"Just For The Hell of It" has to be one of the greatest exploitation flicks I have ever seen. I wanted to see it ever since seeing the trailer a few years ago, which was basically just kids ripping stuff apart. How can you not love that? The film sets the tone quickly as almost immediately the gang destroys a roomful of furniture, even before a single word is muttered on screen. It actually takes seven minutes for any words to come out of anyone's mouth, as after the initial destruction we see a wild late 60's band, complete with guys who seemed like they influenced Angus Young with their head banging on stage.
From there, the movie is virtually non-stop as the gang goes literally from one thing to another, destroying stuff, bothering people, causing all sorts of hell. Some of the things they do are throwing buckets of water at people, hosing down a woman, ripping clothes off a clothes line, ripping up a magazine a woman is reading, and more. These scenes are completely hilarious.
The acts seem to get more violent as the film progresses, as those things progress into beating a blind man with his cane, beating an injured man with his crutches, beating an eatery owner and burning his hand (after destroying his place), and putting a baby in a garbage can while destroying the carriage (where did the mother go?).
The funny thing about all of this is that the gang does it all in broad daylight, in congested places where there are plenty of cars and people around, and of course no one does anything. Even when the gang starts beating on a bunch of little kids playing baseball in the park (in a hilarious scene where you can spot a kid or two laughing as they are being tossed around) one old lady who does see what happened, blames a guy trying to stop the gang for starting a fight with them, and has him arrested.
Then from there, things get much more violent and a little less funny as the gang adds murder and gang-rape to their mayhem.
Much of "Just For The Hell of It" appears to have been shot silent, with sound added later, adding to the cheesiness of the whole thing. It is funny listening to goofy 60's music as the gang commits these crimes, and they also seem to produce hammers and axes wherever they are when they start breaking stuff, despite the fact that you never actually see them carrying any weapons.
The film almost never drags, constantly going from one destructive event to another for almost the entire duration, until the last 15 minutes when things slow down a bit to build up some tension. The guys are all smart alecks and the girls are all pretty. This is a classic JD problem child flick that anyone into very cheesy low-budget stuff will get a huge kick out of. It is H.G. Lewis after all, no one does it quite like him!
