I went into this film expecting/hoping for a sleazy drive-in style slice of seventies exploitation, but what I got was more of a bizarre pseudo western with far too much talking and not enough action. It's clear that this film was made on a budget; the locations are drab and poorly shot, while the acting leaves a lot to be desired also. The plot focuses on a trio of robbers (a father and two sons) that steal a load of gold after killing some miners. They come across a cabin inhabited by a young girl and her stepmother...and all this is told in flashbacks by the young girl, currently residing in an asylum. It's clear that directors Louis Leahman and William Sachs thought they were making something really shocking; but despite its best efforts, South of Hell Mountain is just too boring to shock the viewer. The film drones on for about eighty minutes and most of it consists of boring characters spouting off boring and long-winded dialogue. The only good thing I have to say about the film is with regards to the music; which is good in places. The ending is the only other good thing about the movie; and that's only because it's the last thing that happens. I wouldn't recommend anyone bothers tracking this down...there was much better trash made in the seventies.
7 Reviews
Ooohhh maaan!!!!
von-1320 May 2000
Well.....horror this ain't, but.......!!!??? A terrible low low budget backwood-flic of the worst kind, sort of AND...therefore quite charming and funny to watch...at least on my tv set!!! A cross between Pete Walker, Herschell Gordon Lewis and...say....damn, I give up...just can't come up with any "prettier" resemblances for this trashy movie. Everything is soooo wrong that I just have to enlist it in my film collection alongside with....Death In Venice.....Nekromantik.....Blue Velvet and The Good,Bad,Ugly... right !!?? People with some small talent for adding gory inserts or sexy happenings to film they buy offa other people, should pick this film up immediately....sure is a fat lil' ol' goldmine waiting here, oh maaaannnn!!!!!
Twang, twang, twang
udar5518 October 2009
This promised horror on the box but this Cannon release is more of a backwoods action-drama. Bible spouting Pa and his two sons kill a bunch of people at a mine and steal the gold. On the run, they come across young Sally who is living with her mean step-mom Helen. Sally is smitten with one of the young boys while Helen sees gold in them thar hills. All of this is told via flashback as Sally is visited by a psychiatrist in a dingy insane asylum. This is a really odd movie. It is almost like they finished the main film, found out they didn't have enough footage for a full length movie and added the asylum bits. This is all but confirmed with an opening credit that says, "Asylum scenes written and directed by William Sachs" (of THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN infamy). The main body of the film is credited to one Louis Leahman and it is his only credit. On the downside, this film features more Jew's Harp (twang, twang, twang!) than one should ever hear in a lifetime. I'd actually like to know more about this movie as it has some interesting parts and well done, downbeat ending.
Insurgent little western-genre outcast with mild horror trappings...a weird one.
EyeAskance5 June 2004
A man and his two sons rob a gold mine, killing several people in the process. High-tailing it to the Canadian border, they happen upon the off-road home of a young lady and her sleazy sexpot step-mother. The young girl falls in love with one of the robbers, and various situational weirdness ensues. The vague, under-developed story is expounded during flashbacks the girl has from a squalid sanitarium. These highly malapropos scenes are uproariously over-the-top, and look like some filthy nightmare from the Inquisition.
A head-spinning, ultra-trashy obscurity which seems to want to be set in the old west, though it's impossible to ascertain exactly what the time period actually is, SOUTH OF HELL MOUNTAIN is essentially a misfit dissenter from the ambit of western/melodrama films, but the demented, extrinsic asylum sequences border characteristically on grindhouse horror. Too well-groomed to categorize as "awful", its wandering inconsistencies and stylistically vacillating chaos lead me to believe that there were too many chefs involved in preparing this particular dish.
Uncurbed fans of cultish films should really give this one a bit more attention, mostly for its schismatic peculiarity...it's such an odd-one-out that it becomes strangely appealing as a defenseless bad-movie curio.
