Hellgate starts late one night in a isolated log cabin where three friends Chuck (Even J. Klisser), Bobby (Joanne Ward) & Pam (Petrea Curran) are telling scary urban legend stories to each other. Bobby starts hers, she tells a tale set in the 50's about a nearby public attraction the authentic replica Ghost Town of Hellgate owned by Lucas Carlyle (Carel Trichardt). A gang of bikers known as the 'Strangers' kidnap & kill his daughter Josie (Abigail Wolcott), Lucas is obviously devastated. Soon after a guy named Jonas (Victor Melleney) is attacked by a bat in a mine which he kills, he then notices a strange blue crystal which shoots a blue laser-beam at the bat which returns to life. Jonas tells Lucas who decides to use the crystal to bring his daughter back to life who then lures unsuspecting travellers to Hellgate for reasons I don't really know so Lucas can kill them for reasons that are never satisfactorily explained. As Bobby tells the somewhat lame story they have a fourth friend named Matt (Ron Pilillo) on his way to join them, however while driving he stops to offer a pretty young woman a lift home...

Directed by William A. Levey, who also appears in the film as the severed head in the fridge, I though Hellgate was crap. The script by Michael O'Rourke is really silly & lame. While it tries to be different the whole thing is so absurd that it falls flat on it's face. It moves along at a fair pace but doesn't really interest, grip or entertain. Things are never explained properly & it doesn't seem to have any rules, why does the crystal mutate somethings & make them explode? What the hell is this crystal & why does it have magical powers? Why does it re-animate Josie perfectly without any side effects? Why does it melt Jonas? Why does Lucas kill everyone? He has his daughter back so what does he get out of it? Why do everyone else who are killed come back as zombies? Is it the crystal again, if so why are they rotten & not perfect? The climax is lame & underwhelming to say the least, lets hope the suggested sequel never materialises. This is pretty awful stuff from start to finish with horrible character's that are dumb & unlikable & deserve everything that comes to them.

Director Levey messes everything up, there is no style, tension, atmosphere or scares & the best he can muster is blue neon lighting & lots of fake fog swirling around. The special effects are pretty cheap looking & tacky, that mutant goldfish for instance. The gore is tame, an axe in the head, a knife in a leg, a decapitation, someone face melting & a few zombies that don't do anything. There's a bit of nudity & sex but not enough to save it.

Technically Hellgate is pretty poor, it was filmed in South Africa apparently not that you'd notice. The entire production is cheap, the ghost town itself is one street, the special effects are unimpressive especially that laser beam effect & as a whole no-one seemed to put much effort in it. The acting is predictably bad, Trichardt as the villain has some silly plates on his face & for some reason never says anything during the film.

Hellgate is a really bad 80's horror film that has little to recommend it, it's different & that's the only positive thing I can say about it. A stupid mess of a film & one to avoid.

A group of college kids travel to the ghost town of Hellgate to find out the truth about a young woman who was murdered by a motorcycle gang in the 1950's.There,they are greeted by ghosts and walking dead."Hellgate" is a cheesy horror flick that will satisfy only the most undemanding fans of horror genre.The acting is terrible and the script is cheesy beyond belief.There is a fair amount of blood and gore including a nice decapitation scene,unfortunately the special effects are lame.The only reasons to see this stinker are a fish on steroids and re-animated turtle plus Abigail Wolcott as a hot zombie girl.4 out of 10.Only for fans of truly mindless zombie flicks.

A group of college students decide to investigate an urban legend concerning a young woman named Josie (luscious busty blonde babe Abigail Wolcott) who was abducted and killed by a biker gang back in the 1950's. They go to an old abandoned ghost town to check out said urban legend and naturally find themselves in considerable jeopardy.

Boy, does this ham-fisted attempt at a surrealistic horror movie rate highly as a choice absurd chunk of flaming hot garbage: We've got hopelessly inept (mis)direction by William A. Lavey, a seriously ridiculous premise that's played ludicrously straight, occasional clumsy use of strenuous slow motion, tacky gore, shoddy (not so) special effects, an obviously fake rubbery bat on strings, some tasty gratuitous female nudity, a mutant goldfish puppet and other stuff that blows up real good, dancing undead can can girls, a plodding pace, zero tension or spooky atmosphere, and even a face-shredding zombie turtle (!). As an extra plus, Ron Pallilo (Horshack on "Welcome Back, Kotter") is uproariously miscast as a total chick magnet who hangs a BA for the ladies (yikes!). By no means a good movie, but overall pretty enjoyable in a train wreck sort of way.