Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970)

Even by the bottom-feeding standards of director Al Adamson’s usual fare, Hell’s Bloody Devils is unwatchable garbage. Apparently a slapped-together compendium of footage from two (or more) incomplete features, the movie is part biker flick, part espionage caper, part romance, and part brain-melting sludge. Watching this picture is like staring at a TV that changes its own channels, because scenes stop abruptly, characters drift in and out the picture, and the vibe toggles between clean-cut ’60s (some of the footage was shelved for years) and sleazy ’70s. At its weirdest, the movie stops dead when two characters visit a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise for lunch and Colonel Sanders himself enters frame to ask the characters how they’re enjoying their meal. Familiar actors John Carradine and Broderick Crawford make fleeting appearances in Hell’s Bloody Devils—or, to put a finer point on it, in The Fakers, the espionage picture that Adamson commenced in the ’60s and repurposed for about half the footage of Hell’s Bloody Devils. Whatever. Hell’s Bloody Devils cuts from pointless vignettes of bikers festooned with Nazi regalia to a truly bewildering storyline about an Israeli secret agent teamed with a U.S. operative to do—something. Eventually, the spy stuff leads to a chase scene through a theme park, which comprises drab shots of people running through crowds to the accompaniment of overbearing music. Presumably, diehard schlock archivists have catalogued the components of this disastrous film’s ironic appeal, but for mere mortals, this is about as wretched as grade-Z cinema gets.

Hell’s Bloody Devils: SQUARE