4.5/10
A head-spinning, ultra-trashy obscurity which seems to want to be set in the old west, though it's impossible to ascertain exactly what the time period actually is, SOUTH OF HELL MOUNTAIN is essentially a misfit dissenter from the ambit of western/melodrama films, but the demented, extrinsic asylum sequences border characteristically on grindhouse horror. Too well-groomed to categorize as "awful", its wandering inconsistencies and stylistically vacillating chaos lead me to believe that there were too many chefs involved in preparing this particular dish.
Uncurbed fans of cultish films should really give this one a bit more attention, mostly for its schismatic peculiarity...it's such an odd-one-out that it becomes strangely appealing as a defenseless bad-movie curio.
4.5/10
I still do the whipping in this family!
JohnSeal29 December 2008
Warning: Spoilers
An absolutely baffling western featuring flash-forward sequences set in an insane asylum, South of Hell Mountain was one of the first films produced by the schlockmeisters at Cannon Film. Co-directed by William Sachs, who would later deliver such fan favourites as The Incredible Melting Man and Galaxina, the film tells the very dull tale of a trio of gold robbers who stumble upon a cabin occupied by two women who are hiding some secrets that aren't worth discovering. The cast (most of whom never made another film) try gamely, but are hamstrung by the screenplay, which generally makes no sense. The asylum scenes are edited in to little effect and are punctuated by ridiculous sound effects and tape loops. Ultimately, it's a lot of talk and little else.
Where is the horror?
HumanoidOfFlesh29 July 2010
"South of Hell Mountain" is a mix of western,exploitation cinema and some bizarre asylum sequences,which were apparently written and directed by William Sachs of "The Incredible Melting Man" fame.The father and his two sons rob a mine,kill some miners and end up with two women named Anna and Helen on some farm deep in the woods. The flashbacks take the viewer to the mental asylum,when Anna currently stays with rats and sadistic warden.The plot of "South of Hell Mountain" is nonsensical,the banjo/orchestral score is annoying and the mental asylum sequences with Anna are amusing.Fans of Donn Davidson's "Demented Death Farm Massacre" will certainly enjoy this very rare and weird piece of trash.6 hell mountains out of 10.
South of Hell Mountain
BandSAboutMovies13 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
William Sachs told Hidden Films - an incredible site devoted to obscure/rare movies not available for streaming - of this movie: "They fired the director (Louis Leahman). They didn't know what to do with the footage. It was a meandering thing, there were so many things missing, nothing made sense. So I came up with a spine (for the movie), where the girl is in a mental hospital, and the guy comes to try to get her memory back, and that's what I shot. I used flashbacks out of what was already shot. I shot it at Welfare Island - it's now Roosevelt Island - at an old mental hospital. There were labs there with jars of fetuses and body parts that were 100 years old. They put my name on as co-director, though I really didn't want them to."
Yes, a movie originally about an outlaw and his two sons massacring the men working at a gold mine and then stopping at a cabin in the woods where a woman (Elsa Raven, Mrs. Townsend from The Amityville Horror) and her stepdaughter Sally (Anna Stuart, who was Donna Love for 976 episodes of Another World) live now became one told through the flashbacks of Sally as she attempts to come back to sanity.
And if you're pondering why Helen looks familiar, that's because she's played by an uncredited Candace Hilligoss from Carnival of Souls.
That said - this movie is impossible to find and has even eluded me.
Yes, a movie originally about an outlaw and his two sons massacring the men working at a gold mine and then stopping at a cabin in the woods where a woman (Elsa Raven, Mrs. Townsend from The Amityville Horror) and her stepdaughter Sally (Anna Stuart, who was Donna Love for 976 episodes of Another World) live now became one told through the flashbacks of Sally as she attempts to come back to sanity.
And if you're pondering why Helen looks familiar, that's because she's played by an uncredited Candace Hilligoss from Carnival of Souls.
That said - this movie is impossible to find and has even eluded me.
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