Hellhounds

Hellhounds (2009)

Note: Check out our interview with director of Hellhounds Rick Schroder here.

This movie is set in some nonspecific past with what I think are Greeks running around with their swords slaying monsters. The story revolves around a particularly brave man named Kleitos who is engaged to be married to the great love of his life. But when she is murdered on their wedding day by an unknown assassin he goes off to see a witch to find out who committed the heinous act. He doesn’t find out who killed her, but does find out that in spite of being a pure soul she has been cast to the underworld to be the bride of Hades! With a magical potion he and some of his brave companions travel to the underworld and do battle with it’s minions to bring her back to the living. But unknown to Kleitos one of his companions is harboring a terrible secret. One that might cost them all their lives.

So this is without a doubt an incredibly cheesy movie. I mean seriously Clash of the Titans cheesy. But I like these sorts of epic adventure movies with guys running around in swords and sandals with goofy sounding names slaughtering all kinds of creatures of myth and legend. So on some levels Hellhounds kind of works for me. You get a typical kind of setup with the hero going off to rescue his love from some fate worse than death. There are several unnamed guys in armor following after them, which of course means they are the first to die! The hero has some good friends with him, which means they too will die, but after the unnamed guys and with a much braver onscreen death. And of course there is always a villain who keeps coming back long after you think he is done. But he does get what is coming to him in the end. So Hellhounds does deliver some of the good old cheesy Sinbad type adventure fun that I want from a movie like this. But it also fails at some things.

While many of the movies that clearly inspired Hellhounds involve long journeys they have the good sense to not linger on people walking and talking. Now I’m sure it is the lack of budget more than anything else, but we go long stretches between anything happening on screen that is exciting. Those are filled up with people either walking somewhere or talking about where they are walking to. Neither of these are very thrilling or exciting at all. Also the performances are just awful. Well okay to be fair the lead actor that plays Kleitos, Scott Elrod, is good. He can deliver his lines and has some acting chops. But the rest of the cast isn’t talented enough to overcome what is not a good script or dialogue. Oh and the biggest difference between this and the “classic” cheese fests that I’m comparing it to are the special effects. Hellhounds relies way too much on CGI and bad CGI at that. The titular Hellhounds don’t get much screen time, which is good because they look terrible. This is especially so when they interact with the actors. This comes off as awkward on looks silly on screen.

In the end there is some fun to be had with Hellhounds, but it isn’t perfect. I can’t recommend a purchase, but if you dig some of the movies that I’ve compared this to then it might be worth a rental.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer