Hell Raiders (1969)

Who payed the critics

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

As exciting as a marathon of news reels, this is a weak mixture of action, romance and anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam war, too cheaply done to get a theatrical release, and no evidence of a T.V. premiere in prime time. The plot is supposed to be about the efforts of American troops to get the last of the Nazi's out of Italy, yet more time is spent on the interactions of soldiers and Italian women, a boring romantic plot involving a commanding officer and a female reporter anxious to report from the front and repetitive stock footage of tanks and bombings. A long introductory sequence makes you think that this is so much more, but it ends up being so little. Former B movie leads John Agar and Richard Webb were obviously hard up for work. This ends up being a waste of time stinker with poor editing, horrid sound (often sounding tinny and warped) and an un-cohesive structure. The only scene worth remembering is the plight of a young soldier at the very beginning writing a letter to his father and having a heart to heart with an older soldier who seems touched over being compared to his dad. Other than that, it is a repetitive repeat over similar situations over and over. If only the hell raiders had raided the studio vault and destroyed this print.

B movie director Larry Buchanans' made for TV remake of 1958's "Suicide Battalion" may be best left to Buchanan completists (if there is such a thing). Overall, it's too low budget to work, and Buchanan fails to ever make it genuinely interesting or exciting. Even the action scenes are nothing great. The running time is brief as it is (78 minutes), and would have been even shorter had there not been so much use of stock footage. This viewer would be hesitant to say that the film is actually worth sticking with, but helping somewhat is at least one colourful performance, by Texas native Bill Thurman (best known as Coach Popper in "The Last Picture Show") - playing, appropriately enough, a character named Tex.The story is about a squad of demolition experts sent on a volunteer WWII mission to ensure that the valuable documents left behind in an abandoned headquarters do not fall into enemy hands. That means blowing them up GOOD. Unfortunately, it takes over 55 minutes into this movie before the mission even begins! Until then, there's just too much talk and a needless romantic subplot between intrepid Ronald Paxton (47 year old John Agar, in what sadly turned out to be his last starring role) and a war correspondent named Laura Grant (played by gorgeous Joan Huntington). Richard Webb ("Out of the Past") co-stars. Lovers of schlock from this period will note the presence of Jeff Alexander ("Curse of the Swamp Creature", "Horror High") as a Nazi and Annabelle Weenick ("Don't Look in the Basement") as a goofy Italian madam who teaches her prostitutes how to speak English.If you're curious about this one, I would advise going in with VERY low expectations.Four out of 10.

1968's "Hell Raiders" is a real anomaly in the jaw dropping career of grade Z director Larry Buchanan, the 7th of his 8 Azalea Pictures titles, and the only one not of the horror/science fiction genres. While Buchanan acknowledged that the Azaleas would be the films he would be best remembered for, he clearly had little affinity for their subject matter, and he displayed even less flair for this actionless WW2 adventure. It remains a mystery as to why Samuel Z. Arkoff decided to do a color remake of AIP's 1958 black and white war picture "Suicide Battalion," starring Mike Connors and John Ashley, rather than another science fiction title, shot in Texas (non union) like most of the others. Some sources have cited this as a lost film, but it has turned up on Encore's Action channel, plus a DVD release in a boxed set of obscure war films. The uncredited script was penned in 1958 by AIP regular Lou Rusoff, Arkoff's brother-in-law, dead at age 51 by 1963 (his last film was "Beach Party"!). The drab story is simple: Major Ronald Paxton (John Agar) and Captain Brad Stevens (Richard Webb) lead a band of 6 volunteers on a suicide mission to destroy a deserted Allied headquarters in 1944 Italy, a lakeside location with barren trees revealing an autumnal landscape, previously used by Buchanan in 1967's "Mars Needs Women." Inept filmmaking at its most visually unexciting, compounded by a constant barrage of offscreen gunfire and explosions, all obviously dubbed in post production (nearly every gun that fires, no bullets are seen). Five minutes of actual black and white war footage is woven into the first half hour of exposition, followed by the soldiers partying on leave in a deserted town for 72 hours (though another 25 minutes, it only SEEMED like 72 hours!). The actual mission only begins after 55 minutes, and is no better than anything that came before. In what turned out to be his last starring role, John Agar, veteran of Buchanan's earlier "Zontar the Thing from Venus" and "Curse of the Swamp Creature," is at least professional, but the character, like all the others, is strictly one note. Richard Webb and guest star Joan Huntington, busier on television than in lower budgeted fare, supply the other two thirds of a laughable romantic triangle (once Agar kisses her goodbye, she's never seen again). Buchanan regular Bill Thurman, perhaps best remembered by non horror fans as Cloris Leachman's inattentive husband in 1971's "The Last Picture Show," easily stands out in a showy part as Tex, forever a private, who looks after the younger members of the squad. Jeff Alexander, like Agar from both "Zontar..." and "...Swamp Creature" (plus 1973's "Horror High" aka "Twisted Brain"), only gets a minute or two as an unnamed German captain, disappearing just when it seemed we would get a slimy villain to spice things up. By far the worst performance comes from Annabelle MacAdams, the acting pseudonym for Azalea's regular dialogue director Annabelle Weenick, best remembered for her villainous asylum director in 1973's Texas-filmed "Don't Look in the Basement," helmed by former Buchanan editor S. F. Brownrigg. She resembles no less than notorious San Francisco loon Nancy Pelosi with her wide eyes and brunette wig, mangling the English language as an Italian brothel madam. It's no wonder there are few comments on this obscurity, little seen even in its heyday (I did catch it during the 80s on Cleveland station WJW-TV), and easily the most forgettable title among Larry Buchanan's popular Azalea features, strictly for completists only (I'm sure Larry would not disagree).

Wow. Found it on Movieplex Echoes of War. Let's see. First the two officers, Agar and Webb, are way too old. The Uniforms seem to be a hodgepodge of Vietnam-era and WWII/Korean War-era clothing. The Germans at first seem to be carrying Gewehr 41(W)semi-auto loaders, but then the German soldier who is watching the "squad" take 10 and shoots the stereotypical young and scared soldier is using what appears to be an early wood-stocked model of the FN91, a post war rifle.Constant battle sounds that are looped, the American weapons, when they fired, (M1s, M1-carbines, .45 pistols, etc) only fire one round, though semi-automatic. This was due to the film makers evidently not using blank adapters in their weapons. When they show the Americans firing, each fires a round, and then the action cuts to the Germans. As we watch the Germans, we hear intense American firing.When a German soldier is firing at the squad with an American .30 caliber machinegun, they move to a close up of him as he shakes the weapon and you hear the firing. Funny, he continued to shake as the firing stops then starts again.I could go on, but after about 30 minutes, I had had enough. I can't believe I wasted so many electrons watching this horrid excuse of a movie.