By: debbie lynn elias
Just say “hell yes” to HELLBENDERS 3D!! Beyond entertaining and filled with laughs, HELLBENDERS 3D is the tale of the most unlikely bunch of exorcists on the planet – The Brooklyn Order of the Augustine Interfaith Order of Hellbound Saints aka HELLBENDERS. Described by writer/director JT Petty as “last chance exorcists”, what makes them so special is that beyond their elite exorcism training they do what no others do – live in perpetual debauchery, madness and mayhem, ready to go to Hell on a moment’s notice. After all, what better way to lure the Devil and his minions than with sinful priests?
After being locked away for centuries, the Norse demon Black Surtr has been unleashed on an unsuspecting New York and it’s up to the HELLBENDERS to contain it and send him back to Hell. Led by the perpetually drunken Lutheran minister Angus and aided by his right hand man, Larry and the object of Larry’s affections, Unitarian Elizabeth, joining in the fight are Baptist Macon, Catholic Stephen and Polish Catholic Eric.
When it comes to performances, Clancy Brown and Clifton Collins Jr, as Angus and Larry, respectively, knock it out of the park, approaching the roles with a seriousness and gravitas, giving it their all. It’s that serious approach that fuels the comedic elements of the story, something that is not lost on writer/director Petty. “Right from the start [they] treated it as something serious.” Although given some research materials by Petty, Collins took it upon himself to dig deeper to get into character. “I actually called JT trying to research Surtr and all these other things. ‘I found this and I learned this!’ It all turned into stuff. That’s what really intrigued me. This is all stuff I’ve never heard about. . .I also turned to research on the closest thing to a real exorcism that I could find. I was constantly searching.”
But then you look at Dan Fogler as Father Eric, and it’s obvious he’s approaching the role as nothing by a joke. The imbalance and ambiguity is distracting. However, the meld of actors as a whole is beyond fun, with each providing a distinct and separate function, not to mention level of sin.
Brown is just over the top genius! Robyn Rikoon, with whom I was previously unfamiliar, is captivating as Elizabeth, particularly when possessed by Surtr. Of all who become possessed, her stilted zombie-like movements are the most interesting. I am guessing that her theater background served her well in the physical control necessary to play Elizabeth. Laugh-out-loud funny is Andre Royo who, as Father Stephen keeps “sin records” on each of the HELLBENDERS, urging them to “engage in more debauchery, blasphemy, drunkenness and sex” when not maintaining enough sin points in a week.
Steven Grevedon’s Clint, the spokesman for Opus Dei who wants to shut down HELLBENDERS, feels like a send up of James Coburn’s “Mr. Crisp” in Sister Act 2 but it works so well here, particularly when the Saints learn that he’s with Opus Dei and “not even with the church”. Standout is Clifton Collins’ dialogue delivery in scenes with Grevedon as Collins celebrates the scenes with tacit facial and physical expressiveness of disdain and disgust at Clint’s antics.
And not to be missed is a “sinful” cameo by one of my fave horror gurus, Larry Fessenden. The minute you see Fessenden among the cast, you know there will be some horrific over-the-top hijinks! And here, he doesn’t disappoint.
A decadent delight of a premise, HELLBENDERS 3D makes perfect sense. What better way to attract evil than to perpetuate sin? For Petty, “exorcism is classically, the scariest thing you can do on film because people actually believe in it.” Unfortunately, after a delicious first act, writer/director JT Petty never quite fulfills the promise of the idea nor the talents of his cast, falling into a sense of the film being unable to decide whether it wants to be taken seriously or as a satire of itself. It even feels as if Petty held back with the subject matter. Despite that, however, the fun doesn’t end, and neither do the laughs and scares. But, as for the overall story and details themselves – such decrepit blasphemy or, as Clifton Collins puts it, “bad-assery”!! It’s all so hot, it’s cool. Showing no preferential treatment, Petty has something for all the Christian religions out there – as well as Judaism! Hell apparently doesn’t play favorites and to have his own team of “Hellbound Avengers” that encompasses all whom believe in Christ, well, just tells me that Petty is one equal opportunity offender, er, tither, er, acolyte! The religious mythology with rites, seven deadly sins, the Bible, history of gods, demons and monsters, etc., Petty insures that the devil is in the details!
Visuals are fantastic, both from a lighting and lensing aspect and the SVFX explodes. Super-saturated, enticing. It’s hard to top a core of flames at the gate to hell that looks like a vagina. It comes as absolutely no surprise to me that director Jim Mickle’s partner in crime, Ryan Samul, is the cinematographer her. Samul has a way with light and color that is immersive and emotionally captivating.
A surprise with a relatively lo-budget film like HELLBENDERS 3D is that it is actually lensed in 3D. This is not a post-production add-on. For Petty, there was never a question that HELLBENDERS 3D would be shot 3D as he believes it the perfect format for the story. “The fact that you’re that much closer to [the set, the actors], you can see the roundness of things and feel the texture and all that, it makes it that much more intimate. That kind of intimacy works both for the horror and the comedy.”
As filmmakers will tell you, 3D imposes visual restrictions and lensing limitations, something which played into Petty’s design construction. “We couldn’t get [camera] lower than about 1 ½ feet from the ground because it’s got the mirror box set-up. . . It certainly limits things. The camera couldn’t move to places a non-3D could otherwise because it was the size of a mini-fridge. Light loss became an issue. That’s a weird technical thing but we didn’t have enough lights to light large exteriors. . .Because you’re shooting through a mirror box, you’re losing like a stop and a half through the glass. You have to shoot at a high enough resolution so that both eyes are going to be able to match and you’re gonna be able to move things around in post-production. You can’t cut the corners that you could with modern digital cinematography. Which is actually awesome to have Ryan Samul on board because he is somebody who knows all the digital RED tricks but he also comes from film. He knows his shit well enough that he can put all of it together.” One restriction of lensing in 3D that had no solution was the inability to “cant” or Dutch angle the camera.
From an acting stand-point, veteran Clancy Brown is quick to note “as uncumbersome as [technology and RED Epic camera] is for 3D, it is still more cumbersome than what’s happened lately with digital overall. So going in you realize, ‘Wow. This is more old school’ because you do have to make allowances for the camera “ when setting your mark and maneuvering.
Disappointing in the overall design, however, is some of the pacing as the film loses momentum on more than one occasion, feeling like Petty was struggling to fill in time or a story gap.
In theatres and VOD now, we’re all goin’ to hell with the hellbound HELLBENDERS…..
Written and Directed by JT Petty
Cast: Clancy Brown, Clifton Collins, Jr., Robyn Rikoon, Macon Blair, Andre Royo, Dan Fogler, Larry Fessenden
