A reimagining of Faust seen through a lowly bandleader trying to help his money-strapped band to break through by making a deal with a mysterious club owner. Sadly, this rolls the life of the band down the pits until a 'hellbent' night of murders and payback.

An interesting film.

Been watching a lot of those 80s cheap B to Z films and a lot of them have concepts and earnestness BUT lacks that certain sharpness that can lift up the material. This film is a good example of that. It has a fine concept BUT the execution feels a lot to be desired.

The acting in particular feels B- at best. Its a bit TV movie level acting. No one can emote range AND it puts down the film all around. I wished that they could have gone full camp BUT that is already too much to ask.

The direction/cinematography is typical for this type of film, that weird color range and defiantly cheap looking vibe. Not particularly bad though. The writing has interesting concepts BUT could have been definitely sharper AND add more plot beats. The ending is also very confusing too.

Overall, not the best but watcheable.

Director Richard Casey made one of the most bonkers movies I've ever seen, Horror House on Highway 5. I'm pleased to report that this movie - which melds Faust and the Los Angeles music scene in a mix of the first two Decline of Western Civilization films to create a blast of pure strangeness. Imagine if the Dark Brothers or Rinse Dream made one of their films with no pornography, but after doing even more drugs and never sleeping. It's that good.

Lemmy (Phil Ward, who shows up Horror House on Highway 6, as well as being the art department for Space Mutiny, if you can believe that) is the lead singer of a band that's not going anywhere until he meets Mr. Tanas - pronounced tannis, like the root or spelled backward like...oh you get it - who offers him fame in exchange for his soul.

That's the basic story, but this cough syrup drinking, drug abusing, machine guns in the recording studio affair is unlike any movie you've watched before.

David Marciano, who plays Mr. Tanas, would go on to appear on the show Homeland. Phil Therrien, who was Dr. Mabuse in the two Highway films, is also in this.

If you're looking for a movie where a hobo screams "Black Betty," where a mother looks for her son by killing everyone she comes near, where sound engineers act like a jerk to everyone near them, where singers proclaim that they are Satan's son, a gang called Satan's Cheerleaders and a cursed establishment called Bar Sinister, well, look no more.

It's not great, but it's awesome. If you understand that sentence, you're going to love this movie.