‘The only scary stories’ begins one of Hellgate’s characters during a ghost story session by a roaring fireplace on a stormy night, ‘are the ones that are actually true’. Luckily for us, William A. Levey’s 80s horror B-movie, which has been resurrected from video nasty purgatory by Arrow Films, isn’t based on a true story, and thankfully, never spawned a sequel.
Filmed in Apartheid South Africa, standing in for Lake Tahoe, Hellgate follows a group of college kids, (including a 40-year-old Ron Palillo as Matt) who stumble into the ghost town of Hellgate, run by the undead Lucas (Carel Trichtardt) and his zombie daughter Josie (Abigail Wolcott). Josie met her demise after being kidnapped by a 1950s biker gang, before being resurrected by a crystal that only her father can control, and has taken to seducing men before her father butchers them. Matt is next on her list.
There are two ways to look at Hellgate. The first is to take it as a tongue-in-cheek, intentionally bad horror comedy, the second is to view it as a bad film with delusions of grandeur. This reviewer leans heavily towards the latter, as Hellgate is not a good film. The script is poor, the acting from most of the cast is weak, the special effects are laughable and the plot is unnecessarily complicated. In fact, it’s the plot, with its over-used and over the top tropes and clichés that do the film the most damage. It starts as a ghost story, with an emphasis on the Phantom Hitchhiker urban legend, then takes elements of Dead and Buried and adds a mysterious magic rock, lots of gore, nudity, a perpetually horny zombie woman and a cockblocking undead dad.