Charlie Manson LOVED the goriest of magazines and movies or at least something hatefully abusive to women and/or children. He must of thought Herschell's 'hack-em up' films were an great option at the drive-in in the 60's, when they were released. It's coincidental that between Herschell Gordon Lewis filming on Charlie Manson's Spaun ranch in the late 60's and 'Charlie and the gang' getting revenge on the the recording industry (one school of thought), Just For the Hell of It was released. The actual events in the hills of Los Angeles and fictional events in this movie appear way too similar to be a coincidence (instead of 'pig' written on the wall in red, it was 'FUZZ'). Another troubling connection is that besides acting like Manson the cripple kicking, baby throwing White (Denny Fortune) got his albums title song internationally released with THE most controversial 1969 Charlie Manson tune (sung by the Beach boys???) on EMI's Ah Feel Like Ahcid.

All this should scare the public more than the connections of Just For the Hell of It, Burgess, Kubrick and the making of Clockwork Orange should interest them.

This film starts with a strange scene in which several young men and women decide to completely destroy a room in a house for no clear reason, and they keep doing so even after it becomes tiresome to watch. Right after, this same small group begins to terrorize a couple of elderly men with various disabilities that prevent them from fighting back. It's then revealed that this gang is led by a young man named "Dexter" (Ray Sager), who, like the others, enjoys destroying things just for fun. Things get much more serious when one of his men picks a fight with an outsider named "Doug" (Rodney Bedell), who not only isn't afraid of them but also knows how to defend himself when needed. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was one of those counter-culture films made during that time period that relied more on shock value than on good acting or a solid plot. For that reason, several scenes run much longer than necessary and, as I mentioned earlier, become quite tedious pretty quickly. At least, that's how it seemed to me. Nonetheless, while fans of movies from this era might find some entertainment in this, I wasn't very impressed and have rated it accordingly.