“…and Satan smiled.”
That’s how this movie ends. Honestly, if Satan were sitting through this, he really would smile because he’d know he was about to get another soul who died of pure, unadulterated boredom.
Released by Harry Novak’s Boxoffice International Pictures, A Taste of Hell feels like a massive identity crisis. Novak usually traffics in the glorious, neon-drenched sleaze of true blue exploitation, so dipping a toe into war movie territory feels like an odd detour. But don’t worry: even with a PG rating—proving once again that the early ’70s rating system was pure roulette (Blood and Lace and The Baby, right?)—it still manages to scrape up a little grit.
Set in the Philippines in 1942 (an on-screen title has to remind us, because otherwise we’d just think we were watching Vic Diaz play a modern heavy for the four-millionth time), an American guerrilla platoon gets completely wiped out by a brutal Japanese commander. Well, almost completely. Lt. Barry Mann—played by John Garwood—takes a faceful of violence and survives as a horribly disfigured freak living in a cave, wearing a giant straw hat and wandering around chopping up soldiers with a machete. He even gets a heartwarming subplot where he befriends a hunchbacked local kid (Roderick Paulate, FAMAS Awardee for “Best Child Actor”), because every cave-dwelling machete-wielding maniac needs a sidekick. Meanwhile, the non-disfigured hero Jack Lowell (William Smith) tries to rescue his former flame, Maria (Liza Lorena). Maria is currently stuck in a tiger cage because Major Kuramoto (Diaz) has a special plan for her.
A Taste of Hell commits the cardinal, unforgivable sin of cinema: it is aggressively, unbearably boring.
It’s an incoherent jumble of nonsensical mush. There’s way too much unfocused talking and romance and nowhere near enough blood, violence or Vic Diaz, which is honestly the exact opposite of what you want. The characters drift around like ghosts, and the storytelling feels like an abandoned workprint missing half its reels. William Smith tries, as always, and Garwood basically just mimes his way through his burn makeup since he barely speaks.
But wow, this whole thing is so slow.
You spend eighty minutes wading through total nothingness, praying for a spark of life, and suddenly the last five to seven minutes erupt into the exact violence and action you’ve been craving the whole time. A decapitation, and a guy is tumbling out of a guard tower, which is deeply appreciated. But you’ll want more. I mean, you have a scarred-up maniac and a hunchback child, and this is what we get?
It ends with that baffling “…and Satan smiled” title card, leaving you staring blankly at the screen wondering why nobody injected this kind of unhinged energy into the actual movie.
A clip of the decapitation was shown on Norwegian TV on the show På Sparket as an example of video nasties.
This has two directors: Basil Bradbury was the DP or cinematographer on Honeymoon of Terror and Invasion of the Star Creatures. Writer Neil Yarema also has a directing credit on this movie.
