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6.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Hell Bound remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have seventy minutes to spare and love dusty, weird melodrama, Hell Bound is absolutely worth a watch tonight. It is perfect for people who collect odd 1930s cinema curiosities, but if you need fast pacing or actual scary special effects, you will probably throw your remote at the wall.
So, the setup is simple. Lane and Diane are this young married couple living in a sleepy coastal town where basically nothing happens except the wind blowing.
Then they find this old book of magic, and everything go completely off the rails. It's not like modern horror where there's a slow build; it's more like they open the book and boom, instant life ruin.
Lola Lane plays Diane, and she has this incredibly expressive face that does about 90% of the heavy lifting in the dramatic scenes. Honestly, her husband Lane (played by Lloyd Hughes, who looks constantly confused) is kind of a wet blanket.
There is this one scene where they first open the book, and the lighting gets super dark all of a sudden. You can tell some guy off-screen was just pulling a lever on a spotlight, but it somehow works.
It reminded me a bit of the strange vibes in Die Gespensteruhr, though this one feels way more American and seaside-y. Speaking of the seaside, the ocean sounds in the background are so loud they sometimes drown out the actual dialogue.
I swear the sound guy just fell asleep on the volume knob. 🌊
Leo Carrillo shows up too, and he always brings this weird, frantic energy that doesn't quite match anyone else in the room. He is acting in a completely different movie, maybe something more like Air Eagles where everyone is just shouting over engine noises.
But that's what makes these old films so fun. The pieces don't fit together perfectly, and you can see the seams.
Like, there is a scene where Gertrude Astor walks into their house, looks at the book, and her reaction is so over-the-top I actually laughed out loud. She gasps so hard I thought she was going to inhale her own necklace.
The plot itself gets pretty muddled near the middle. The writers—Julien Josephson and Adele Comandini—clearly had two different ideas about what this magic book actually does.
Is it a curse or demons? Mostly it just seems to make everyone behave like they had five cups of espresso.
I did love the shots of the coastal town, though. They have this foggy, lonely quality that feels real, unlike the shiny studio sets of the era.
It has that same isolated feeling you get when watching The Lonely Woman, where the background feels like a character itself.
Also, shoutout to Frank Hagney who plays this random tough guy. He has a face like a brick wall and just stares at people until they get uncomfortable.
The climax is a bit of a rush job, to be honest. It feels like they realized they only had five minutes of film left in the camera and had to wrap up the whole magic book situation immediately.
But hey, it keeps things moving. You won't get bored, even if you are mostly giggling at the dramatic organ music that swells every time someone looks at a dusty page.
It's a messy, goofy, sometimes genuinely spooky little relic. Definitely worth a look if you like your horror creaky and vintage.
IMDb —
1929
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