NOW ON SHUDDER! Someone really knows how to break the ice at the monster party in the notable creature feature Hell Hole, directed by John Adams and Toby Poser. Written by Adams, Poser and Lulu Adams, the film opens in 1814 during Napoleon’s bloody conquest of eastern Europe. A French captain (Anders Hove), in need of something to feed his starving soldiers, takes a horse away from a Gypsy woman (Marina Gunjaca) in the woods. When the soldiers pull out their knives to carve up the horse, a multi-tentacled monster leaps out of the horse’s body and eats most of them up.
We then move centuries ahead to Serbia, where Emily (Toby Poser) is overseeing a fracking operation with John (John Adams). In their office is the interim Sofija (Olivera Perunicic) as well as her professor, Nikola (Aleksander Trmcic), who is monitoring the project’s ecological impact. While fracking away, the crew come across the perfectly preserved body of one of the French soldiers (Marko Filipovic). The soldier is not just frozen in time, he is also still alive. Emily doesn’t know what to make of this and they keep a close watch on their new guest. Soon people start spotting slithering eel-like tendrils popping out of parts of the soldier’s face…

“…a multi-tentacled monster leaps out of the horse’s body…”
Monster movies by classical design are big teases. You get some brief glimpses in a carnage-filled opening, then fleeting glances afterward until it goes full gander in the third act. This is supposed to increase the audience’s appreciation of the man-built beast on display, building up the details into a graphic crescendo. It also allows the filmmaker to hide the zipper in the monster suit with limited visibility. In between monster scenes, we have what is charitably referred to as the people parts. This is usually some sort of workaday drama that is impacted by a creature on the loose. So, lots of people doing their jobs with maybe a kiss or two. This filler always pales in comparison to the monster attacks, as there is no competition entertainment-wise. Seeing folks getting eaten by monsters is fun. Anything else just isn’t.