O Prazer da Violência

H.G. Lewis' films are not for everyone. He uses amateur actors that he finds in the cities he films in and the sets are probably houses that the actor's parent's own. But his films are so out there and so bizarre that I can't see how you wouldn't get a kick out of them. "Just for the Hell of it" centers on a large group of white-bred kids who, for no reason whatsoever (hence the title) decide to engage in pranks ranging from fairly harmless (hiding a blind man's cane) to truly evil (raping a girl on a beach and putting her boyfriend in a sinking boat). If you want to know what a stereotypical late '60's drive-in film was like, this would probably be your best bet.

White did not throw the baby in the garbage can and at Tarantinos Beverly theatre it opened the Grindhouse Film Fest so it must be recognised by the Grindhouse elite community somehow, so maybe to some it is not as bad to some as it appears to you. In Berlin, knock off copies are still available, it still plays regularly in subject appropriate theatres and there has been recently been gang actions mirroring the illness that the gang in Just For The Hell of It portrayed, again, using the opening figure with the knife on T-shirts. If it can get Berliners crazy enough, maybe we get back into the international scene again. Linking up with the Russians that are fans, maybe we can get our demands faster. Maybe we need a wacko like Denny Fortune to run for Anti-Christ. His attitude is not unlike our (and the Russians) early leaders who could of taken over the world.

A group of crazy, violent teens makes life a living hell for a town of babies, handicapped people, blind men, and single women with nary a cop in sight when anything happens, shortly after anything happens, or even after that. Herschell Gordon Lewis tries his hand at making a teen gang violence picture with some kind of social commentary. But the result is a film with a very sadistic side and loads of intentional(I think they were at least) and many unintentional laughs. Acting, a far off feeling in most Lewis films, is fairly decent here. The youthful leads convey menace enough to hope something terrible happens to them. The group plays all kinds of pranks...some harmless at first but then work their way up to murder and rape. The Lewis touch is clearly evident in the relentless, unfeeling tone of the film. It has no heart at all. Because it has some laughs and shows some situations of intended violence hitherto unseen in any of Lewis's works, I would take a moment and see the film....just for the hell of it!

This film has about the naughtiest juvenile delinquents ever shown in a motion picture. They do horrific things to their poor neighborhood. They destroy property and their school, dumb paint on people, torment a blind man, attack elementary kids playing soccer, put a baby in a trash barrel and roll it away, and axe and splatter paint all over newspapers about these things. What's their excuse? "We did this just for the hell of it." This is incredibly violent, and it sure served as a lesson to me when I saw it, I totally stopped carving my name on benches, writing messages on mirrors with marker, and drag racing.

"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!