In the exploitation film, All Hell Breaks Loose from director Jeremy Garner, a biker gang, Satan’s Sinners, escape from their torment in Hell to roam the earth, taint innocent virgins and recruit some bitches for the devil, exploitation style! Also, they ambush a newlywed couple and murder the groom and kidnap his bride to slut up for the devil. God or some guy in a white outfit decides to get involved, resurrects the groom so he can get murdered over and over trying to save his bride while delivering God’s justice to the wrong doers. What follows is a lot of forced laughing, bad acting, some titties, a bad Elvis impersonator and a story that isn’t half bad.
Exploitation movies have a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to success and how they are accepted or rejected. In many ways what makes them successful are really what are considered negative things in films. Bad acting, bad editing, logic holes in the story and so on. Despite these things however exploitation films can contain a certain X Factor so to speak that endears them to people, otherwise they get relegated to the wastebasket of remembrance of when you went to the drive in on a Saturday night get laid by the school slut of ’74. So the key to these movies is portraying a certain charm an everyday person can relate to, to elevate the film past its shortcomings.
All Hell Breaks Loose…almost rises above its flaws…almost. The biggest issues I had with the movie was the bad acting…even for a movie like this the acting was just not…right. The biker named Sundown (Joshua Lee Frazier) who was supposed to be a hard ass just came off as a bad actor trying to be a hard ass caricature. Though I did like his speech to Tina (April Mai) later in the film after she was deflowered, this lent a certain somber and philosophical tone to the otherwise silliness of some of the film. There were a few more scenes like this in the movie as well that helped the film be a little more engaging for the viewer which was a nice touch.
Another thing that bothered me in the film was how the bikers were always trying to laugh and sound evil…ALL the time. I think they would have been more threatening by just looking menacing in the background in some scenes. And then there is the Elvis impersonator biker played by Ehren McGhehey of Jackass Fame. I thought the guy was more of a Parkinson’s disease sufferer than an evil Elvis biker guy. I thought the guy suffered from Tourette’s or something.
There are a few bright spots in the acting department however like Nick the Groom (Nick Forrest) who did a good job portraying a haphazard guy trying to save his wife, multiple times and while his acting wasn’t GREAT I did like the leader of the biker gang Statch (Todd A. Robinson) who I felt at least looked more like a biker than the Sundown character who just looked like a used car salesman going through a mid-life crisis.
I also particularly enjoyed some of the subtle humor in the movie like the bikers trying to conduct a Satanic ritual by playing a Village People record backwards and the pervo priest in the film was kind of funny as well. Overall however I was little let down by All Hell Breaks Loose because from the trailer the movie looks like a blast and on some levels it is but it embraces the flaws of the exploitation genre too much. So much in fact that they serve as a dead weight that pulls the movie under and tries to drown it.
All Hell Breaks Loose 
(2 / 5)
